House of Lords Conduct Committee: Code of Conduct Review

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, for initiating this debate. We have just heard an excellent presentation from someone who should be the next chair of the committee.

I was for 10 years a member of the European Parliament’s house administration committee. We looked after the administration of Parliament—no politics, but lots of administration. We did not have a lot of time to keep on looking at complaints. Although we did, that was a very subsidiary part of our job. My first concern about this committee is that it exists at all, that we have four independent experts and five Members of the House as, basically, a voluntary police force. I am not sure we need it. It should be part of a general committee looking at the administration of the House, the way Members are treated and what we get. We might then get some of the few demands that we make attended to—at the moment, after 11 years in this House, I still do not know how on earth to get some quite simple things done.

I think my noble friend Lord Forsyth mentioned the declarations of our interests that we make in the Chamber. Frankly, saying “I draw attention to my interests in the register” is absolutely meaningless. People look at me and think, “Balfe is on about his engineering unions”, but I bet they do not know them. We need to look at how we present that. Do we need to get up every time? Do we do it at the beginning of a speech that is nothing to with those interests, or somewhere else? There is no real guidance about it.

The second point I will make is that it was said that the House of Commons has a better set of rules than we have. Well, they have certainly got themselves in a bit of a mess at the moment with, “My clothes were within the rules” and, “These glasses are from Specsavers”. Perhaps I could introduce someone down the Corridor to the virtues of Specsavers. What went on, which was supposedly within the rules, is certainly not in the spirit of what is acceptable to the general public, and that is what really matters. My view—I say sorry to the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller—is that this committee has gradually had mission creep and is now busy looking for things to do. I think the best thing it could do is to amalgamate itself with the House’s administration committee.

I will give one example, which is to do not with the committee but with what has been mentioned: reputational damage. Those who know me will know that I have my own definition of what should constitute foreign and defence policy. It is quite a respectable definition, but it is not supported by any political party in this House. It led me—because I believe the Russian Federation is part of Europe—to attend a function at the Russian Federation embassy. I have warm words to say about the Russian ambassador; I think he is a nice chap. I have served in the Foreign Office and know how difficult it is to go abroad to lie for your country—that, of course, is what most ambassadors have to do. That visit drew the attention of the Sunday Times, which put me and my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, who sits next to me, on its front page.

I got into the House on the Monday, as I normally usually do, and received a telephone call saying that the Chief Whip would like me to see her. I went to see the Chief Whip, who rather sheepishly led me into the office of the Leader. The Leader, the noble Lord, Lord True, said “I have received a complaint that you are doing reputational damage to this House by going to the Russian embassy”. I said, “Oh, really?”. He said, “I could withdraw the whip”. I said, “That would be very good. It would really go down well in Moscow if you were to withdraw the whip from me for going to the Russian embassy to a national day reception, together with the high commissioners of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and lots of European ambassadors. Maybe you could ask for them to be sent home and withdraw their accreditation?”. Of course, the Leader being sensible, he said that he did not say that he would withdraw the whip, but that he could. That was the last I heard of it. I will oppose anything that tries to bring a concept such as reputational damage into our rules because what is one person’s reputational damage is another person’s legitimate political expression of belief. I think that is very important.

Before I sit down, I want to mention two particular cases that have concerned me. One is my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, who was sentenced—for want of a better word—before the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, was chair of this committee. Ken is well over 80. He is—I think I will say—a curmudgeon, but a very nice one. He came over one night from Belfast, and he had mislaid his pass. He was shot during the Troubles, and he has suffered for many years from severe pains in his leg. His leg was hurting badly. He got to the barrier, and he ended up in a dispute—I put it no higher than that—with the man behind the glass box. We all know the way in from Westminster tube station. A noble Lord tried to sort it out, but it got into a confrontation. It was reported to the committee. Ken was suspended for six months, I think, and he was told that he had to go on a course to make him racially aware, or some such thing, and he refused to go on it. He still has not been on it, and he has not been back to this House because it was made a condition. Frankly, I think that was totally over the top.

My next case is that of the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, who had a few too many, shall was say, and instead of choosing the Red Lion, chose the bar in the House of Commons in which to fall out with a member of staff. Had he chosen the Red Lion at the bottom of Whitehall, nothing could have been done, because the Conduct Committee’s remit, as far as I know, does not run as far as the Red Lion. None the less, as has been mentioned, the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, was sentenced to a week’s suspension, which miraculously turned into three weeks and, which has not been mentioned, a year’s ban on ordering alcohol in the House. This is totally over the top.

Both those cases demonstrate—and nowhere in the report is it mentioned—not even a shred of compassion or understanding. By all means know the Nolan rules and be able to recite them in your sleep, but if we do not know how to treat people with compassion—and both these cases showed that—we are failing, and we are failing considerably. No one said to Ken, “Look, old boy, we realise you were a bit over the top, but”—this is what I would have done in the European Parliament—“I’m going to arrange a meeting between the two of you. You know you were over the top and you have got to apologise”. Ken told me that he would have apologised if he had been able to. We have to look more at the human compassion that is needed to run an organisation like this. You cannot run it on the basis of a set of rules. I am terribly sorry, but it is not the way you run an organisation of human beings with human foibles.

I have read these rules thoroughly, and I will be quite honest: I stay away from the staff. Apart from with Simon Burton, I make it a point not to engage with any of the staff in this place beyond the absolute minimum necessary because I do not want to be landed with some sort of complaint. I am not a particularly bad-tempered person, or anything; I am just a careful person. Part of the fault of the rules is that it is ruining the interaction within the building itself.

The final point I shall make is that it is totally unacceptable to have reports that we cannot debate or question. Even if it has to be in a private committee room, such as this, without minutes, there should be an opportunity for these reports to be questioned and to be justified. It is absolutely unacceptable that we can have something worse than a Star Chamber because at least the Star Chamber goes to the Cabinet. What we have is a group of people, four out of the nine of whom are not even Members of this House, who can pass sentences which ruin and wreck people’s careers. That is not acceptable, and we need some very fundamental reform.