Conduct Committee

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness and her committee on their work in reviewing the code of conduct and the manner in which they did it. It was a privilege to give evidence to the committee, and I was extremely impressed, though not surprised, by the care with which it approached its work.

The committee had two overlapping tasks, the first being to streamline the code and guide to make them clearer and less ambiguous. By reducing its length by 30% and simplifying the language, it has clearly achieved this. It also had to deal with several substantive issues on which there is no consensus in the House—here it was impossible for it to please everybody. For myself, I wish it had dropped the reference to “personal honour” and brought in an offence of bringing the House into disrepute. I was one of those who, to quote the report, thought that the term was

“hard to understand and archaic”.

But I was given the chance to argue that case before the committee, and I simply failed to convince it. So it was with other Peers and other topics. But the committee weighed my evidence and all the evidence it heard, and reached its own conclusions, as it was tasked by the House to do. That is why I will vote for the report and do not support the amendments today.

The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has argued for an independent tribunal and legal representation. The report, having considered the case for an adversarial system, rejects it on the grounds that he quoted: that it

“would result in a long-drawn out and expensive process, potentially undermining rather than promoting the principles of natural justice and fairness”.

As opposed to the noble Viscount, I agree with that conclusion and so cannot support his amendment.

The noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, wishes to amend the code to prevent Members bringing complaints of harassment against other Members, for the reasons he has just enumerated. I completely disagree with him. Harassment is a serious offence, and standards of acceptable behaviour and what constitutes harassment have changed for the better, in my view, over recent years. To accept the noble Lord’s amendment would tolerate behaviour that is intolerable, and it would be an extremely retrograde step were the House to agree to it.

Neither do I recognise that there have been any miscarriages of justice in the past relating to this issue. His suggestion that the code could be abused for party-political advantage is simply implausible. If anybody were to try this, I am sure that they would be given extremely short shrift.

I urge the House to support the Motion to approve this report, reject the amendments and thank the noble Baroness for her extremely distinguished stint as chair of the committee.