Standards of Behaviour and Honesty in Political Life

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. We are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Morse, for giving us this opportunity.

I begin by referring to a character mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, because it helps to put this all into context. The problems we are facing at the moment—I shall come on to these in more detail—are very real, but to have rogue politicians is not new. Most of your Lordships will know the famous story of Maundy Gregory. Sentenced to a prison term, he was sewing his mail bags when he was visited by one of his former colleagues, who asked, “Sewing, Gregory?” “No—reaping”, he replied.

Of course, there have been rogue politicians through the ages, but we are in a different context now, because until relatively recently, we all accepted the basic ground rules. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn also referred to this. Whether believers or not, we had a fundamental Christian structure to our society, where almost everybody accepted that certain things were right and certain things were wrong—certain things were done, and certain things should not be done—although there were those who transgressed. We think perhaps of John Profumo, but what an extraordinary comeback he had by devoting his life to Toynbee Hall and being properly recognised—I think here of the Christian doctrine of redemption—by being given a CBE.

But we are in a different context today. Again, the right reverend Prelate referred to this when he talked about my truth and your truth, rather than the truth which we all held to and accepted. Almost every politician now seems to think that as long he thinks what he is doing is all right, it does not really matter— whether it is telling a fib on the Floor of the House of Commons or watching questionable material on an iPhone. But it does matter, and it is important that we recognise that. We must have a machinery, a structure, for supervising and, to a degree, policing that. I was taken by the very thoughtful speech and suggestion of my noble friend Lord Wolfson, whose dignified letter of resignation is, I hope, framed on the walls of 10 Downing Street.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Not a chance.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I live in hope. My noble friend talked about the Lord Chancellor, and about having a Lord Chancellor who is in a destination office. He used the analogy of the station. We are shortly going to be saying goodbye to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, one of the most distinguished and distinctive Lord Chancellors we have had. He was always in residence in King’s Cross or St Pancras, but his successors have all got off at Adlestrop. It is very important to recognise that a Lord Chancellor, in a high and exalted position, having taken the oaths to which my noble friend Lord Wolfson referred, can be in a position, to a degree, of moral guardian of the ethics of the Cabinet. Although he would never put it that way, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, fulfilled that role to a degree. It is very important that we try to restore public confidence in those who hold high office. If we do not, our very democratic structures are at risk.

There has been a great change in the other place since I entered it 52 years ago last Saturday. There were not enough women then, but there were a number of colleagues who had fought in the last war with great distinction and had MCs, and almost everybody in the House had had a successful career somewhere. Even I, entering at the age of 31, had done 10 years in the real world as a schoolmaster, a deputy head and so on. There are far too many these days who come in without having had any experience at all of the real world. They come in very often at the first time of asking—their first election—and many have done nothing outside the party-political arena. They have been spads or assistants to MPs, but they do not properly understand the real world. Because of that, what was a vocation to public service has become a job and a career in itself.

That is really what is behind much of what we are talking of today, but it is not only that. They have dispensed—as I hope we will not in your Lordships’ House—with the hours that enabled the House of Commons to have a collegiate structure. I was sitting in my office last night and at five-something the House was up and they were gone. That did not use to happen and because of that, we were together, collegiately, talking and mixing, as we do in your Lordships’ House at the Long Table. A fortnight in advance of a very important debate, I urge your Lordships to remember what happened in the House of Commons when it lost its collegiate structure and gave up the scrutiny of legislation because of timetabling. All these things are enmeshed, but above all, we have to have standards in public life which enable the electorate to respect those whom they elect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am reminded listening to this debate of the opening words of Francis Bacon’s essay on truth:

“‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.”


We know that democracy depends on an open debate about what truth is, and respect for reasoned argument and for evidence. It is partly the move away from that recognition of and respect for reasoned debate, and the search for the appropriate and correct outcome—and I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mann, that one has to admit that the whole debate over Brexit has fed a lot of that movement—that has taken us to where we are now.

It is highly appropriate that this debate should be led by a Cross-Bencher and dominated by Cross-Benchers. They have a role in being non-party and in asking questions about evidence and the quality of the argument which the Government are putting forward. It is part of the deterioration even in this House over the last few years that I have heard senior Conservatives saying, “Well, you know that all the Cross-Benchers are systematically left wing”. I will not name the senior Conservatives who have said that, but some Cross-Benchers know them well.

Of course, that is a general label used to close down political debate. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which has its Second Reading next Tuesday, is based on Policy Exchange papers which at one point state that 80% of the academic teaching in British universities is left wing. This would puzzle the nearly 35% of scientists who work in universities and many others, but that is what Policy Exchange and the Telegraph have stated on a number of occasions. When judges disagree with the Government, they are dismissed in the Daily Mail and elsewhere as “lefty lawyers”. BBC and Channel 4 public service broadcasters are regularly attacked; I am bored by the number of occasions every week that the Times runs anti-BBC stories. This also happens when the Bishops say anything which is deemed to be political. It seems to have escaped the new right-wing consensus, as it were, that the gospel is systemically left wing in a number of ways, particularly in its clear bias towards the poor and against the rich—but the Bishops are told that they should not mention that.

Dismissal of reasoned argument damages democracy. We have skirted around the issue of written constitutions versus unwritten constitutions. I recall that, when I used to teach the American constitution as a graduate student in an American university, we talked about the importance of having a Government of laws and not of men. However, what we are seeing in the United States at the moment is a Government of laws being tested to the extreme by the politicisation of the courts, by bending the rules and by challenging what the rules have promoted. Good and honest Conservatives in Britain, and there are many, should look across the Atlantic and be as concerned about what is happening there—the damage to democracy and to the idea of a national community—as they are about developments in Poland and Hungary.

A democratic Government depends, ultimately, on the self-constraint of those who lead it. Laws and institutions strengthen these constraints and add transparency and external pressure. Where the self-constraint of political leaders weakens, the case for strengthening and institutionalising external constraints becomes stronger. That is why I support the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life to institutionalise some of these constraints further.

We all recognise that some politicians are rogues—in all parties. My party has suffered, as well as others. Lloyd George has been mentioned; I had severe problems with Jeremy Thorpe when he was our leader; I did not know enough about Cyril Smith. The importance in every political party is that there are enough people who are concerned about the maintenance of standards, and enough influential people in public life to resist the rogues when they appear.

Since we are talking about public life, this also applies to the role of the media, which in Britain has contributed to the decline in our standards. The Daily Mail has become the Fox News of British life in its denunciation of anyone who disagrees with whatever the government line may be at the present time. The Telegraph is a pinnacle of English nationalism, owned by people who escape British tax by living in the Channel Islands. Culture wars, the dismissal of experts and the constant attacks on the BBC are all damaging the quality of the idea of democracy as a process in which we argue and disagree with each other while also respecting each other’s opinions. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn mentioned the importance of civic education and ensuring that we encourage our public to take an informed approach to politics and public life, not treat them as spectators of a game that is simply played in Westminster.

There has been mention of the role of the House of Commons, the decline of the independent Back-Bencher and the rise of the political professional parachuted into safe seats by central office. Part of what we see has gone wrong is that the Government now have 20% of the membership of the House of Commons on their payroll—140 people. The majority of Conservative MPs who are not on the government payroll voted to dismiss the Prime Minister but, when the King’s friends—to use the 18th-century phrase—are as large a group as that, the Commons ceases to be an effective check on the Government.

Then we come to the role of Ministers and Cabinet government, in which each Cabinet Minister has his sense of responsibility—shared responsibility—from the Government. Ministers should recognise that governing is different from campaigning. Part of what is wrong with this Government is that they seem to think campaigning is all that matters—“Promise them what they like, and forget about it next year.” Patronage is to be used responsibly, not simply to reward friends or donors. Political leadership requires putting hard choices to the public from time to time, not simply relying on easy promises. Responsibility is held to the country and the national interest as much as to the party and the Prime Minister. The acceptance of advice and evidence, even when unwelcome, is a necessary part of a Minister’s role.

The noble Lord, Lord True, is himself a Minister and shares that responsibility, collective and individual. I have listened to him defending each constitutional twist and turn of this Government. I have watched him pushing through the Elections Act, and I am sure that he is aware that the chairman of the Electoral Commission has just stated that the Act makes the Electoral Commission no longer an independent regulator. It is a real weakening of our democratic constraints on an unscrupulous Government in power, and the noble Lord was complicit in that. I have heard him sweeping aside concerns about PPE and test and trace—I have read his reply to the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, on that subject—and defending inappropriate public appointments. I am sure that the Minister recognises that his responsibility as a Minister is not to be too complicit in allowing standards of public life to decline. I hope that he examines his conscience from time to time on that very point and asks himself what contribution he is making towards restoring higher standards of behaviour and honesty in public life—because, I repeat that, in the last resort, democracy is sustained only by the leadership of those who hold responsibility at the top and their willingness to open and maintain dialogue with their public.