House of Lords (Peerage Nominations) Bill [HL]

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lady D’Souza in supporting this excellent Bill. As others have said, the changes are incremental, but they are ones we need. For me, as for most noble Lords, it is a huge honour to be a Member of this House. We take the position and our responsibilities very seriously. At the moment, the scrutiny that this House can provide is certainly required and occasionally we win a great victory—too rarely, but it is worth trying. The scrutiny we provide certainly improves Bills and the work that goes on in committees undoubtedly serves the country well. It is an honour to be able to take part in that.

Nevertheless, the route by which I got here was a strange one. I got back from a holiday in 2010 and my younger son said to me, “By the way, some posh-sounding bloke called. He sounded like the Prime Minister.” Of course, he did not take a message. Nothing happened, but then a month later I was at a party and my mobile phone rang, and it was some posh bloke who sounded like the Prime Minister; it was David Cameron. He wanted to know whether I would be interested in joining the House of Lords. It was not something that had ever occurred to me, but we talked a bit. One did not know whether such an invitation would ever come again, and besides, at that stage, David Cameron had a mission to heal the broken society and I was up for that, so I said yes. Then we got cut off, so my change in status was sealed with a text message, which finished, “LOL, Dave”. It is an unusual route. Things moved on and of course HOLAC had to look at whether I fitted the propriety distinction. I like to think that I did—I certainly got here.

What I am saying may very well sound like pulling up the drawbridge to prevent others coming in through a similar route. Having said that, I think my route may be quite rare; I was not on very familiar terms with said Prime Minister and neither had I been a donor, although it was useful to see the Sunday Times survey in 2021 which found that everybody who had given more than £3 million to the Conservative Party was honoured with a peerage—it is always useful to know the price. However, I think it highly unlikely that, having got through the propriety test, I would have got through the “conspicuous merit” requirements proposed in Clause 7(2)(a). There would have been people who were quite prepared to argue that a journalist who had been very rude about quite a lot of people, including some in this House, was probably not of sufficient merit to come in, so in a way I am very grateful for the limited powers that HOLAC had on that occasion.

However, I think we can all see that the time has come and things have to change, not least because only 6% of the country feel that the way people are appointed to this House is appropriate. Putting HOLAC on a different footing would be a massive change, even if it sounds small. Giving it extra areas to bear in mind and the power to recommend more candidates would be a good thing. The Bill would make it much harder, if not impossible, for a Prime Minister to simply ride roughshod over what the commission said and appoint to this House people whom the commission felt would not act as proper Members. Surely that is something that everybody in this House would support. I support the Bill.

Standards in Public Life

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

No, those matters are, as the noble Lord quite rightly says, for the British people, who elected this Prime Minister. So far as investigations are concerned, we have processes. We all believe we should have those processes and, when investigations are launched on accusations—a formal complaint has been made to the grievances process—due process in this country is that the investigation should take its course confidentially, with all those involved being able to give evidence for and against and the truth being established. That is the tradition in our country, in our courts and in our Parliament. It is not hiding behind the matter; it is the appropriate process to achieve justice and truth.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the issues over standards come so thick and fast that I wonder whether the Minister accepts that they are detracting from the business of government. I have a degree of sympathy with him; he may have some difficulty in accepting that. Yesterday, he found himself in the Moses Room, having to defend the Government for coming to the Procurement Bill with more than 300 government amendments at the start of Committee. This is not the way to run government. Will he accept that the issues over standards are failing the Government and the country in the way that we are governed?

[Lord True (Con)]

No, I do not accept that in the most general terms. I believe many people in this House and outside this House have very strong views about the individuals concerned in this, including my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, both for and against. The mechanisms for upholding standards in public life are important and we should allow them to run their course. I stand by the words put in the Statement earlier. However, with regard to the Procurement Bill yesterday, I did apologise. I do not think the noble Baroness was in Committee. I took what I thought was appropriate action to address the issue and I hope we have found a way to proceed to the convenience of all parties, although that is subject to proper negotiation in the usual channels.

Standards of Behaviour and Honesty in Political Life

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Morse, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue. I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, and grateful to him for reminding us about the characteristics of the current incumbent of No. 10.

I must begin by declaring an interest. I am proud to be a Member of this House, and proud of the vital work it does in our constitution. I am devastated by what this Government are doing to trash the reputation of this Parliament. I spent most of my career as a journalist. In the eyes of the general public, there are few who come lower than journalists but here I am, and it is even worse.

I begin by talking about the trickle-down effect—but not in relation to wealth, where the idea is that if the people at the top make lots more money, everybody will be better off; this does not work. When it comes to corruption, the trickle-down effect is dramatically successful. Take the example of Putin’s Russia. According to the Ukrainian Research Institute’s intelligence, 90% of the tanks that the Russians are currently trying to get out of mothballs are unusable because vital parts have been taken away and sold; the circuit boards are worth something on Alibaba. The generals have decided that, if it is right for Putin and Co. to make their millions, they too deserve a cut. That is one reason why things are going more slowly than the Russians would like in Ukraine.

The tone comes from the top. As others have said, the fish rots from the head. We know where the rot started with this Government. Franklin D Roosevelt said:

“The Presidency is not merely an administrative office … It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”


In his private life, he may not have been a perfect moral character, but, in his leadership of the States, he was. Whatever personal failings there may be in our Prime Minister, sadly, they also translate into his leadership of the country. That reflects badly on all of us, damages the way this country operates and trashes its reputation abroad.

Others have referred to the Nolan principles. I cannot resist going through them again, slowly, and thinking about them in the context of the No. 10 we have today. They are: selflessness; integrity; objectivity; accountability; openness; honesty; and leadership. If it were not so sad, it would be laughable. All those characteristics are discernibly missing from what goes on at No. 10 at the moment.

The effect of that on our democracy—the subject of this debate—is already being felt. Our Civil Service has been badly damaged by the way it has been treated by Ministers who will not take responsibility but expect civil servants to carry the load for them—Ministers who bully their civil servants but do not resign, even when they are told that they should. Of course, nobody now wants to take on the senior Civil Service roles. Why would they? Who can blame them?

Equally, voters are looking at what is going on and being turned off democracy. Earlier this year, an IPPR report found that 53% of adults believe that donors, big business and lobbyists are more powerful in influencing government policy than voters. Only one in 20 people believed that voters had the most influence on government policy. The democratic process is undoubtedly being damaged badly by what is going on at the moment.

That disillusionment is particularly pronounced among young people. The Bennett Institute for Public Policy in Cambridge published research, 18 months ago, that led it to the conclusion that those in their 20s and 30s are the first generation in living memory to have a majority who are dissatisfied with the way democracy works. It is a global phenomenon but in the UK, it is far more pronounced.

Is it surprising, though, when only today in the Times, the Conservative former Solicitor-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, writes that the proposed Bill of Rights will further bolster the concerns of those who believe, with some justification, that this Government have a reckless disregard for domestic and international law? That is the verdict of a Conservative former Solicitor-General. No wonder people are disillusioned.

What is to be done about it? I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and his reluctance to legislate, but things have reached a stage where legislation is the only way. Perhaps I have become far too disillusioned. The noble Lord says that he would like to see the gradation of penalties being proposed, but surely this Government would see everything as just a minor infringement rather than one that deserved a significant penalty. Would we feel confident that this Government would do the decent thing? Of course, there may be those in the future who would, but we are dealing with a very difficult state of affairs.

We have the Boardman recommendations, which would certainly be distinct improvements. There are 19 recommendations and five suggestions, and the Government have yet to respond in full to them. Can the Minister tell us when we will hear a full response to the Boardman suggested regulations and when they might be implemented? That would at least be a start towards improving what is currently looking like a very sorry state of affairs.

Elections Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 25th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I can only respond to the language I heard in the debate and, of course, that will lie in Hansard. Of course I listen to the range of concerns set out by your Lordships. The main concern that I hear, and understand, is about the potential impact on the independence of the Electoral Commission.

I stated in Committee, and I do so again now, that the Government’s proposals take a proportionate approach to reforming the accountability of the commission to Parliament, which some who have spoken have admitted could be reviewed, while respecting its operational independence. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and others that it is vital we have an independent regulator that commands trust across the political spectrum.

By the way, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, asked would I worry if the Labour Party had such powers on the statute book. I remind your Lordships that the Labour Party is a great constitutional party, and I would trust it to use the responsibilities and powers that it had in an appropriate manner.

In previous debates, parliamentarians across both Houses identified areas of concern with the commission’s work. My noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts spoke to this. Under the existing accountability framework, in practice, parliamentarians are limited in their ability to scrutinise and hold the commission effectively accountable. The report by my noble friend Lord Pickles, whom I am pleased to see in his place, obviously alluded to certain issues that he felt had not been fully addressed. These measures will seek to remedy this by providing guidance, as approved by Parliament, for the commission to consider in the exercise of its functions, and by giving the Speaker’s Committee an enhanced role in holding the commission to account in how it has performed its duties in relation to the proposed statement.

It has been suggested, several times, that the “duty to have regard” to the strategy and policy statement placed on the commission in Clause 15 will weaken its independence and give Ministers the power to direct it. The Government strongly reject this characterisation of the measures. The Electoral Commission will remain operationally independent and governed by its Electoral Commissioners as a result of this measure, after as before. This duty does not allow the Government to direct the work of the commission, nor does it undermine the commission’s other statutory duties.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

I wonder, given what the Minister has just said, whether he could explain the purpose of new Section 13ZA, on the examination of the duty to have regard to the strategy and policy statement, which states:

“The Speaker’s Committee may examine the performance by the Commission of the Commission’s duty under section 4B(2) (duty to have regard to strategy and policy statement).”


What is the purpose of having the ability to examine the commitment to the policy statement? What would the Government do if it found that “have regard” had not been sufficient?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I say to the noble Baroness that it is not a power to direct. The Speaker’s Committee is not a government institution; it is part of the architecture that is there, and has been there, to oversee the work of the commission. That was inherent in previous legislation; this legislation seeks to improve its ability to do so. What the legislation means is that when carrying out its functions, yes, the commission will be asked to consider the statement, but weigh it up against any other relative considerations.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, knows the respect I have for him. I have enjoyed discussing this matter with him and no doubt may again if he has his way in your Lordships’ House today, which I hope he will not, but our contention is that there are a number of safeguarding provisions around parliamentary approval and consultation built into Clause 15. I outlined that at length in previous debates and will not repeat it here. I believe, notwithstanding the noble and learned Lord’s remarks, that those safeguarding provisions should reassure those who have expressed concerns about strategy and policy statements being drafted by future Governments that may have ill intent.

Elections Bill

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

That is why they should not stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, drew a parallel between the Electoral Commission and Ofcom. However, Ofcom has a huge and evolving remit; inevitably, it has to respond to changes in government policy in areas as diverse as regulating the spectrum and the quality of broadcasting. The Electoral Commission is a very different beast, with a very straightforward role: to oversee elections and regulate political finance to ensure that we have a free and fair election system.

It describes its job as working

“to promote public confidence in the democratic process and ensure its integrity”.

What could a Government want to do to change that? It is simple, straightforward and easily understood. I cannot understand what the policy statement enshrined in Clauses 14 and 15 would add to that quite straightforward purpose. Nothing I have heard today has helped me in that direction, and I hope the Minister might be able to answer the question that others have asked: what is the purpose of this?

That there is room for improvement in the way the commission operates is true, but the proposed policy statement is simply not the way to accomplish that. In my experience, when it comes to elections, political parties have one overriding objective: to win as many votes as possible. Indeed, in the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party was so keen to win votes in South Thanet that it drove a coach and horses—and, indeed, a battle bus—through the rules. So egregious were the breaches that in 2019, Mr Justice Edis, presiding over the subsequent court case, was highly critical of what he termed Conservative Central Office’s

“culture of convenient self-deception and lack of clarity about what was permissible in law and what was not.”

The senior central office employee who was instrumental in this electoral fraud was sentenced to nine months in prison on 22 counts. It was only because of her personal circumstances that the sentences were suspended. There is no doubt that Conservative Central Office is not the only political headquarters to have played fast and loose with the rules if it thought it could. That is why we do not want political parties anywhere near the Electoral Commission.

Those who drafted Clause 14 may have done so with the most honourable intentions in mind but, as has been said, these clauses could have a truly malevolent effect on our electoral system. There is an unpleasant whiff about them, and it could evolve into a foul stink. The positive case for these clauses has simply not been made, and I therefore support the removal of these clauses from the Bill.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I am somewhat conflicted in this debate, to the extent that I, unlike a number of noble Lords who have spoken previously, do not view the Electoral Commission through rose-tinted spectacles. I shall refer to one or two problems that I and others have had with it recently. I have, however, had the opportunity to meet and deal with Mr John Pullinger, its new chairman; I wish him well and believe—partly because of what he has done in relation to some of the issues that I have had—that he will actually change the culture in the Electoral Commission.

I was fascinated by the contribution just now from the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft. I must declare an interest, because the person to whom she and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred is a close personal friend of mine, but I will not deal with the case as such. The noble Baroness aired the view that, although CCHQ had been found guilty of an offence, it was almost certain that the other parties did the same. That is actually the problem—

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I was not insinuating that other political parties had played fast and loose in that particular election. I merely meant that, had they felt able to in some elections, they might have done.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I am sorry; I did not make myself clear. I was referring not specifically to that election but to elections in general, which is what I took to be the comment of the noble Baroness.

I will first cover the Electoral Commission and then come on to this particular clause. As the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said first and others have said later, the Electoral Commission is required to produce an independent, free and fair set of elections. It is not required to start intruding in terms of developing or interpreting legislation. I was brought up to believe that these two Houses and the judges—the judiciary —decided how our laws operated. But, unfortunately, the Electoral Commission has moved into that field. I say that with reference to the debate in this Chamber on 6 January on the progress of regulatory bodies into fields and issuing edicts that they are saying are law.

I refer here not to the case that I just raised but to the availability of electoral rolls. They are key if you are going to investigate corruption in Tower Hamlets, but access to them is being denied by the Electoral Commission. In an email, it said that, unfortunately, “the law is silent” on this matter. It then went on to develop policy on it, effectively saying that it is law. It has issued instructions to EROs on a certain basis.

Later in the Bill, I shall cover the fascinating development of the law of secrecy when it comes to a polling booth, a practice that we have had for 150 years. The Electoral Commission is now changing the processes—it is changing the law—which is why I have tabled an amendment to stop it doing what it appears to be doing.

The noble Lords, Lord Rennard, Lord Wallace and Lord Kennedy, are all aware of the difficulties that I have had with it since early August on accredited observers—people who can be allowed into a polling station. The Minister wanted to go into a polling station in a by-election in Tower Hamlets and was told that she could not because she was political. She, or her office, was making those arrangements with the chief executive of Tower Hamlets. Nothing in law says that an accredited observer cannot be a political individual. I would have been quite happy if the Labour or Lib Dem spokesmen in the Commons or the Lords had gone to witness the problems there, but, suddenly, the Electoral Commission said, “You cannot do that”. Nothing in law says that.

What makes it worse—this is where I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake—is that the Electoral Commission does not admit its failings. As I say, I made correspondence available to other parties throughout, contemporaneously, and came to the conclusion that, in the way it has operated, the Electoral Commission is institutionally arrogant. It will not admit its failings, to the extent that, despite representations, detailed letters and failures to reply, when challenged about the refusal to allow the Minister into a polling station—it had been involved in conversations some 10 or 15 days before the by-election—it said immediately afterwards that it was not aware of a Minister being prevented from entering a polling station. This is despite the fact that, two and a half months later, it admitted that it had had conversations with the Cabinet Office and the Minister’s office, not to mention one with me in a polling station and with a local councillor, all of whom the Electoral Commission officials are saying it stopped, in one form or another.

What was fascinating was that, when confronted with all these different things, Electoral Commission kept saying, “We didn’t say it.” The Cabinet Office officials thought it did, as did the Ministers and the staff at Tower Hamlets. I believe it did. It is not a body which has previously been willing to admit its failures. As I say, it failed to do so when—

Devolved Governments: Public Expenditure

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I think we all know that the Barnett formula was something of a fudge, put together many years ago. It is an extremely complicated thing to try to unravel. We know that the amount of funding that goes to individual citizens is favourable to the devolved regions, but the formula is not necessarily satisfactory—so I would encourage the noble Lord to keep up his campaign to push for a review.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, given the Minister’s dislike of waste in government, could he comment on the article earlier this month by the Comptroller of the National Audit Office, Gareth Davies? He criticised the lack of any formal process for evaluating both the efficiency and delivery of cross-government projects. He said that there was very little information on

“what difference is made by the billions”

spent by government. What does the Minister think of that?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I think the noble Baroness makes a very good point. I will suggest to the relevant Ministers that the work on the fiscal framework, announced in October, includes a review of the points raised.

Money Laundering

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

It is important to remind the House that the overseas territories are independent entities and that we cannot just force them to comply with our own regulations. But we have an ongoing dialogue with them. For example, we have a very useful exchange of information through the exchange of notes arrangements, and they have agreed to introduce publicly accessible registers of companies’ beneficial ownership. The discussions are very much ongoing and I respect the right reverend Prelate’s concern.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, at the anti-corruption summit in 2016, the Government committed to producing a register of overseas owners of British properties. In 2018, they produced a draft Bill on that which has still to become law. Could the Government say whether they are in fact committed to stopping this sort of overseas activity in the UK?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I can assure the House that we are absolutely committed to stopping that. I accept that the introduction of the Bill is taking too long, but active discussions are going on at the moment about a new economic crime Bill and I hope that we might see its introduction within the next few months.

Brexit Opportunities

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I have a huge amount of sympathy with the thrust of my noble friend’s comment. It is about bringing back democracy and restoring the authority of this Parliament. I recognise the controversy about the Henry VIII clauses, as he describes them. They deal with a particular situation involving the inherited EU law and the complexities of managing the legal transformation out of the European Union, and I hope that they will be seen in that very specific context.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister now boasts on his Twitter feed profile:

“You don’t get something for nothing, you can’t have freedom for free.”


Apparently, it is from a Rush song from “2112”. I do not recall him carrying that message around as he was leading us into Brexit. Since we have heard what we are going to do with that new-found freedom, in the absence of an impact assessment, can he tell us at what cost this freedom has been bought?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think it has been bought at any cost. I make no apology for standing up for freedom—free enterprise and freedom to think and debate—and that is what we did not have very much of in the final years of our EU membership until the referendum. It is axiomatic, in my view, that free debate, free enterprise, free economies and the ability to change your Government will always benefit the countries that have those things. There is a lot of empirical evidence around the world that that proposition is correct.

Government Departments: Non-Executive Directors

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat that the vacancies for non-executive board members are advertised on the Government’s public appointments website. Appointees are subject to a shortlisting panel interview, with the appropriate mediators and the appropriate composition.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, in a speech in June this year, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, opined on the useful challenge and enhanced scrutiny that non-executive directors would bring to boards—yet in August last year the Times found that eight out of 13 appointments, including four to the Cabinet Office board, were, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, might say, “ducks”. They all had close allegiance to the Conservative Party. Will the Minister explain how merit determined that eight out of 13 should have close political allegiance?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, again, I am not following any implication of disparagement of the honour of those who are serving as non-executive board members. The Government are grateful and I would submit that, if we could see into the future, we would probably find that future Governments will be grateful for the public spirit of those people who come forward to help government departments run in a more businesslike manner. The majority will be people with great business experience who are used to driving up performance in large organisations. I cite from the Cabinet Office, for example, the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe.

Cash Network

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

To reassure the noble Baroness, there are still some 40,000 ATMs in the country at the last count, and we remain committed to supporting their continuation. Link, the payment services provider for cash machines, has restated that a number of times. The other side of the coin is that the percentage of transactions using cash has declined dramatically; it was 56% of all transactions in 2010, and is now down to 17%. The usage is declining, which is why some of these facilities are going.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, post offices are highly valued by the communities they serve. Will the Government consider committing to the Post Office’s future by developing it as “The People’s Bank”, providing cash withdrawal facilities in the communities that need them?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, the Post Office plays a vital role in supporting payments across the system. There are some 11,000 post offices, and some 95% of business customers and 99% of personal banking customers are able to deposit cheques, check their balances and withdraw and deposit cash. The banking framework allows banking via post offices.