Conduct Committee

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I give heartfelt thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, and her committee. I am really pleased that the code has been revised in this way; it is in such good plain English and is more concise. I am grateful for her introductory speech explaining some of the tensions in reaching the conclusions. The code is a really important tool in protecting staff, Peers and the reputation of the House of Lords.

To fulfil these functions, we need to know when behaviour does not comply with the code, which is why I was so disappointed, but perhaps not surprised, by the Motion from the Conservative Peer the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. It suggests that if we suffer or our colleagues suffer something that involves harassment, we should just keep quiet. That smacks, to me—and his noble friend Lord Lilley did talk about the schoolyard—of the worst aspects of English public school life. I had hoped that that was now a thing of the past in schools, but in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, not grassing on one’s fellows is more important than ensuring that intimidating behaviour is stopped.

Cruel or bad behaviour thrives in a culture of secrecy, and we should have none of it in this House. The code rightly lays down the need for transparency and due process, and I welcome that. I also welcome the presence of lay members of the Conduct Committee bringing their outside perspective to the House. Training is important, because times and social mores change, and Members do need to keep up. If we demonstrate that we have failed, like any decent workplace, we should offer training.

I wish, though, that the code should replace the wording in the first rule, “personal honour”. My noble friend Lord Newby mentioned this, too. I understand from paragraphs 56 to 60 of the review that this was an on-balance decision, but I feel the code would be less subjective for each Peer and stronger if it used “integrity” in paragraph 10(b), which is then further defined in paragraph 12(b).

We as a House have our work cut out to restore public confidence. In particular, I agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, when she talked about financial impropriety being equally as important as our own behaviour, because that is the issue that the public outside are more concerned about.

I probably cannot talk about one of the ongoing investigations into a serious, possibly criminal, issue, but I am sure noble Lords know to what I am referring. The general point I make about this is that, when there appears to have been a breach of the code, a Member should not be able to avoid the processes of the code by quickly taking a leave of absence. Leaves of absence are for illness and caring for loved ones in extremis, not for avoidance of sanctions. There is a lot more that I might say about lobbying and profiting from being a Member of the House by being offered directorships et cetera that would not happen if one was still Mr Bloggs rather than Lord Bloggs. Of course, if we had proper reform and an elected House, that would deal with much of the issue.

I hope the committee will take on the very complicated issue and address some of these matters of financial impropriety and all the nuances around the financial implications that we have not had time to touch on today. In the meantime, this revised code is very helpful, and I hope that all Members will do their utmost to see that it is acted on.