Standards of Behaviour and Honesty in Political Life

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I applaud my noble friend Lord Morse for enabling this House to have a debate on this important issue, which affects our democratic process. These standards affect the reputation of this country across the world, which is why this debate is so important.

I will focus on two aspects of the Government’s behaviour, and I declare my interest as a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. My first issue is to do with its work. It is the relentless growth in the ways by which Ministers avoid parliamentary scrutiny of their policies, and an increasing use of these parliamentary “avoidance mechanisms”, as I would call them. Of course I am talking about secondary legislation.

The House has just considered the Schools Bill, and I must apologise to those directly involved in it because they will be familiar with what I am going to say initially. The Bill is the most extreme power grab by Ministers in recent memory. As a member of the Delegated Powers Committee, I ought to say that the Bill is an outlier, but an increasing number of Bills use these mechanisms and indeed other new mechanisms created by Ministers—and maybe their civil servants—to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. One basic mechanism is the skeletal nature of Part 1 of the Bill, bolstered or compounded by Clause 3 with its incredible list of Henry VIII clauses, which gives Ministers carte blanche to change Acts of Parliament on pretty well any aspect of the school system. Part 1 is the core part of the Bill, albeit that there are other important issues in later parts.

Due to a drop in government Ministers’ recognition of the importance of the supremacy of Parliament, our very democracy is at stake and under threat. As noble Lords know, the House of Commons pays no attention to regulations, and this House is not permitted to amend them so these regulations are outside our powers. We do have the power to reject a regulation, as I know to my cost when I put forward an amendment to the £4.4 billion cut in tax credits, which this House wonderfully passed. But it led to threats to close down this House; I was lined up and threatened that the House would lose all its powers if I were to pursue that amendment—so we do not really have the power to reject a regulation.

If we cannot reject regulations and cannot amend them, Ministers are left with inordinate power. As we know, power corrupts—and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So, in my view, this is a very worrying situation. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee recently undertook a 30-year review of delegated legislation, the report of which was published last November. I have touched on just two issues in that report; there are many more, and it does not make for happy reading.

For me, even more concerning than the drop in public standards domestically has been the willingness of our Foreign Secretary to consider breaching international treaties. Her readiness to breach international law by taking unilateral action, for example, on the Northern Ireland protocol not only undermines Parliament but brings the entire country into disrepute internationally and, in my view, is going to cause untold problems with the European Union. It was clear when we signed the protocol that it involved a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain, but the difficulties were deferred. They should have been much more clearly sorted out at the time of negotiations. The Irish Taoiseach made it clear that the protocol is in fact working pretty well for many industries, and that for those where there are problems, these could be sorted out by negotiation. Sinn Féin argues that the protocol is working fine. I find that a little difficult to believe, but the middle way certainly sounds sensible. The Foreign Secretary’s rush to make it clear that she would be taking unilateral action is just another example of the contempt for the maintenance of standards in public life.

We have had a drop in standards at both the domestic and international level, and the people responsible for standards are acutely conscious of it. This is where I part company a little with my noble friend Lord Butler, with whom I normally agree. We have had at least four significant reports from independent bodies and individuals on the need for public standards reform, three of them in 2021. In particular, I want to mention the landmark report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, published in November 2021. As my noble friend Lord Butler said, the Government did indeed respond on 27 May, but I have a slightly different view about their response.

In my view, the Government avoided any reform of key issues. I have just a couple of examples. The report recommends that the Government should pass primary legislation to place the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests, the Commissioner for Public Appointments and the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments on a statutory basis, as my noble friend Lord Butler said. Sadly, the Government have rejected this recommendation, which could have resulted in real improvements in standards. In my view, that is why the Government rejected it: they do not want to be challenged. As my noble friend Lord Butler said, the Government agreed to another important recommendation: that the independent adviser should be able to initiate investigations into breaches of the Ministerial Code, but only if the Prime Minister is basically in agreement—which, of course, immediately undermines the power of that provision.

We have a major issue, both domestically and internationally. If it is not dealt with, we parliamentarians will continue to lose respect, and this country will continue to lose the respect of countries across the world.