Standards of Behaviour and Honesty in Political Life

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, gratitude goes to the noble Lord, Lord Morse, for allowing us to have this debate. We all hope that in the end, the Minister will be truer to his instincts than to his brief. So, we wait.

A week ago, the former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an interview to the Financial Times, where the banner headline read:

“We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy.”


She went on to say that

“everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window.”

We know what she is referring to: the hearings on Capitol Hill for the next few months will reveal the extent to which the events of 6 January 2021 were not the response to a wind-up speech from the former President wanting to get his supporters to go and upset the balance but were pre-planned. The evidence now revealed shows that those who are supporters of QAnon and the Proud Boys had planned their insurrection many months in advance. We are told on the latest evidence I looked at this morning that somewhere between 20 and 30 million Americans are still active supporters of QAnon and believe that its views about the Democrats are to be held as a truth worthy of re-electing the former President on. These are frightening realities, not just because they will affect America but because they affect us. The tone of all democracy is fragile.

I came across the assessment of the journalist, HL Mencken, rated as one of America’s leading political analysts, writing in the Baltimore Evening Sun 100 years ago, on 26 July 1920. He said:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people … On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”


You have to wonder: how did he know? It lies in the phrase

“the inner soul of the people”.

What had been allowed 100 years ago to begin this erosion of understanding, this wiping away of principles, that would lead us to this moment?

We all wish that the noble Lord, Lord Geidt, was here in the Chamber so that he could explain what was especially “odious” about the dealings he was having in Downing Street. It leads one to one obvious conclusion. There is no point having an ethics adviser if the key person either seeking or receiving the advice has no proven core of ethical conduct. We do not need purity and perfection, but we need what is captured in the Nolan principles: honesty, truth-telling and integrity of purpose.

I noted that in a number of the briefings sent, at least to me, in preparation for this debate was the inevitable series of demands for more regulation, more accountability, more committees and more assessment bodies—all with good intent. The answer is not to add to the weight of those objectively assessing the behaviour of individuals: that just adds cost; it does not bring clarity. Simply to rely on regulations, structures and even laws is to miss the point.

I uncovered an article written by one of the great former Members of this House, who sadly passed some years ago, Lord Sacks, on 8 September 2011, 10 years on from the events in New York City. The article was headed:

“Bin Laden saw that the West was in decline”.


The subheading reads:

“The attacks are linked to a wider moral malaise, including the loss of authority, integrity and family unity”.


If our great friend Lord Sacks was here, I am sure that what he wrote then is what he would say today. To bring his words back to life, I shall quote them. We all had profound respect for him as an individual and for his wisdom. He wrote:

“all great civilisations eventually decline, and when they begin to do so they are vulnerable. That is what Osama bin Laden believed about the West and so did some of the West’s own greatest minds … If so, then 9/11 belongs to a wider series of phenomena affecting the West: the disintegration of the family, the demise of authority, the build-up of personal debt, the collapse of financial institutions, the downgrading of the American economy, the continuing failure of some European economies, the loss of a sense of honour, loyalty and integrity that has brought once esteemed groups into disrepute, the waning throughout the West of a sense of national identity … These are … signs of the arteriosclerosis of a culture, a civilisation grown old. Whenever Me takes precedence over We, and pleasure today over viability tomorrow, a society is in trouble … The West has expended much energy and courage fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq abroad and defeating terror at home. It has spent far less, if any, in renewing its own morality and the institutions—families, communities, ethical codes, standards in public life—where it is created and sustained. But if I am right”,

says Lord Sacks,

“this is the West’s greatest weakness in the eyes of its enemies as well as its friends … Our burden is to renew the moral disciplines of freedom.”

That is why we have debates of this nature: we want those disciplines renewed—who would not? I must ask members of the governing party, when many said, as they did to me as friends, as I am sure they did too many of us, that they stood aside from what they knew to get Brexit done: are they still content that that win was worth it all?