Conduct Committee

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who is very wise, and to echo her remarks about the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, who is a glutton for punishment; she actually extended her term of office in order to deal with this issue and it is a very important issue.

I am sorry that we have only four minutes—although it is advisory—to discuss very important questions. I have a number of comments, which I hope the committee might give consideration to. First, what is the definition of a “minor case”? It is not clear from the report to what that relates. Secondly, the idea of extending the terms of appointment to six years, although not really a matter for the committee, is undesirable.

My main concern is the extension of the committee’s remit into social media. In particular, I find some comments from the report quite worrying. For example, paragraph 24 says:

“as a self-regulating chamber the House of Lords has the right to determine that egregiously offensive statements made by its members on public-facing social media may in certain circumstances fall within the scope of the Code”.

It is hard to argue with that in principle. I do not do social media, because I think that it is a revolting place and what people say about each other is not to my taste, but the idea that the committee should get involved in social media is a very big step. To be fair, the report hedges around the circumstances, but the hedging is rather vague and it needs careful consideration.

My other point is that, although it is fantastic that we no longer need to declare a non-financial interest, the report makes it quite clear that getting up and saying, “I refer to my interests in the register”, which people in this place do every day at Question Time, is a breach of the code. However, they are still required to continue to declare their financial interests. I do not think that is practical. Question Time is already difficult because some people make very long questions or give very long answers—or responses to questions, certainly. Having to declare an interest at Question Time without being able to say, “I refer to the register”—it is a waste of time anyway, because nobody has a clue what is on the register—would just extend the length of Question Time. That should be given further consideration.

Paragraph 49 relates to Members who have left the House. The suggestion is that, if a former Member were to breach the rules, it would be for the commission or the Clerk of the Parliaments to use their powers. I mean no disrespect to our distinguished clerk, but I think it should be for the commission and not for the Clerk of the Parliaments.

The noble Baroness and her committee have produced a document in which I can pick holes, but it is a great leap forward from what we had before. They took evidence—I gave evidence—and they considered it very carefully. It would be quite wrong for the House not to support this unanimously and with great gratitude to the noble Baroness and her committee for their work, which cannot have been easy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for all those comments. I will try and answer them all and, if I fail, that will not be deliberate. I am grateful for the kind personal comments; I am bathing in the plaudits from various sides of the House, and I appreciate that. However, this is also very much a matter for the distinguished members of the committee.

I am going to start with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, then I shall try to pick up on any that have not been covered, on topics such as social media, as we go through. I am grateful to noble Lords for taking these issues seriously and for the range and extent of their comments.

The concern of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, that complaints of harassment by Members of either House may be politically motivated and used to embarrass opponents is a view shared by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and others. I assure the House that the members of the Conduct Committee are fully alive to the possibility of politically motivated complaints, as are the commissioners. We understand that we work in a political environment, and we have robust processes for identifying and rejecting frivolous or vexatious complaints.

I shall come to the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Swire, later on, but in truth I suggest that the risk he identifies is more imaginary than substantial. Paragraph 27 of the enforcement process says:

“No information will be made public unless or until a report is published”,


even if the commissioner launches an investigation. It is a confidential process, and if the complainant were to breach that confidentiality, they would, as paragraph 62 states, be committing

“a contempt of the House”.

When the commissioner’s report is ultimately published, it will either uphold or dismiss the complaint. If the complaint has been dismissed, the commissioner may withhold the name of the Member concerned or even decide not to publish a report at all. That has happened in the last year—not in the cases that have been mentioned today, though for obvious reasons I cannot go into detail—so I would argue that the scope to cause malicious political mischief is, in practice, very small. There is only political damage if the complaint is upheld and the Member is in fact guilty of harassment.

I would remind people—this goes to the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—that, in the definitions of “harassment”, we are following Section 26 of the Equality Act, which defines it as “unwanted conduct” that has the “purpose or effect”, so it can be unintentional, of “violating” a person’s “dignity” or

“creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”

for them. Whether Members of the House like that or not, it is the law.

I suggest that all the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, would achieve would be to prevent genuine victims of such harassment from complaining— and, let me be clear, there are victims. Even though allegations by Members of either House against noble Lords are extremely rare, there have been some cases where serious misconduct has occurred. In some cases, the details are not in the public domain because the complainants wished to remain anonymous, but I assure the House that there have been serious cases involving noble Lords.

To go back to my opening remarks on the Behaviour Code, the principles of respect and courtesy are there for the entire parliamentary community. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that they are not there just for the staff, although that is an important component. They are there for the whole parliamentary community. If we start having carve-outs for particular groups, we risk unravelling the entire behaviour code. I hope that, if the noble Lord presses his amendment, the House will reject it.

The noble Viscount has clearly stated his case—indeed, he talked to me about it beforehand—and has been consistent in so doing. He has been supported by others, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. Nobody can doubt his honest advocacy of a wholly independent process with a strong legal flavour. In the end, it is up to the House to decide. It is not, in the end, up to the Conduct Committee. The Conduct Committee’s view is clear. What he suggests is very different from Commons procedures, for example, where you have three layers. First, the commissioners decide whether it looks as though the code has been broken. Secondly, there is the Standards Committee and, thirdly, the independent expert panel with no Members of the House of Commons on it. We could go that way, or we could go the way suggested by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. My view is that the existing system is fair and provides natural justice, and I dispute that it has been otherwise. But, again, whether the noble Viscount wishes to withdraw his amendment is up to him.

I will try to read my scribbles on what other things were said, and I will try to answer them correctly. I hope I have answered the points made by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom. I of course contest his view that there has been a serious miscarriage of justice. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, raised a number of questions in his four minutes. I will start with one on social media, which was also picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and others. What we think we are trying to achieve here—what we think we have done—is just to say what the existing arrangements are. I do not want to get into particular cases, but I will mention the case of the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, which some noble Lords may remember. He carried on a parliamentary discussion on social media with somebody he had met on the Parliamentary Estate. In the view of the committee, this was parliamentary activity in an unusual situation. In most cases—in the vast majority of complaints that we get concerning social media—the comments by the Peer concerned could not by any definition be said to be part of parliamentary activity.

Then we have to go on and ask whether this is freedom of speech—whether it is about having an honest and robust opinion, having the ability to offend or insult, or whatever. Unless it is covered by the definitions of harassment and it is parliamentary, the code will not engage. So I suggest that all that we have actually done is put into the code the current practice. We have not been on mission creep in this or any other part of the code—I know that a number of Peers were concerned that we might have been.

For minor cases, I do not have a definition, but the idea is that we try wherever possible to keep out of the whole process as many as possible—that is partly for purposes of the noble Lord, Lord Swire. That is something that I have also corresponded with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, about.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

On the points that the noble Baroness made about social media, can we take it that what she has told the House on record will be used by the commissioner and the committee going forward? The clarification that she has provided is fundamentally important.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

Yes. I like short answers.

On declaration of interests, at the end of the day, failure to declare a financial interest in a debate is a matter for the committee. It seems to us that the Privileges Committee and the processes of the House need to decide whether noble Lords do that at Question Time or more broadly—but we all think that “I refer to the register of interests” is a meaningless phrase, because nobody is going to look it up and it does not really help. But that is for others.

I would like to contradict the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that the committee, and all our procedures, regard bullying, sexual misconduct and harassment as more important than serious financial misconduct. There is not a competition here; there are different sorts of breaches of the code, and some of the most egregious that this House sees are financial ones. I would like to confirm that, and I hope she will accept it—it is not a competition between the two of them.

On the use of offices, of course we all deal with emails and work in our offices. To go back to my earlier point, many Members of this House have other jobs; they have other responsibilities and things that they do. What we cannot allow is for the office to become used almost exclusively for other business—to be the route of a charity being based there, for example. So there is a distinction, but I assure noble Lords that the committee is not going to be concerned about people using their offices to catch up with work in other areas.