Standards in Public Life

Lord Evans of Weardale Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Weardale (CB)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, in this debate. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for securing this debate, which is timely and important. I declare an interest as the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

I am grateful to noble Lords for their support for the various recommendations that we have made in recent years and also for the contribution that many noble Lords have made to our consideration. The cross-party nature of our committee is a real strength and means that the recommendations that we make carry more weight that they would otherwise. We wait with optimism that the Government will respond positively to the most recent recommendations that have been discussed already this afternoon.

There has been no golden age of public standards in the United Kingdom. We have already heard about MPs’ expenses and cash for questions and, going further back, we can think about corruption in local government in the 1960s. Nevertheless, the United Kingdom has a strong reputation for the public standards that are embodied in our public life and for the lack of corruption that we enjoy. That is something that matters enormously to our national well-being.

I was struck by the compelling evidence that the committee received recently from business leaders as to the value that they put on high public standards and the fact that this makes the United Kingdom a more attractive investment area. We were also impressed when we talked to members of sixth forms the year before last and asked them what they saw as the right public standards. They gave a strong endorsement to the seven principles of public life that were first articulated by Lord Nolan. More recently, our committee has commissioned research into public attitudes towards public standards, and we were encouraged again that there was strong support for the idea that those in public life should live up to high standards. I do not believe that this is something merely of interest to the metropolitan elite; it is also of great interest to young people today, and to the people of this country.

We have a strong reputation but we need always to be looking for ways in which we can shore that up. Our system of public standards regulation in this country is complex—probably too complex—and relies on a network of bodies, some of which have statutory power, some of which do not, and some of which are dependent entirely upon convention. There are strengths to that, in that standards apply differently in different environments, but some of the institutions that we rely on need to have better statutory underpinning to ensure that they are able to undertake their roles strongly and without fear of any political interference. We need to consider whether there is more to be done by way of statutory underpinning for our standards system.

I have also noted with interest the way in which legal process is starting to encroach on this area. The Good Law Project has brought a number of cases that, ultimately, have been about public standards. We are seeing the way in which the courts are starting to make decisions or how the Government have sometimes changed their position when challenged in the courts. I do not wholly welcome that. This is something where the political leadership of this country needs to provide the strong lead; we should not have to rely on the courts. The seven principles of public life are a personal responsibility for all of us who have a public role, whether in politics, government, local government or beyond. The seven principles, which I think have stood the test of time extraordinarily well, are ones that apply institutionally, but also individually, and are a personal responsibility.

A number of noble Lords have made reference to recommendations that we made in our Standards Matter 2 report in respect of a number of the institutions that we rely on. I await with hope that we will see progress and that the Government will respond positively to those.

I also draw attention to another matter that has been referred to briefly—namely, the forthcoming Elections Bill, which contains provisions that, in my view, would significantly weaken the independence of the Electoral Commission. We should view that with great concern, not as a party-political issue, but one of good governance. There was a Written Ministerial Statement on this recently, which was encouraging, but I believe that we need to see changes to what is in the Bill if we are going to underpin the independence of the electoral system which is, in turn, a critical part of our public standards.