Conduct Committee

Baroness Manningham-Buller Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Manningham-Buller]

That the Report from the Select Committee Review of the Code of Conduct and the Guide to the Code of Conduct (4th Report, HL Paper 66) be agreed to.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, this report is the culmination of the Conduct Committee’s review of the Code of Conduct and the Guide to the Code of Conduct, launched last spring. We chose to embark on this review—and sometimes I wondered whether that was a wise move. We were not asked to do so by Members of the House and were not required to do so by others, but we felt that it was the right thing to do. The existing code is 15 years old, and I hope the House agrees that we have made a number of improvements to it.

I start by thanking the committee—Peers and lay members—for their work on the report and, of course, the staff of the House who gave us wonderful help. It was clear, as we began to take evidence, that many Peers had not actually read the code, and I do not altogether blame them: it was too long, a bit repetitive and parts of it were very unclear. But we have been helped by the comments and thoughts from the debate in the Moses Room in October and from extensive evidence given to us by noble Lords, in person or in writing. I am not just being polite—that has been immensely helpful to us—although, going on, I will try to be polite.

I am also grateful for the feedback that we have had since the report was published. I have spoken to many noble Lords individually and to the main parties. Of course, we are not satisfying everybody. We cannot. There is a price paid when you try to achieve compromise, but I sense, from the feedback that I have had, that there is widespread understanding of and support for the report.

At this stage, I remind noble Lords that our aim was to simplify and clarify the rules. We have tried to make them shorter, clearer and less bureaucratic. We have also sought to uphold the current code’s twin objectives. I will quote them:

“to provide guidance for members of the House of Lords on the standards of conduct expected of them”

and—this is important but has sometimes been overlooked—

“to reinforce public confidence in the way in which members of the House of Lords perform their parliamentary duties”.

These two objectives were the test for every change that we considered. We asked ourselves, “Is this helpful to Members?” Secondly, “Does it reinforce public confidence in the House?” Sometimes those questions yielded different answers, so we had to strike a balance.

I shall give the House one example: the registration of non-financial interests. Public confidence in the House requires transparency over Members’ outside financial interests; I think we are probably all agreed on that. If Members failed to disclose outside employment or other major financial interests, that would undermine public trust and confidence in the House. However, the public interest in requiring the disclosure of Members’ unpaid roles—for example, with voluntary or charitable organisations—is far less clear. Over the years, the rules governing non-financial interests have become wider and more complex, resulting in several Members falling into inadvertent breach. We want Members in this House to have a wide range of interests, so this is quite a difficult area.

We concluded that the bureaucratic burden of the rules on declaring non-financial interests was disproportionate when compared with a small potential benefit to transparency. We therefore recommended ending the requirement to register and declare non-financial interests. Members will still be able to declare them in debate, if they are relevant to the matter under discussion and if time allows, but in our view that is not an enforceable rule.

I have dwelt on that example of our thought processes to try to help the House to understand why we have made the changes that we have. We went back to first principles, restated the most important rules of conduct as clearly and as succinctly as we could—noble Lords will notice that the code and the guide are substantially shorter—while stripping away rules that we considered disproportionate. Noble Lords have had the chance to read the report and the new code and guide, so I am going to touch on only a few key points.

On enforcement, we have introduced a minor cases procedure to allow the commissioners quickly to dispose of allegations of minor technical breaches, the details of which will be published only once the case has been resolved. We have restated in the code that, in investigating alleged breaches,

“the Commissioner and the Conduct Committee must … act in accordance with the principles of natural justice and fairness”

We have made it clear, as has been the case for many years, that Members under investigation are entitled to consult friends or advisers, including legal advisers.

The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, would go further, requiring the Conduct Committee to reverse its conclusion in paragraph 38 of the report and instead proposes a wholly independent investigatory and decision-making process with no Member of this House or any Conduct Committee report. I am grateful to the noble Viscount for letting me know last year that he was going to raise this issue. But my view, and that of the committee, is that this proposal strikes at the heart of the House’s culture of self-regulation. It would take the regulation of a Member’s conduct away from that Member’s peers, entrusting it instead to a quasi-judicial process with full cross-examination by lawyers, presumably representing both sides. The process would be long and more costly, and would deter some victims, in particular of bullying and harassment and sexual misconduct, from coming forward.

Over the years, many legally eminent Members of this House, former Lord Chancellors and Supreme Court justices, have sat on the Conduct Committee and its predecessor committee, which I chaired at one stage, including two former chairs: the late Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance. The committee that undertook the review also included three KCs, including a former law officer, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. These committees over the years have all rejected calls for a fully adversarial system, and the House has just as consistently agreed with its committee. Of course, it remains a matter for the House, but I hope that the noble Viscount will not press his amendment to a Division.

Returning to the report, I have not got much more to say, because I know the time is tight. The committee resisted calls to extend the code further into Members’ non-parliamentary lives. We understand that, in a small handful of cases, Members’ behaviour in their private lives has hit the headlines, creating a perception that the House’s reputation has been damaged. But we need to be clear that the purpose of the code, consistent with the principles of self-regulation, is to help the House in regulating Members’ parliamentary conduct. Members are not full-time; they have jobs and lives outside the House, and we need to respect that separation.

Similarly, we have restated again the existing protections for Members’ freedom of speech. The code is clear that the constitutional principle of freedom of speech in parliamentary proceedings is a primary consideration, and the enforcement procedure underlines that policy matters or Members’ views or opinions wherever expressed, whether inside or outside the House, are not within the commissioner’s remit.

Before concluding, I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom. He does not seek to reject the report in its entirety but would instruct the Conduct Committee to bring forward proposals that would

“remove the entitlement of members of either House to bring complaints of harassment against members of the House of Lords”.

The amendment would therefore exclude a relatively small group of people, Members of one or other House, from the possibility of making a complaint of alleged harassment by a Member of this House.

This strikes at the heart of the changes and improvements in the culture of Parliament that have been made since 2017, when the then Prime Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, personally intervened to support the establishment of an independent complaints and grievance process. That led to the behaviour code agreed by both Houses, which protects everyone who works here. I remind noble Lords of the original mandate, which was for a behaviour code that applies to all persons working for or within Parliament. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, would create a situation in which Members of this House could still bring complaints of harassment against MPs, but MPs could not complain against Peers. I doubt that the Commons would stand for that. So we risk a tit for tat and a potential unravelling of the behaviour code.

Harassment in the workplace is unlawful. The offence is defined in Section 26 of the Equality Act 2010. I do not believe that a Member of this House who is subject to harassment by another Member should be deprived of the right to complain about unlawful behaviour. I shall listen to the noble Lord but if he presses his amendment to a Division, I hope the House will strongly reject it.

Finally, what will happen after today’s debate? If they are agreed, the new rules will come into effect on 5 April and new versions of the document will be available then. Members’ entries in the Register of Lords’ Interests will be automatically updated to reflect the simplification of the registration categories. No action is needed by Members on this point.

I look forward to the debate and, with that, I beg to move.

Amendment to the Motion

Moved by

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[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for all those comments. I will try and answer them all and, if I fail, that will not be deliberate. I am grateful for the kind personal comments; I am bathing in the plaudits from various sides of the House, and I appreciate that. However, this is also very much a matter for the distinguished members of the committee.

I am going to start with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, then I shall try to pick up on any that have not been covered, on topics such as social media, as we go through. I am grateful to noble Lords for taking these issues seriously and for the range and extent of their comments.

The concern of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, that complaints of harassment by Members of either House may be politically motivated and used to embarrass opponents is a view shared by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and others. I assure the House that the members of the Conduct Committee are fully alive to the possibility of politically motivated complaints, as are the commissioners. We understand that we work in a political environment, and we have robust processes for identifying and rejecting frivolous or vexatious complaints.

I shall come to the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Swire, later on, but in truth I suggest that the risk he identifies is more imaginary than substantial. Paragraph 27 of the enforcement process says:

“No information will be made public unless or until a report is published”,


even if the commissioner launches an investigation. It is a confidential process, and if the complainant were to breach that confidentiality, they would, as paragraph 62 states, be committing

“a contempt of the House”.

When the commissioner’s report is ultimately published, it will either uphold or dismiss the complaint. If the complaint has been dismissed, the commissioner may withhold the name of the Member concerned or even decide not to publish a report at all. That has happened in the last year—not in the cases that have been mentioned today, though for obvious reasons I cannot go into detail—so I would argue that the scope to cause malicious political mischief is, in practice, very small. There is only political damage if the complaint is upheld and the Member is in fact guilty of harassment.

I would remind people—this goes to the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—that, in the definitions of “harassment”, we are following Section 26 of the Equality Act, which defines it as “unwanted conduct” that has the “purpose or effect”, so it can be unintentional, of “violating” a person’s “dignity” or

“creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”

for them. Whether Members of the House like that or not, it is the law.

I suggest that all the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, would achieve would be to prevent genuine victims of such harassment from complaining— and, let me be clear, there are victims. Even though allegations by Members of either House against noble Lords are extremely rare, there have been some cases where serious misconduct has occurred. In some cases, the details are not in the public domain because the complainants wished to remain anonymous, but I assure the House that there have been serious cases involving noble Lords.

To go back to my opening remarks on the Behaviour Code, the principles of respect and courtesy are there for the entire parliamentary community. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that they are not there just for the staff, although that is an important component. They are there for the whole parliamentary community. If we start having carve-outs for particular groups, we risk unravelling the entire behaviour code. I hope that, if the noble Lord presses his amendment, the House will reject it.

The noble Viscount has clearly stated his case—indeed, he talked to me about it beforehand—and has been consistent in so doing. He has been supported by others, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. Nobody can doubt his honest advocacy of a wholly independent process with a strong legal flavour. In the end, it is up to the House to decide. It is not, in the end, up to the Conduct Committee. The Conduct Committee’s view is clear. What he suggests is very different from Commons procedures, for example, where you have three layers. First, the commissioners decide whether it looks as though the code has been broken. Secondly, there is the Standards Committee and, thirdly, the independent expert panel with no Members of the House of Commons on it. We could go that way, or we could go the way suggested by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. My view is that the existing system is fair and provides natural justice, and I dispute that it has been otherwise. But, again, whether the noble Viscount wishes to withdraw his amendment is up to him.

I will try to read my scribbles on what other things were said, and I will try to answer them correctly. I hope I have answered the points made by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom. I of course contest his view that there has been a serious miscarriage of justice. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, raised a number of questions in his four minutes. I will start with one on social media, which was also picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and others. What we think we are trying to achieve here—what we think we have done—is just to say what the existing arrangements are. I do not want to get into particular cases, but I will mention the case of the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, which some noble Lords may remember. He carried on a parliamentary discussion on social media with somebody he had met on the Parliamentary Estate. In the view of the committee, this was parliamentary activity in an unusual situation. In most cases—in the vast majority of complaints that we get concerning social media—the comments by the Peer concerned could not by any definition be said to be part of parliamentary activity.

Then we have to go on and ask whether this is freedom of speech—whether it is about having an honest and robust opinion, having the ability to offend or insult, or whatever. Unless it is covered by the definitions of harassment and it is parliamentary, the code will not engage. So I suggest that all that we have actually done is put into the code the current practice. We have not been on mission creep in this or any other part of the code—I know that a number of Peers were concerned that we might have been.

For minor cases, I do not have a definition, but the idea is that we try wherever possible to keep out of the whole process as many as possible—that is partly for purposes of the noble Lord, Lord Swire. That is something that I have also corresponded with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, about.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

On the points that the noble Baroness made about social media, can we take it that what she has told the House on record will be used by the commissioner and the committee going forward? The clarification that she has provided is fundamentally important.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

Yes. I like short answers.

On declaration of interests, at the end of the day, failure to declare a financial interest in a debate is a matter for the committee. It seems to us that the Privileges Committee and the processes of the House need to decide whether noble Lords do that at Question Time or more broadly—but we all think that “I refer to the register of interests” is a meaningless phrase, because nobody is going to look it up and it does not really help. But that is for others.

I would like to contradict the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that the committee, and all our procedures, regard bullying, sexual misconduct and harassment as more important than serious financial misconduct. There is not a competition here; there are different sorts of breaches of the code, and some of the most egregious that this House sees are financial ones. I would like to confirm that, and I hope she will accept it—it is not a competition between the two of them.

On the use of offices, of course we all deal with emails and work in our offices. To go back to my earlier point, many Members of this House have other jobs; they have other responsibilities and things that they do. What we cannot allow is for the office to become used almost exclusively for other business—to be the route of a charity being based there, for example. So there is a distinction, but I assure noble Lords that the committee is not going to be concerned about people using their offices to catch up with work in other areas.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I am grateful for that, but I am slightly worried about who is checking our offices and emails. I am of course referring not to Hancock-type activity in the offices but to the general running of one’s business, where there is a blur between private and parliamentary.

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[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

Did I understand the noble Baroness to say that people were checking her emails?

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

I do not understand how one would investigate or where a complaint would come from in relation to being told that one was using one’s office for the wrong sort of activity. How would anybody know?

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

Well, we have had complaints in this area before, which we have acted on, from information from people involved.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that the behaviour code was meant to cover everybody. I hope that I have answered the question on politics. The rules do not constantly expand; actually, they have retreated on this one. By removing non-financial aspects, we have reduced them.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that I have written down “fudge”, and I cannot remember why. It was her word, not mine, so perhaps the noble Baroness could remind me what the question was.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

That was specifically on social media. The noble Baroness was not clear, but she has since clarified.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

I hope the noble Baroness is content with what I have now said.

Lord Hodgson, with whom I have had a helpful correspondence, talked about the direction of travel moving towards the noble Viscount’s possibility. He also mentioned the tension between facing two ways. That is absolutely recognised, as I said in my opening speech, and we have tried to bridge that gap.

I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on social media. The view of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, that we have just dealt with a playground scrap is certainly not my view, and I also see problems with open hearings—particularly if, at the end of the day, the person concerned is found to have been innocent, as working on the presumption of innocence is very important. Equally, I also agree that where mediation can be achieved, it is infinitely preferable. However, I will not recommend to my successor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, that he seeks to abolish himself—but again, that is a matter for the House.

The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, raised a point which other Peers had not mentioned about Standing Order 68. All the committee is saying is that, should the House, and should the usual channels and the Privileges Committee, decide that this was no longer tenable, complaints under the behaviour code would still need not to be debated, but complaints of, say, financial impropriety could be, if the House wanted to go down that route. But I say to the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, that the committee is not asking for that; the committee is just raising it as something, following the Lord Lester case, that the House might want to consider.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, was concerned about appendix B—as were many of the rest of your Lordships—which has all the definitions of sexual harassment, and so on. Those definitions stand as part of the behaviour code. They are not a matter for this House to change, and the commissioner will refer to them when making investigations under those headings. I have read out the bit from the Equality Act to try to reassure her there, and I have commented on social media.

Recruitment of independent members of the committee is entirely open, and the sort of person the noble Baroness describes, who she would regard as having more common sense than an HR person, can easily apply if they wish to do so. But at this stage, I would really like to say, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, said, that the external members of the committee offer real help and value to us in our deliberations. I think that we should be extremely grateful to them, and I regard that as important.

The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, makes an important point. I acknowledge that going through this process is distressing and concerning for even the most robust of us. Therefore, as regards giving support, we have specified in the new code that people can bring friends; they should be supported throughout. They could bring one Peer—not a great gang of them—or one or a few colleagues. But we recognise that where possible, we have to be compassionate, and want to be, to people who find themselves in this position, certainly until they are found against.

I hope I have answered the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Swire, on whether we can look at ensuring that the damage done by being investigated is not made public. The commissioner goes through a preliminary assessment then has to decide whether there is enough evidence that there may be a case to answer, and at that stage, things begin to become more public.

I hope I have covered all noble Lords’ comments, but I thank your Lordships very much for the useful—

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, perhaps she could confirm that the committee is very much boxed in by the rules that it is provided with? If, for example, a commissioner makes a finding both as to fact and as to sanction, and that set of findings is not appealed, the committee has no remit to reinvestigate. Therefore, it ought to be more widely understood that the committee’s ambit of power is relatively restricted in relation to that sort of case.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

I would certainly be happy to confirm that. Of course, if people appeal, and many do, the committee engages fully in the angles of that appeal and whether in fact they wish fully to endorse the commissioner’s findings. Again, it is a bit different in the Commons, but if the House wants to change that, it would need to consider it in the whole issue of process. But I thank the noble and learned Lord for that intervention.