Lord Balfe
Main Page: Lord Balfe (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Balfe (Con)
I suppose I should begin by saying that for a time I worked for David Cameron. Maybe I was foolish, but I did not get paid. I did it as a volunteer —but clearly I was working for him. I thank my Front Bench for sending round an email to all Members saying that there is a free vote on my amendment. I hope that that will encourage people to vote for it. I would be very interested to hear, in the course of the debate, what the other political groups are advising.
I tabled this amendment because the report came at an opportune time. When the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, was answering questions on the Statement, we heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Brinton, complaints—justified, probably—that contracts had been let but not declared into the public space. And at the heart of my amendment are the words
“if the public are to be supportive of legislation, they have a right to know the full financial interests of legislators”.
The amendment then
“asks the Select Committee to examine the need for the House to adopt disclosure rules”.
It does not tell the committee to do that; it asks it to examine the need—nothing more than that—so it is quite mild. The committee could examine the need, then come back and say, “Look, it just doesn’t work.”
There are many other interests, as well as foreign interests. I have never been paid by any foreign Government, but I have a well-known aversion to certain aspects of Her Majesty’s Government’s foreign policy which I have made quite clear. I have made it clear because that is where my analysis leads me, not because anyone has tried to bribe me. I sometimes feel quite upset that I must be a very lowly species, because nobody wants to bribe me. I cannot even say that I turned a bribe down, because I have never been offered one.
What we have to look at is the perception of the politician by the public. It is not a happy perception at the moment: there is a feeling that we are doing quite nicely, without saying how. We must tackle that. The public have a right to know, in my estimation. I hear what my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier says about barristers, but the Bar Standards Board, in its evidence, says:
“The majority of barristers are self-employed, so it should not be difficult for most barristers who are Members to identify the fees paid to them by a client.”
I do not find it difficult to work out where my money comes from, and I have no difficulty about declaring where it comes from. In the interests of transparency, we should be looking at a system whereby people declare where their principal income comes from.
I am asking the committee to look into this because it is a complex issue. There are de minimis standards, and there are different standards of declaration. They need considering carefully, and they need to be brought before this House; they are not a suitable subject for an amendment. In paragraph 13 the report says that
“the public interest ultimately must override the issue of client confidentiality”,
and that is absolutely right—it must.
It is not unreasonable for us to declare what we are paid. We are legislators, and we are passing laws that affect people on a day-to-day basis. What is wrong with our declaring what we get? I have never found any difficulty with the present rules, so I do not see why any noble Lord should feel great difficulty with a new level of declaration.
Are we going to start telling the Government that we want to know what went on with Greensill? That is well worth a debate, because it reveals, to put it mildly, a lamentable situation in Whitehall which clearly needs addressing. But if we are to ask for that to be addressed, we must address our own situation. Our situation, too, deserves a level of transparency. That is all I want to see.
I will be dividing the House because I should like the public to see how many people do not even want a committee to look at this matter—not doing anything, but just looking at it. Since there will be a free vote on our side, I hope that there will be a free vote elsewhere. I hope that the noble Baroness’s committee will be asked to look at the matter and come back because if we are not prepared even to look at these sorts of matters, we are not fit to be telling the Government to reveal their secrets, which I want brought out into the open. I shall sit down and might move my amendment to the Motion later.
Lord Balfe
As an amendment to the Motion in the name of Baroness Donaghy, at end insert “but, while welcoming the report, believes that it only deals with a small part of the issues that need addressing; further believes that if the public are to be supportive of legislation, they have a right to know the full financial interests of legislators; asks the Select Committee to examine the need for the House to adopt disclosure rules as close as possible to those operated by the House of Commons; and instructs the Committee to bring forward a further report exploring this matter.”
Lord Balfe (Con)
I will speak very briefly. I appreciated in particular the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mann. We need to keep an eye on what might be charging over the horizon—and to keep our way of doing things in this House open and transparent.
I reflect that 56 years ago this week I strode over the steps of the Foreign Office as a very junior member of staff. Since then I have spent most of my life talking to people, many of whom have been quite objectionable. However, I have always tried to talk to them at our expense. One very useful thing has been the Lord Speaker’s fund, which allows you to visit countries of the Council of Europe at the expense of this Parliament. You are never in a country where you are asking for anything at all because the House pays the fare and the subsistence. It is a very valuable programme as it enables people to talk to others without being beholden to them. It is the programme on which the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and I went to Russia.
It is important to talk and, of course, not all relationships are financial. Tomorrow morning I shall be having coffee with the Turkmenistan ambassador. Now, many people have things to say about Turkmenistan and its attitude to such matters as human rights, but this is part of a big jigsaw, is it not? You have coffee with him, which is not a declarable interest; it is important that we do not retreat into a laager. In 25 years in the European Parliament, I spent a huge amount of time talking to people who, let us say, were not our cup of tea—people such as the French National Front and others beyond that.
With all that in mind, and in the hope that, through the Conduct Committee, we will as a House look into the possibility of expanding and clarifying our areas of declaration so that they become closer to those in the Commons than they are at the moment, I will not press my amendment.