House of Lords Commissioners for Standards

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mance (CB)]

My Lords, the Motion standing in my name invites the House to appoint two new Commissioners for Standards. It does not relate to membership of the Conduct Committee, a subject that was recently raised by several noble Lords. I have written to them separately to address those points. Today’s Motion concerns only the appointment of two new Commissioners for Standards.

The office of an independent commissioner investigating breaches of the code and guide goes back to a decision of the House in 2009. The first commissioner served two three-year periods. The current commissioner, Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, has served a five-year period and was engaged to commit five days a month. Her term expires at the end of this month.

I take this opportunity to say a word of thanks to our current commissioner for her work during her term in office. In her time, the work of the commissioner has changed radically, in particular with the introduction, in 2009, of provisions relating to bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct which, sadly, have received quite a bit of attention in the commissioner’s reports since then. The size, nature and complexity of her case load is therefore quite different from when she was appointed in 2016. She has dealt with several challenging investigations, some of which have come to the Conduct Committee on appeal, which could not have been foreseen by her, or by anyone, when she took up the post. It is the changing nature and volume of the work of the commissioner that leads us to recommend the appointment of two commissioners to replace Ms Scott-Moncrieff, each with a basic commitment to five days a month. By having two commissioners, we are building greater capacity and resilience into the enforcement of the code.

I chaired the recruitment panel, which was made up of three Members of this House in addition—the noble Baronesses, Lady Anelay of St Johns, Lady Donaghy and Lady Hussein-Ece—and two external members of our committee, Cindy Butts and Vanessa Davies. After a detailed process, guided by recruitment experts and accompanied by a shortlist, and consideration of the dozen shortlisted and interviews of five, we concluded that Mr Martin Jelley and Mr Akbar Khan should be appointed.

Martin Jelley is a distinguished police officer and currently chief constable of the Warwickshire Police, with huge experience in professional standards and in Parliament, having successfully introduced new police misconduct regulations for England and Wales, which have fundamentally changed their position. He also chaired a police conduct exercise. Akbar Khan has had a diverse career, as a qualified barrister and as a qualified attorney in New York state. He is a workplace investigator for the Foreign Office and secretary-general to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, as well as the legal director of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Short biographies of Mr Jelley and Mr Khan are available in the Printed Paper Office and on the parliamentary web pages, setting out their career backgrounds.

This Motion asks the House to approve their appointments for single non-renewable terms. The present commissioner’s term is also non-renewable. To account for slightly different circumstances—in particular when Mr Martin Jelley retires, which is only on 1 July—their terms are slightly staggered. That will also allow an overlap at the end, which is good from the point of view of continuity. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I will now call the following Members to speak: the noble Lords, Lord Cormack, Lord Balfe and Lord Hamilton of Epsom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I will not repeat what my noble friend Lord Cormack said, except to say that I did not disagree with anything he said. I also echo that it is a pleasure to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, in the Chamber.

My first question is why we need the commissioners to spend 10 days a month looking at the standards in the Lords. Have they slipped so far? Secondly, why do we need two commissioners? Will they each have a caseload? I would have thought that it would be better if we had one commissioner, who would get to know the House better by doing 10 days a month. I would rather that he was doing the days necessary to do the job, up to 10 days a month, because I am aware, from a long life of bureaucracy, that it tends to expand to fill the gap available—he would then say that it should be 11 days, because 10 days is not quite enough. I am always concerned at the length of time set aside.

My noble friend Lord Cormack referred to the former Speaker of the Commons and the difficulties there. One of the first things that should be done is to publish, for the general public to see, this course that we have all taken, because I found it patently ridiculous, frankly. It taught me absolutely nothing, apart from the fact that there is some very easy money to be made out there by designing courses that are pretty irrelevant.

I came into contact with the commission over a much more minor, but fundamental, case; that of the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis. I always felt happy defending the noble Lord, because there was absolutely nothing I agreed with him on in politics. I did not agree with his attitudes to divorce, abortion, Northern Ireland or anything at all, so I always felt that I could look at his case as a straightforward one of whether or not he should have been suspended. To me, the way in which the procedure worked, with no opportunities for any input and no appeal, was unsatisfactory. Maybe we need some sort of private hearing—maybe we do not want it on the Floor of the House—but we cannot have a system that is quite as closed as that one.

My second point is that there does not appear to be any sort of decent trade union representation in this outfit. I know that the noble Lord can defend himself, but when I looked through his case, I saw that there were dozens of points that I would have picked up had I been a TU official. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, should make some provision for people to be accompanied by, effectively, a representative to put their case.

My final two points are these. The punishments being given by this body—and they are punishments—are way out of line with those of the House of Commons. I am not saying that the House of Commons is right, but in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, his political career was effectively ended by this body. That was also the case with Lord Lester. Their careers were ended. In the House of Commons, people tend to be suspended for a time and then they come back. In my view, the punishments here are far too harsh.

The second and final point I would like the noble and learned Lord to look at is that part of the finding against the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, banned him from the Palace of Westminster. I have raised this before, but can the noble and learned Lord and his legal colleagues assure me that we have the right to ban a citizen of this country from entering his Parliament? We did not take his badge away; we banned him from Parliament. I do not believe that we have the power to ban a citizen of this country from approaching his elected Members, but if we do, please let us know in writing.

That concludes my observations. I look forward to meeting the noble and learned Lord. I am in receipt of one of his letters offering to meet me. I would be happy to do so, but I felt that one or two things needed putting on the public record.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Before I call the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, I will let the House know that the list has been growing exponentially. After him, I will call the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham of Droxford, then the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, then the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, and then the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I also welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, being in the House today. I have two questions for him to do with Valuing Everyone. I apologise, because I know that the Motion he moved has nothing to do with that, but there are very rare occasions when we can question him and his committee on what they are doing.

When I last spoke on this issue, the Valuing Everyone course was costing the taxpayer £750,000. That now seems to have gone up, and is little short of £900,000. That seems an awful lot of taxpayers’ money to spend on a course of extremely dubious value. When the noble and learned Lord’s committee were spending this amount of taxpayers’ money, why did it not get the people it was commissioning to come and give the course to it before it signed the contract to spend all this money, so that the committee at least knew what course it was inflicting on everybody in your Lordships’ House and in the other House?

The other question is this: is this really the right reaction to a handful of people behaving in a very bad way? It seems an incredibly broad-brush approach to send everybody on a rather questionable course, when most people in your Lordships’ House behave, I would have thought, pretty immaculately. We are talking about a very small minority of people, yet we subject everybody in your Lordships’ House to going on this course and to facing certain restrictions if they do not attend. This is where I might fall out with my noble friend Lord Balfe, but I wonder whether exemplary punishments of the few people who do misbehave would be a much better use of resources and save the taxpayer enormous sums of money.