Conduct Committee

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I will not repeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, has already said in opening this debate, nor do I have time, sadly, to comment on the two amendments moved by my noble friends Lord Hailsham and Lord Hamilton of Epsom.

That said, I doubt that the noble Baroness elbowed her way to the front of the queue to chair the Conduct Committee, but we should be grateful to her that she was persuaded to take on the job. As a member of the Conduct Committee, I saw at first hand her skills as a leader, as a negotiator, as a manager of expectations and as a catalyst for consensus. Perhaps more importantly, I saw her as someone who cares deeply about fairness and justice. This new, shorter, decluttered, comprehensible code of conduct and guide are as good as they are very largely because of the noble Baroness, but I must also expressly thank the clerks to the committee, whose advice and drafting skills were of the highest quality. This House is in their debt.

As a member of the Conduct Committee from January 2022 until January this year, I heard many anxious but also perplexing contributions to the debate, outside the committee’s formal sessions, about the rules of conduct for this House. Happily, the evidence that we received in the committee—before the general election last year, I chaired some of the evidence sessions—from the party group leaders, including my noble friend Lord Forsyth, from the then Leaders of the House and of the Opposition and from the Convenor of the Cross Benches, as well as from outside interested parties, was universally thoughtful and helpful in informing our deliberations and conclusions.

Revising the code of conduct is not a mass participation activity. Despite affecting every one of us, the revision excited relatively little interest, perhaps because very few Members of this House breach the code. Most of us do not know who the commissioners or the members of the Conduct Committee are, be they Peers or lay members. It was therefore unsurprising that, despite reminders, only a handful of your Lordships responded to the call for evidence, but we were very grateful to those who did.

In my time on the committee, we had to deal with only a small number of breaches of the code. The overwhelming majority of us in this House are polite, kind, honest and decent towards each other and to those who work with us in Parliament. The exceptions were rare, but even then we were not dealing with people who were irredeemably bad. Mistakes happen. Technical breaches of the code occur. Things are said that, on reflection or earlier in the day, would not have been said. Most who were found to have broken the code accepted that they were wrong, were contrite and apologetic. I doubt they will do it again. On those occasions where we were concerned with more serious breaches, the problems not infrequently arose from diminished capacity and the afflictions of old age rather than malice.

Furthermore, quite a few complaints made about Members of your Lordships’ House were trivial and vexatious. There was a small number of regular complainants and, if the new code is approved, we will have a better way in which to allow the commissioners to deal with those that do not affect innocent Peers or those who have committed only minor or technical infractions, which can be dealt with by correction of the register. Overall, the new shorter code is such an improvement on its predecessor that it ought not, I hope, to attract the criticism that the earlier version experienced.

I do not have time to identify the new changes, but I want finally to turn to the question of the lay membership of the Conduct Committee. There are strong views for and against their being on the committee and I will not speak to that question now, but lay members are appointed for six years, twice as long as our own three-year term limit. That needs to be changed. I found the lay members to be dedicated people who took their work seriously and responsibly, but I do not understand why their terms should be twice the length of our own.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

I hope the noble Baroness is content with what I have now said.

Lord Hodgson, with whom I have had a helpful correspondence, talked about the direction of travel moving towards the noble Viscount’s possibility. He also mentioned the tension between facing two ways. That is absolutely recognised, as I said in my opening speech, and we have tried to bridge that gap.

I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on social media. The view of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, that we have just dealt with a playground scrap is certainly not my view, and I also see problems with open hearings—particularly if, at the end of the day, the person concerned is found to have been innocent, as working on the presumption of innocence is very important. Equally, I also agree that where mediation can be achieved, it is infinitely preferable. However, I will not recommend to my successor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, that he seeks to abolish himself—but again, that is a matter for the House.

The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, raised a point which other Peers had not mentioned about Standing Order 68. All the committee is saying is that, should the House, and should the usual channels and the Privileges Committee, decide that this was no longer tenable, complaints under the behaviour code would still need not to be debated, but complaints of, say, financial impropriety could be, if the House wanted to go down that route. But I say to the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, that the committee is not asking for that; the committee is just raising it as something, following the Lord Lester case, that the House might want to consider.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, was concerned about appendix B—as were many of the rest of your Lordships—which has all the definitions of sexual harassment, and so on. Those definitions stand as part of the behaviour code. They are not a matter for this House to change, and the commissioner will refer to them when making investigations under those headings. I have read out the bit from the Equality Act to try to reassure her there, and I have commented on social media.

Recruitment of independent members of the committee is entirely open, and the sort of person the noble Baroness describes, who she would regard as having more common sense than an HR person, can easily apply if they wish to do so. But at this stage, I would really like to say, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, said, that the external members of the committee offer real help and value to us in our deliberations. I think that we should be extremely grateful to them, and I regard that as important.

The noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, makes an important point. I acknowledge that going through this process is distressing and concerning for even the most robust of us. Therefore, as regards giving support, we have specified in the new code that people can bring friends; they should be supported throughout. They could bring one Peer—not a great gang of them—or one or a few colleagues. But we recognise that where possible, we have to be compassionate, and want to be, to people who find themselves in this position, certainly until they are found against.

I hope I have answered the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Swire, on whether we can look at ensuring that the damage done by being investigated is not made public. The commissioner goes through a preliminary assessment then has to decide whether there is enough evidence that there may be a case to answer, and at that stage, things begin to become more public.

I hope I have covered all noble Lords’ comments, but I thank your Lordships very much for the useful—

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, perhaps she could confirm that the committee is very much boxed in by the rules that it is provided with? If, for example, a commissioner makes a finding both as to fact and as to sanction, and that set of findings is not appealed, the committee has no remit to reinvestigate. Therefore, it ought to be more widely understood that the committee’s ambit of power is relatively restricted in relation to that sort of case.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

I would certainly be happy to confirm that. Of course, if people appeal, and many do, the committee engages fully in the angles of that appeal and whether in fact they wish fully to endorse the commissioner’s findings. Again, it is a bit different in the Commons, but if the House wants to change that, it would need to consider it in the whole issue of process. But I thank the noble and learned Lord for that intervention.