Conduct Committee

Lord Mann Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, we have heard several times how we non-lawyers do not understand the principles and complexity of the legal profession. I will quote a recent article on international arbiters.

“The linguistic challenges in international arbitration can be both numerous and significant, with the potential to not only increase the cost and time spent on proceedings, but actually impact the entire outcome of the case.”


We have heard six international arbiters speak, so they will be familiar with the case of Occidental v Ecuador from seven years ago. That case, Ecuador being a state, would obviously be covered in some way by this. The cost of mistranslation was around $2 billion. When I set up a family-owned translation and interpreting company specialising in complex negotiations, I did not pay what I suspect the daily rates were for senior barristers and other legal professionals. We had to pay—it was a few years ago when I last did it—£500 a day. For Korean it was £700. Certain obscure languages would be more. We had to sign confidentiality clauses. There was no option; we could not negotiate to see whether the client wanted it or not. We had to do so.

If I still had that company now, I would be covered by this. It is not just lawyers and the legal profession who are impacted, and I have no problem whatever with the principle. I would have had no negotiating power there. If I had refused to sign a confidentiality agreement because I could not do so, I would not have got the job, full stop. There is no question about it. There was no negotiation potential. Some of the companies, Governments and state institutions were precisely the ones that would be covered by this.

Let us not pretend that only one specific profession is impacted by this. It is a little shameful that what, in the case of Occidental v Ecuador, was called the normal approach of international arbiters to forget about the importance of the translators in the work they do did not manifest itself among the issues that have been raised with the committee. Actually, if you think about it, they are far starker, because there is no negotiating power whatever.

From the language I hear, I get a sense of déjà vu. I wrote and co-presented the trade union submission to the Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life and its successor committee. I had the job of persuading the senior Labour politicians, because of the links, that they were not going to get the kind of support that some of them were used to without it being declared publicly. It was difficult, because they said, “Hang on a minute. This is quite different. This is not about sleaze or cash for questions.” I am a member of that union, I have a long association with it, and I remember the special pleading every time. Thankfully, Rodney Bickerstaffe, the former boss of the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, came to me early on and said, “I’ve got your back if any of these rather famous politicians ever try to have a go at you over this.”

I won on the principle that standards in public life are not divisible and that you cannot claim special interests because of your particular perspective, which is exactly what was happening there. People said, “We are different. We have this relationship.” The same arguments were put coherently, eloquently and forcefully, but they were no different. In that situation, why should the public not know if a trade union had given some money to a politician? What is wrong with that? What is wrong with transparency?

I think of the Commons expenses scandal, which I warned the Prime Minister about 18 months before it became public. I successfully put a resolution through the Commons 12 months before it became public, and I did so without the Whips—I used devices that they had not quite caught up with, and I think it is fair to say that it sneaked through. That reversed and banned the so-called “flipping” of homes. The powers that be were stupid enough not to implement what Parliament had said, and we then saw the explosive consequences.

However, I was castigated again, repeatedly and constantly, as were a handful of others who said the same thing. They said, “We are people of honour”, to which the response is, “Yes, you are, and your honour will be strengthened by transparency. If anybody is not honourable, they will be caught out by transparency, and their behaviour will therefore change”. One did not need to cast aspersions on anybody then in relation to those principles. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, but not on the detail of his amendment. We need to go a lot further and extend it to Peers who go to embassies abroad. That should be logged and available for the public to see, as should all-party groups that do the same. Transparency is not a bad thing.

We choose to come here. No one has to come here, just as I did not have to stand and be elected as a parliamentarian. When I did, I sold my business because I thought it was invidious to be bidding for work on government contracts when I was on the inside, not because I could not account for it or because it was dishonest. It seemed uncomfortable to me. That is a price worth paying to speak out in our democracy. We are not even elected here. How could anybody not vote for more transparency and for these proposals?