Ministerial Code

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, I assert again the importance of the Ministerial Code, which, as the noble Baroness said, is the responsibility of the Prime Minister of the day. The fact is that Ministers remain in office only for as long as they retain the confidence of the Prime Minister, whose constitutional role means that the management of ministerial appointments is his and is separate from the legislature. On the general running interest that there appears to be in the refurbishment of the Prime Minister’s flat, the costs of the wider refurbishment have been personally met by the Prime Minister. As has been said, the Government have been considering the merits of whether works on parts, or all, of the Downing Street estate could be funded by a trust, and this work is ongoing.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Statement refers to Britain as a “robust democracy”. We have done without a written constitution because we have rested on the honour and good conduct of our Ministers and, above all, our Prime Ministers. Can the Minister name any other constitutional democracy, or any other democracy in the world, in which the Prime Minister decides on the rules of ministerial conduct and appoints his own independent adviser without checks and balances from the justiciary or his legislature? Should we not now have to move towards an explicitly constitutional democracy, or risk drifting towards a people’s democracy?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am rather old and to me “people’s democracy” conjures up the old eastern bloc. I am interested in high-quality, high-integrity government. The Ministerial Code is the foundation of that. But I must repeat to noble Lords, as I did to the noble Baroness opposite: the constitutional reality is that the appointment of Ministers is in the hands of the Prime Minister of the day. The Government are not considering a change to that position.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I make a practice at this Dispatch Box of not throwing stones, and I think everyone in every party should be cautious about throwing stones. In response to what the noble Baroness said—I am sorry that she is in her place, but it is good to see her—on the question of in-house lobbyists, it is true that the Government did not pursue that in 2014. There are issues involved. It obviously will be considered currently. Such an approach would require thousands of businesses, charities, NGOs and trade bodies to pay a registration fee of £1,000 a year to write or speak to Ministers. That could be detrimental to the public interest, but I note what the noble Baroness says.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I take my share of responsibility for the last Act. It is now clear that we have to extend further the coverage of lobbying activities. Will the Minister accept that these should include greater transparency for political think tanks, including full declaration of their sources of funding? As he will know, Conservative MPs are concerned about the Runnymede Trust. Others of us are concerned about the Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange, for example, which declare on their websites their access to Ministers and their influence over government policy.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a further suggestion. Since 2010, with the help of the party opposite, we have brought in a statutory registration of consultant lobbyists and a new routine of regular government transparency publications on spending, salaries, contracts and tenders. We are implementing the recommendations of the Boardman review on procurement. We have banned the practice under previous Governments of quangos hiring lobbyists to lobby the Government. We have made sure that taxpayer-funded government grants are not used for lobbying purposes and have provided for greater transparency on trade unions. We have done a number of things. That does not mean that more may not need to be done. I accept that work is ongoing to consider these matters.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP) [V]]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister’s announcement today and I want to pay tribute to him for his constructive and helpful approach during the week. He is a man who is not afraid to meet and to listen—the hallmark of a good Minister. Much that was going to be said undoubtedly will now not be, and I am aware that that applies throughout the House. However, I do want to make a few brief remarks.

It is difficult to understand why a Bill that relates to maternity leave does not once use the word “woman”. That, as we would say here in Ulster, is quite bizarre. While I support all the amendments, I am down to speak to just one. I have stated that my colleagues and I fully support the legislation; indeed, everyone who has spoken, irrespective of their views about the wording, supports the Bill itself. It is just regrettable that the wording did not come up to the standard that some of us felt we could have supported.

A Bill being fast-tracked always raises my suspicions, and I do wonder why this Bill is being fast-tracked. I know that sometimes there are very good reasons, and I think we all accept that this Bill has to be got through. However, unfortunately, this Bill, which is about ensuring the rights of pregnant women, was quite disrespectful to women in its original wording, in that it referred to them as “persons”. In all good conscience, I could not have supported the language used throughout, which made no mention of “women” anywhere.

The terminology stands in sharp contrast to all other UK legislation affording maternity rights and protection. I refer to the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Equality Act 2010. Some advocates of inclusion and diversity in Parliament, with whom I would not always agree, have rightly opposed the move towards gender-neutral language, on the basis that you cannot grant new rights to certain groups by taking away the rights enjoyed by others. The Bill would, regrettably, have anonymised and dehumanised the status and life experience of women. But we know that has now been changed, thanks to the Minister’s constructive approach. I believe listening is the sign and hallmark of a good Minister, and the noble Lord, Lord True, has certainly done that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this Bill will now pass unamended and I welcome that. But we recognise that our debate has touched on wider issues and that we are likely to return to them, in spite of our agreement on the government concession, on other Bills.

When I first joined this House a quarter of a century ago, it was dominated by men, most of them hereditary Peers. A Conservative woman Peer told me the hereditary Peers in her group treated the women Peers as if they were “day boys”. Having been at a boarding school myself, I knew exactly what this meant. In my first Session, I objected to some sections of that year’s defence review, which included women in the section on “equalities”, but gays in the section on “disciplinary problems”. When I dared to refer to great commanders of the past whose sexuality might have been called into question if aggressive efforts had been made to investigate them, I was attacked from both the Labour and the Conservative Benches and thought it wise to apologise before the debate wound up. Happily, this House and the country as a whole have moved on a great deal since then. We have all become more inclusive and openly diverse. None of us, I hope, wishes to return to the attitudes or the language of that earlier generation.

It is not only in Britain where we have moved towards gender-neutral language in political discourse. In Germany and France, which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned, similar changes have been debated and carried into effect. There have been similar protests over attempts at political correctness—although I am not aware that people in France or Germany have taken over the term “woke” from its American origins. The general direction of change has been towards gender neutrality in language, where possible, to remove the implicit biases against women and LGBT people that were often embedded in language.

We all appreciate that this is a sensitive area where passions can easily be aroused. The last thing we want in this country is to slip towards the aggressive culture wars that have been stoked up in the United States, with partisans of opposing viewpoints more interested in the battle itself than in finding common ground, with well-funded organisations feeding the fire. We have all seen American battles spill over into British debate, from the student rebellions and protests that the Vietnam war provoked, to those over Black Lives Matter and opposing interpretations of each country’s history, glorious or inglorious. I hope all of us wish to resist sliding down the road that has led to such bitter divisions in American society, stoked by rival lobbies and highly partisan media. I hope we are all committed to an inclusive society and inclusive language. I also hope we are united in wanting to avoid moves to secure equality for women and moves to provide equal rights to LGBT people being pitched against each other.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the Bill and support its proposals.

It implements proposals made six years ago by the Women in Parliament APPG. As the Minister told us, the Ministerial Code was amended two years ago to accommodate ministerial maternity leave, so the Bill should have been introduced earlier—not rushed through now. I accept its use of gender-neutral language, as recommended in the 2007 legislative guidance, but I note the sensitivity of language at stake here. This clearly needs further discussion but I suspect that it would not be helped by dividing the House at the end of this debate.

The battle to improve maternity conditions for working mothers carries strong personal echoes for me. My wife was a lecturer at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology when we were expecting our first child. At that time, there were no older married women on the academic staff and no arrangements for leave. Helen drove home every lunchtime throughout a university term to breastfeed our daughter. Thankfully, conditions for women giving birth while in work have improved immensely since then, particularly in the Civil Service. I welcome this further step in liberal improvements in the status of women.

However, this welcome comes with a number of critical reservations. As the Minister admitted, the Government are rushing this through to deal with the immediate situation that faces a particular Cabinet Minister. It is almost an ad personam Bill. It does not address parental leave for ministerial fathers. It does not cover adoption. It does not address the issue of sick leave for Ministers, even though this arose for a Cabinet Minister involved in one of the most delicate aspects of the Brexit negotiations—the Northern Ireland issue—in 2018. I regret the absence of these elements from the Bill. I thank the Minister for his pledge to set out the Government’s proposals for covering these other dimensions soon.

The Bill provides for maternity leave to enable a Minister to return to their responsibilities six months later. Such continuity offers an excellent principle for good government; it takes most Ministers a year or more to master the full complexities of their portfolio. Yet we now have a Cabinet almost none of whose members has held office for much more than a year. The current Attorney-General is the third to hold that office since 2015. She sits alongside the fourth Foreign Secretary, the fourth Chancellor and the fourth Secretary of State for Education, and the fifth Business Secretary, since 2015—and now there are rumours of a coming reshuffle. Will the Minister tell us whether his Government intend to allow Ministers to stay in their posts long enough to expect to return from six months’ leave to the same office? Ministerial churn at a rate of nine to 18 months per office is the opposite of good governance.

But my most fundamental criticism is that this is the only constitutionally relevant Bill that we have so far seen in this Parliament, apart from those on Brexit. The Prime Minister promised in the 2019 manifesto that

“After Brexit we also need to look at the broader aspects of our constitution”.


That commitment was widely welcomed across the political spectrum; think tanks even held meetings to discuss what this broad agenda should include. Instead, in the past year the Government have sacked senior civil servants, broken the Ministerial Code, disregarded the recommendation of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, attacked the Electoral Commission, strengthened the Executive at the expense of Parliament, and bypassed democratic local authorities in handling the pandemic. The constitution commission which the Government promised to set up in less than 12 months from the election has been shelved. The Minister has defended this slide from the manifesto commitment without hesitation. He has repeatedly told us that Conservative victory in last December’s election represented the “will of the people”, on 43.5% of the electorate. He has defended behaviour from this Government that John Major—whom he served—would never have contemplated as Prime Minister.

We have watched the US Republican Party slide away from constitutional democracy towards pluto-populism—rich men claiming to represent the will of the people, while breaking the spirit and the letter of constitutional democracy. We see the beginnings of a similar slide here. That is why we need to hold the Government to the manifesto commitment they want to forget.

While I welcome this Bill, I encourage colleagues across the House to hold the Government to account on their neglect of larger constitutional issues, not least because the relationship between England, Scotland and Northern Ireland has been shaken by Brexit, and will not be resolved without further constitutional changes.

Constitution, Democracy and Human Rights Commission

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I have said that the Government are delivering the commitment in the manifesto to look at the broader aspects of the constitution in a range of separate workstreams. Obviously, this and others to be announced in due course will all reflect what the noble Baroness has said and what I have said—indeed, that is the case for those reviews that have been set up already and the cross-party Joint Committee that is looking at the FTPA.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I wish to repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Young, said in his opening question, which is that any constitutional reform needs to have broad-based support that inspires public confidence. How do the Conservative Party and its associated right-wing think tanks, eating the elephant in chunks and bending the conventions of the constitution in the way that it has in the last year, begin to deal with public alienation from politics and holding the union of Great Britain together?

[Lord True (Con)]

I think that on reflection the noble Lord will think that he does a disservice to those serving on the Independent Review of Administrative Law, those reviewing under Sir Peter Gross the operation of the Human Rights Act and indeed Members of both Houses on the Joint Committee when he characterises them in that way.

Elections: May 2021

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, I certainly assure the noble Baroness that the Government believe that safe and secure elections are the cornerstone of any democracy. The law is that these elections should go ahead on this date. The Prime Minister said that all matters are always under review, as they are in a pandemic. People then seemed to ride away and say that that was an indication that they would be postponed, but, as the Minister for the Constitution said in the other place yesterday, a very high bar would have to be set to not proceed with these elections. As far as her comments about returning officers, they obviously look at polling stations, but I will take note of the points the noble Baroness made. Certainly, voting should be easy.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

I hope I can get the Minister to add that local democracy is absolutely part of the foundation to any effective constitutional democracy, which is one of the reasons why we have to be very careful about postponing these elections further. I thank the Minister for the Statement and I thank Bradford Council for the very extensive briefing it gave me this morning on the difficulties. Can the Minister assure us that, since elections are so fundamental to democracy, as such, any decision will be taken not by the Government alone but in full consultation with all other parties contesting the elections? Given the difficulty of campaigning under current circumstances, will the Government be prepared to consider providing, for example, two pieces of free post to every nominated candidate, to make sure that parties which have more easy access to funds do not get disproportionate benefits from being able to pay for post?

[Lord True (Con)]

As the noble Lord knew I would, I thoroughly endorse the first remark he made. I believe local democracy is the cornerstone, and I wish that were more widely recognised. The Government will continue to engage with political parties to ensure that people are able to campaign safely and securely and to secure information. As far as his specific proposal is concerned, I will certainly make sure that that is fed into consideration.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that Britain’s democracy presently has many problems with public alienation and that we need democratic renewal. But leaving the European Union neither restores nor respects the sovereignty of Parliament. To add to the list of wildly misleading promises about Brexit, which have fed public alienation, Michael Gove’s assertion on 26 December that the agreement and its implementation will establish

“a special relationship… between sovereign equals”,

linking the UK to the EU, is a whopper.

Our special relationship with the United States is of course an unequal one, in which the USA matters far more to Britain than we do to them. We allow American bases within the UK to operate without parliamentary scrutiny. We embed British officers in US commands. Within the EU for 40 years we shared foreign policy co-operation with our partners. Indeed, the whole framework of European foreign policy co-operation was constructed under British leadership, from Jim Callaghan to Lord Carrington to Geoffrey Howe. The EU offered to maintain that relationship. Theresa May’s Government agreed to do so. It was Boris Johnson who preferred the illusion of sovereignty and who has thrown away the European foundations of any British global role.

This Bill, and the agreement it transposes into domestic law, commits us to continuing negotiations across a very wide range of issues, in which the UK will be the dependent partner. I mention two issues only out of the many that remain unresolved. The issues of data access, and the adequacy of data protection, are vital to the future of our economy. Three-quarters of UK data exchanges flow between here and the European continent. Sovereign independence on data regulation for the UK is not on offer; our choice is between closer alignment with American or European regulation. We will pursue the Government on this.

Mutual recognition for cultural professionals, musicians, actors and artists is left out of the agreement, as has already been mentioned. I declare an interest as a trustee of the VOCES8 Foundation. Many of us will seek written assurance from the Government that mutual recognition will be negotiated.

Lastly, I query the territorial extent clause of this Bill. This Government have pledged to “take back control” of UK sovereignty. Yet the Crown dependencies and overseas territories—the offshore havens that benefit from British sovereignty but avoid many of its obligations —are left outside. These are of course sources of large donations to Conservative groups and right-wing think tanks, and the headquarters of companies that win public procurement contracts. It is a deceit on the British people to proclaim total sovereignty against the EU but to permit British possessions exemptions from the obligations of sovereignty. This too we will pursue further.

UK-EU Future Relationship Negotiations and Transition Period

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, we are all working to get a deal but the only deal that is possible is one that is compatible with our sovereignty and takes back control of our laws, trade and waters. Although an agreement is preferable, we are prepared to leave on so-called Australia-style terms. People and businesses must prepare for the changes that coming on 31 December, most of which relate to our departure from the EU single market and customs union, not the outcome of the talks.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, references to Australia and Canada deny the geography, which is that we must retain close relations across the board with our neighbours whether we are in the EU or outside it. Does the Minister have a response to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hague, in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph? He said that no deal with our European neighbours would

“create the biggest crisis in our relations for more than a century.”

[Lord True (Con)]

I repeat: we are seeking a deal. As the Prime Minister said a few minutes ago, hope springs eternal. There are significant differences. I do not agree that there would be a crisis that could not be surmounted by the British people.

Ministerial Code

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I would not characterise it in that particular way. The Prime Minister concluded in this case that the Ministerial Code was not breached. There was a prior case in 2012 when there was a finding that the code had been breached and the Minister also remained in office.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, has the Minister read the lecture given by the noble Lord, Lord Evans, to the Institute of Business Ethics on 11 November? The noble Lord commented that

“too many in public life, including some in our political leadership, are choosing to disregard the norms of ethics and propriety that have explicitly governed public life for the last 25 years, and … when contraventions of ethical standards occur, nothing happens.”

Does the Minister agree?

[Lord True (Con)]

No, my Lords, I do not agree, because I do not consider that that generalised charge against people in public service is justified. I find high standards of probity among the colleagues I work with and among the people I have had the honour of opposing in the past when they were in government.

Public Procurement (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this is the third version of a public procurement EU transition SI since January 2019. Later this afternoon, we will be dealing with the third version of a parallel exit SI on data transparency. My colleagues tell me that they have also been responding to the third version of a whole succession of EU exit SIs in many other areas. This looks like indecision and incompetence across government, with Ministers failing to provide clear direction to their officials or to decide what the hard detail of our future relationship with the EU will be.

The impression of confusion and indecision is heightened by the references in the Explanatory Memorandum to the not yet enacted Trade Bill, which means, as has been explained, that there will be an unavoidable gap in the legislative framework from 1 January. As the Minister knows, the delays to the passage of the Trade Bill are due to government hesitation, not parliamentary obstruction. We are now well over four years since the EU referendum and two years since the passage of the withdrawal Act. I can easily imagine the scorn that Conservatives in opposition would be expressing about any other Government that had drifted like this.

We are also being asked to approve this SI without having certainty about the nature of the UK’s future relationship with the EU. Can the Minister explain what differences in the applicability of this SI will follow from the absence of any deal with the EU, rather than a continuing legal framework for our relationship? Will UK companies and service providers retain any rights to compete for public procurement contracts within the EU in the event of a breakdown in relations? Will they retain such rights if there is some sort of minimalist deal?

In this case, an instrument that refers repeatedly to previous amendments and to the further amendments now proposed is deeply obscure, and will no doubt provide good fees for lawyers as they struggle to interpret it. Worse, it includes repeated phrases such as, “The Minister for the Cabinet Office may make further regulations”—combining legislative complexity with excessive executive powers.

I note that the SI provides for

“the continued application of the general principles of Union law applicable to the award of public contracts”.

That is very sensible, since the principles of Union law on public procurement were negotiated by UK Ministers and officials under previous Conservative Governments, including when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. But that of course does not fit in with the absolutist definition of sovereignty that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, now expounds every week. There are continuing international obligations, as the SI recognises, which cannot easily be ignored when the UK Government wish.

I also note that the intention in this SI

“is to treat non-UK economic operators on a level playing field.”

That is also an abrogation of UK sovereignty, of course. Are we refusing to accept the concept of a level playing field in our future relations with other European states but reasserting it in our relations with contractors from Turkey, the Middle East and China?

The SI also touches on delicate questions about the relevance of international agreements in environmental, social and labour law. The EU is moving ahead in developing policies on how to include calculation of the embedded carbon in imported goods and international contracts. Will this also be a factor in calculating the value of bids for UK public procurement from foreign contractors? And on “social value”, will the Government take into account the political, labour and social conditions that contractors tolerate in their own home countries?

Several noble Lords have mentioned recent concern about public procurement by this Government. That raises wider questions about the outsourcing of public services and the management of public procurement. On another occasion, we must debate the contracts awarded without open competition to contractors linked to the Conservative Party through personal links or donations, or to overseas companies without relevant expertise or experience.

I was particularly struck by the award of one of the first test and trace contracts—

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but we will have to move on. There is a three-minute time limit.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

I think that I have six minutes.

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

I apologise.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

I was particularly struck by the award of one of the first test and trace contracts to a multinational company with its headquarters in Miami to manage a service that self-evidently depended on detailed local knowledge within England. But there have been many other surprising awards, which demand further scrutiny.

I have one last question, on which the Minister may wish to write to me. These SIs frequently refer to the United Kingdom and Gibraltar but rarely, or never, to the UK and the Crown dependencies, which of course were not members of the EU. I note that companies headquartered in Jersey or Guernsey are frequently awarded UK government contracts. Are UK companies also guaranteed a level playing field in return? Do the Crown dependencies follow and observe UK practice in this field? If not, should the UK Government not take back control of that aspect of British sovereignty?