EU: Trade and Security Partnership
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]
My Lords, the February document that the Government published on the future relationship included a chapter on digital services that sets out that we need to
“encourage regulatory cooperation and a strategic dialogue on emerging technologies”.
I could not find this in the items for discussion in the fourth round of negotiations, nor does any progress seem to have been made on it. Are the Government hoping that we will continue to have regulatory co-operation in this very important emerging industry? As a fallback position, are they discussing with the Americans whether we will converge on American data regulation rather than European regulations if these negotiations break down?
Lord True [V]
My Lords, the noble Lord is right: there is an international dimension to these questions. We expect foreign policy co-operation broadly to be substantial with the EU, as it is with many of our international partners, but we do not think that an institutional framework is necessary to deliver it.
EU: Plans for No Deal
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, I read with great interest your Lordships’ report on the Northern Ireland protocol. I do not agree with every judgment in it, but it was very valuable and the Government will make a response in due course. I said—I think when I answered the noble Baroness on a previous occasion—that a business engagement forum in Northern Ireland is imminent. A process of engagement with business across the country is of great importance, is ongoing and will be intensified.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Minister in his first Answer said that we are negotiating on the basis of the agreement reached last October. Earlier this year, we had a number of authoritative briefings, presumably from No. 10, to say that the decisive result of last December’s general election in effect sidelined the political declaration and that we were now negotiating on what the Minister also described as a more minimalist arrangement. The political declaration talked about an “overarching” framework and a continuing security, foreign policy and defence relationship, which is a great deal more than Canada or Australia. Have we now abandoned the political declaration, or are we still, as the European Commission would like, negotiating on the basis of that agreement?
Lord True
My Lords, we have put into law a withdrawal agreement, including the NI protocol, and that is the basis of our continuing policy. The Government have published a number of documents which have been laid before your Lordships’ House on our approach to negotiations and, most recently, on the Northern Ireland protocol. That is the basis on which we are proceeding, in good faith and hope.
Census (England and Wales) Order 2020
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, both here and in the Commons, there have been some powerful speeches on the inclusion of questions on Cornish identity and Sikh ethnicity, so I need do no more than express my sympathy and support for the cases that have been made. We are moving towards a country of complex and multiple identities, not easily represented by our two-party and first-past-the-post system—but that is an issue for a different debate. I mark in passing that a strong sense of Yorkshire identity is entirely absent from the questionnaire. We face a Conservative Government who resist any recognition of Yorkshire identity in how they approach devolution in Yorkshire, which is to city regions rather than to Yorkshire as a whole, as all our local authorities have stressed.
We are a much more complex society. As the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, remarked, our local authorities often know this about languages and ethnic groups in much more detail than do our national Government. That leads me on to the relationship between local and national data. I am struck by how the Government have approached the pandemic by neglecting the skills and resources of our local authorities, going to outside private contractors for testing and other things rather than reinforcing the strengths of our local authorities.
The Minister said in opening that we should make greater use of data already held by government. A great deal of very useful data is held by our local authorities. As we consider the future of the census, we need to take further the question of how we feed in and out of different government agencies the data which they hold separately, and the safeguards that data mining and data analysis need therefore to have.
There is of course the difficult question, which we will come back to later, of why electoral registration is held separately from other forms of establishing where our citizens live and who they are. Every British citizen and long-term resident should be on the electoral register.
I welcome the statement in the Conservative manifesto last year that:
“We will improve the use of data, data science and evidence in the process of government.”
That is a highly desirable idea, although reading Dominic Cummings’s blog over the years and looking at the antics of what one has to call the Warner brothers, Ben and Marc—one of them in No. 10 and the other working for an outside company which has apparently some very privileged relationships with the Government—I think that we clearly need greater transparency as to what exactly is going on within government as we move through the digital transformation.
I thank the Minister for offering me the opportunity to talk to the Office for National Statistics on my own. However, it would be much more valuable to use the real expertise on the digital transformation that there is on all Benches in the House, and invite us for a number of briefings on how the Government plan to expand and improve their use of data, how the future census may or may not fit in with that, and how they will build in the safeguards which we will need. To comment on what the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, said, the question of data transparency as well of data ownership is an important part of that. I note that in Sweden, for example, the degree of transparency on tax returns is a great deal higher than in Britain, which apparently has a markedly positive effect on not paying some people too much money.
The Minister also talked about the need to maintain the security and secrecy of people’s personal data. That is highly desirable—we certainly need to improve the safeguards on that—but citizens sometimes need to demonstrate to government their entitlement, presence and records. The Windrush scandal, for example, was entirely unnecessary. All those people had, within other agencies of government, records that they had been living in Britain for some time: their tax returns, national insurance records, and in many cases their driving licence. The Home Office did not attempt to look at the metadata to establish whether there were records for those people before it attempted to deport many of them. That is another major issue to which we need to return.
We certainly wish to look at the wider issues here. We were promised last year that the Government would publish a White Paper on their data strategy before the end of 2020. I understand that this has now slipped several months behind schedule because officials have been detached to deal first with the threat of a no-deal Brexit and now with the coronavirus pandemic. This offers opportunities in digital transformation for improving the quality of government policy but also risks individual privacy and liberty. Can the Minister assure us that the Government will do their utmost to carry Parliament and the public with them as they move forward, and that regular briefings for parliamentarians on what is planned and whether a further census should be held in 2031 should be part of building and maintaining public trust?
Beyond this, I simply add that the quality of the data the census provides will depend on how well it manages to record marginal communities and individuals: recent migrants, the homeless, and elderly people living alone. I hope that the Minister will also assure us that the Government will target resources on such groups, who are the least likely to know how to go online or voluntarily and patiently to fill in a long and complicated form on their own.
Beyond Brexit (European Union Committee Report)
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I hope that the Minister can give us some evidence that the Government are concerned to win friends in Europe now that we have left the EU. February’s white paper on the future relationship with the EU left out the references to last October’s political declaration agreeing to an
“overarching institutional framework … for ambitious, close and lasting cooperation”
in foreign policy and defence, cybersecurity, civil protection and health security. I note the unwise omission, in February, of co-operation in health security. Now, the protection of national sovereignty overrides questions of national interests and how we might promote national interests through co-operation.
The declared intention is to turn away from Europe. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 3 February that:
“We are free to reinvigorate our ties with old allies”,—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/20; col. 25.]
as if EU membership had cut us off from other partners. We are leaving behind our oldest ally in the EU, Portugal, and we are leaving France, with which we now share a significant military deployment in Saharan Africa which the Government have told Parliament little about so far. We are putting political and economic relations with the United States first and foremost, even though we differ from Washington on an increasing number of important global issues.
This Government have no foreign policy. Beneath the empty phrase “global Britain” are buried illusions about a buccaneering Britain in a free-trading world, released from the shackles of a declining Europe. The current Foreign Secretary has made no attempt to build friendly bilateral relations with our European neighbours, nor has the Prime Minister. But the long history of British foreign policy has been centred on conflict and co-operation with our European neighbours. Now, 120 years after the Marquess of Salisbury stepped down as Conservative Prime Minister, splendid isolation is back.
Budget: Economic and Fiscal Outlook
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, in last year’s debate on the government statement on economic convergence, my noble friend Lady Kramer said that it was “surreal” to debate the EU framework when the UK was leaving the EU. This year’s debate is far more surreal: we have now left; Boris Johnson has hardened the terms for a new economic relationship; it looks increasingly possible that no agreement will be reached; and the pandemic has disrupted the world economy.
Statements about the UK economy made before the end of February are no longer valid. The OBR warned that the projections it offered would be invalidated if Covid-19 affected Britain severely. Well, since then it has. The Treasury has abandoned its commitment to fiscal restraint—rightly, given the gravity of our situation. None of the statements we are considering placed much emphasis on the UK’s structural trade deficit or the impact on our economy of a further fall in our exchange rate. The collapse of our negotiations with the EU would worsen both.
The four priority states with which the Government hope to sign free trade agreements to compensate for the anticipated decline in trade with our immediate neighbours are the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand? At present, 0.2% of Britain’s exports flow to the 5 million New Zealanders. If we were to double our exports to New Zealand every year for the next five years, that would still leave us exporting less to them than we already do to Poland, Norway or Sweden—countries with which we will find it more difficult to trade in 2021. Is that a rational trade strategy?
Michael Gove has just announced a “customs academy” to train the extra 50,000 staff who will be needed to handle Britain’s trade with the EU after we have crashed out. So much for Vote Leave’s promises that leaving the EU would reduce the burdens on business.
In recent weeks, the Government have rediscovered respect for experts and evidence—at least on health, disease and epidemics—which Ministers from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove down had rubbished. On the economy, the Prime Minister and many of his advisers are still in a fantasy world. Iain Martin, in last Friday’s Times, even resurrected the Singapore-on-Thames illusion that a no-deal Britain could flourish as a service economy, without an important manufacturing sector.
We will not emerge successfully from this acute economic and social crisis unless our Government reconsider their priorities for our domestic economy and trading partners and carry the country with them as they rebuild. So far, I see little sign that they will do so.
Public Services: Update
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating yesterday’s Statement. He will know that we share the Government’s aim to save lives and rebuild our economy and well-being. In this context, there is much in the Statement that we applaud, particularly its acknowledgment of the role of volunteers, the health service, food growers and retailers, pharmacists, care workers, educators, charities, the police and the military. I would also add the BBC and indeed Ministers and civil servants, who have had to respond to previously unimaginable demands.
Unlike anything we have ever seen, this crisis has literally involved every single one of us. It is a national challenge like no other. We therefore have a population who are part and parcel of the country’s response and, in return, we owe it to them to be honest and transparent about the risks, the difficult trade-offs, the certainties and uncertainties, the data, and what the Government are actually doing, and planning to do. The Prime Minister, on his return to Downing Street from Chequers, pledged to act with “maximum possible transparency”. We therefore hope that we will soon have reliable data on the rate of BAME infections and deaths—an issue of major concern to our Caribbean and Asian communities.
We very much welcome that, from today, the statistics will include deaths in care homes and in the community, as well as those in hospitals. This is right in itself, but it is particularly important because of the numbers involved—perhaps 19,000 Covid-related deaths; a near tripling of the number of deaths in care homes over three weeks—and because of the failure to ensure that these people in society’s care, and the staff who look after them, were properly protected with equipment and testing. This is no time to look backwards and consider why that was, but it is time to look forward and ensure that the situation is remedied. This is especially true as it looks as if the UK’s overall coronavirus death rate could outstrip that of Italy, France and Spain, and may even be the highest in Europe.
We need the Government to take all necessary steps, and that includes heeding the very wise words “to underpromise and overdeliver, rather than overpromise and underdeliver”—as we saw, I am afraid, with PPE and testing. The Cabinet Office has a key role in this, not just on procurement, as mentioned quite rightly by the Minister, but on cross-departmental working and liaison, ensuring that lessons are learned as speedily as they are in the medical world, where advances in treatment of the virus in one week are disseminated around the health service profession by the following Monday. The Cabinet Office has a similar role in ensuring that everyone knows the lessons being learned elsewhere.
The Cabinet Office also has a role to ensure that all our citizens are fully informed about what is happening and what is being discussed. In that context, could the Minister explain why, if the Welsh, Scottish and indeed other Governments can ensure that signers are available and on-screen in daily press conferences, somehow No. 10 cannot quite arrange this? It can easily be done at a distance and so not break social distancing rules. Our deaf communities feel very strongly that they are being excluded from daily updates.
Going forward, plans to test and trace will affect all sectors of society, including those with a disability, and we will need every agency to help inform, encourage, test, safeguard and trace. That is a real cross-government task, involving local government, devolved authorities, charities—especially those working with the vulnerable—service providers, civic society, businesses and trade unions.
Until now, there have been some forgotten groups in all this, such as those who receive care in their own homes and domiciliary care staff. All these people must get the PPE that they need, and social care must be properly funded to deal with the extra costs of the pandemic.
These are some of the “here and now” issues, but we also need a viable and sustainable national recovery plan, which I assume will be Cabinet Office-led. For these next decisions, involvement across the piece is needed, not simply to help craft those plans, but to ensure that businesses, schools and other organisations have time to prepare, such that the infection rates do not increase again. Transparency and consultation will be vital, so will the Government publish their next- steps framework?
We stand ready to help—it is in the national interest—to ensure that the NHS, public services, businesses, workers, families and communities recover and become more resilient. But we need to understand, and contribute to, the Government’s thinking, so we ask that there is that involvement. Will the Government agree to hold talks with teachers, trade unions, businesses, charities and local authorities on how their forward strategy can be developed and implemented to rebuild the economy and jobs?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
I, too, welcome this Statement and the remarkable change of tone it contains about public sector workers used by Conservative Ministers and advisers until a few weeks ago. Last December’s Conservative manifesto, and even more the writings of Conservative advisers such as Dominic Cummings and Rachel Wolf, condemned the Civil Service as “incompetent” and wasteful, as ignorant about science and looking after their own interests rather than the public as a whole.
Happily, Ministers have now realised that civil servants and others across the public sector believe in the concept of public service, which right-wing libertarians and public choice economists have rubbished for so long. Across our entire public service, from the NHS to the police and military to Whitehall and local authorities, we have seen people rising to the challenge, moving jobs to help others, and working all hours. Many of them, we should also recognise, are far more modestly paid than their equivalents in the private sector, but they have shown their commitment and their loyalty to the communities they serve.
I am glad to see the reference to local resilience forums, and the recognition that this is a series of local crises across the country as well as a national crisis. I hope that this will persuade the Government to reverse their marginalisation of local authorities and to recognise the vital contribution that effective local government makes to a thriving democracy. I was struck when I read the section on democracy and political reform in last December’s Conservative manifesto that it contained no reference at all to local democracy. I hope that the Minister will argue for its inclusion in the agenda for the constitution, democracy and human rights commission which the Government have promised to set up this year.
The Statement expresses gratitude to
“to colleagues from the devolved Administrations for their participation and their constructive contributions to all our discussions. Those discussions have helped us to understand how the virus has affected every part of our United Kingdom.”
Can the Minister tell the House how the Government have ensured that they have understood the impact on every part of the UK, given that the large majority of the UK’s population lives in England and that there appears to have been no visible mechanism for consultation with the English regions or even with the city mayors from outside London?
The Minister mentioned that the military has now been brought in to help out with logistics but also with expanding testing for the virus. The Statement does not explain why the initial programme of testing was contracted out to a large private consultancy firm: a contract which, the Daily Telegraph has reported, was awarded without the normal tendering process. Was that because of an instinctive Conservative assumption that the private sector is always better than the public sector? The underutilisation of the first testing centres, reported and repeated difficulties with the booking system, and the apparent assumption that all care and health workers had access to their own cars and had time to drive up to 50 miles to be tested all show this to have been one of the weakest aspects of the response to the epidemic. I am glad that the military have now been brought in to expand testing. Why were they not brought in at the outset? My own experience in government, dealing with the digitisation of Whitehall, suggested that outside consultancies often charge more and deliver less.
The Statement refers also to the redeployment of a large number of civil servants across Whitehall to cope with the crisis. What other tasks of government have had to be put on hold as a result? I understand, for example, that the Government’s promised White Paper on data strategy, for which the Minister is responsible to the Lords, is now several months behind schedule, since officials had been transferred; first, to help with preparation for Brexit and now to respond to the epidemic. I understand that officials working on the Brexit negotiations have also been redeployed in response to the epidemic. Will the Minister commit to informing the House in the near future whether the team negotiating Brexit is still sufficiently staffed to handle the complex negotiations that we are engaged in or whether the demands of this emergency will enforce a change of pace if we are to avoid confusion or failure?
Finally, I welcome very warmly the Government’s tribute to
“the stoicism and steadfastness, the hard work and heroism, the compassion and commitment of those working at the front line of public service.”
We all make that tribute, and long may the Government’s change of tone continue.
Lord True
My Lords, perhaps I may begin by congratulating the Prime Minister and Carrie Symonds on the birth of their son. It is a story of movement from near death to new life in a few weeks. I am sure that that is what we all avidly pray for for this economy and this nation as we look ahead to a way out of this crisis and to new hope.
I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their responses to the Statement and the constructive way in which they put forward their points of view, many of which I share. I endorse their admiration for all that is being done in the NHS, social care, the public services and the private sector in the face of this crisis. Naturally, I add my own respect and prayers for those people and their families who have given, literally, all they had to give. None of us, as the nation showed at 11 o’clock yesterday, will forget them.
Everyone across the land, which includes central government and, yes, local government, is doing the best they can, as fast as they can, and the most they can in these difficult times. As the noble Baroness said, there has been an extraordinary response from the public in the coming-together across the land, and long may it last.
We must not forget that some remarkable things have been achieved. I acknowledge to both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that there have also been things that have not gone as well in every detail as all would hope. I think that it was General Moltke who said that no plan extends with certainty beyond first contact with the main force of the enemy, and Covid is a new, hidden, mutable and invisible enemy with characteristics not met before. However, I assure the House that the Government and all their agencies are working night and day to ensure that our front-line health and social care staff have the equipment they need to tackle this virus, and we have delivered more than 1,000 million items of PPE since the outbreak began, including 36 million to care homes.
I agree with the noble Baroness that transparency is important. As she acknowledged, we are moving today to bring together the different strands of statistics in relation to care homes, which will give full and proper transparency on that. Her point on BAME is very important. Work on that is under way, as the scientists have said at the daily briefings. I cannot give her a date for an outcome to the work.
Care homes are obviously a sector of enormous importance, and they have been of concern to the Government all the way through. As I have said, 36 million items of PPE have already been delivered to care homes, but it is a vulnerable section of the community where I acknowledge the need always to strive to do better.
On communications, I will take up the noble Baroness’s point; I understand it very well. I acknowledge her point on the need for the broadest co-operation if and when we move into test and trace. On publishing frameworks, I think that the noble Baroness and the House know that the Government’s position is that we have first to keep on with the effort that that public are making to contain this virus and to meet the five tests before we move forward to any release from the current lockdown provisions. As the Prime Minister acknowledged when he came back to work, over the next few days, the Government will continue to examine carefully all these issues.
On the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, I do not need any reminder of the need to commend the Civil Service. I have always had the highest respect for it and have worked with it through my life. The ideal of public service is one that I personally consider to be of the highest importance, and it is something to which I have always aspired. I assure the noble Lord that that is shared widely, if not universally, across the Government. On the importance of local authorities, I referred to the local resilience fora. Local authorities are making a great contribution. We will continue to work to improve and maintain communications with them and with agencies right across England, as the noble Lord rightly said.
I welcome what the noble Lord said about the military. Its role has been extraordinary. The Armed Forces have made a great difference and perhaps have not had as much attention in the media as they might have done, but I was grateful for what he said on that score.
So far as the redeployment of civil servants and the delay of business is concerned, there has been an impact on some aspects of government business, of course. It is right that full priority should be given to confronting this crisis, but on the noble Lord’s concerns about the negotiations towards the transition on 31 December, I assure him that a very effective team with a large number of civil servants is at work there, as was said in the recent Statement. Indeed, if he read Monsieur Barnier’s statement, he will have seen how Monsieur Barnier himself commented on the professionalism of David Frost and his team in carrying forward those negotiations. I believe that we can have confidence in that.
I hope that I have answered most of the points made. If not, I will write to noble Lords.
European Union: Future Relationship
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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The Lord Speaker
I call the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley. No? I call the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, then. No? Then I call the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, seven months ago the Government presented to Parliament the political declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship which did not talk about a free trade area, but rather about,
“an ambitious broad, deep and flexible partnership”
including
“foreign policy, security and defence and wider areas of co-operation.”
The paper presented to us by the Government in February set out a much narrower free trade agreement, as the Minister has just said. It says nothing about a wider partnership. Should we now accept that the declaration made last October is no longer a reference point for the Government’s negotiations?
Ministerial Code
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, many years ago, when I was a graduate student teacher at an American university, I used to discuss with the students the differences between the British and American constitutions. The American constitution is based on the idea that you cannot entirely trust people in power; you need a carefully written constitution and checks and balances to prevent the unconstrained power of the Executive going too far. It has advantages and disadvantages; sometimes it leads to policy not getting through or even to complete deadlock.
Our system is based on a much more flexible unwritten constitution and what the noble Lord, Lord Young, has called on more than one occasion the “honour code”: that people will behave well in British politics, that the conventions will be respected and that the mechanisms which hold the British establishment together and exclude those who do not accept its rules ensure that people do not behave badly. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has called it the “good chaps theory”. The Lords plays a certain role in this as a backup against the popular House being swept away by a surge of populist enthusiasm; successive Marquesses of Salisbury made many speeches about the quiet, calm deliberation that the Lords could bring to British politics.
Part of our unwritten constitution was the relationship between Ministers and officials. It is not only a British aspect; Max Weber once wrote that the difference between politics and administration is that politics is the realm of campaigning, emotions and principle while administration is the realm of reason, evidence and advice. That is an unavoidable tension, made even more difficult when ministerial turnover in Britain is so extraordinarily high, as it has been in the last few years. Officials have to try to keep the show on the road as Ministers pass through every six, nine or 12 months.
That consensus has clearly broken down. The current Cabinet has two Members—one being the Prime Minister—who have broken the Ministerial Code. Indeed, the Prime Minister broke it in three places when he resigned as Foreign Secretary, extending that by continuing to live in his official residence for a further three weeks. In December 2018 the Committee on Standards in the Commons rebuked him for a “casual failure to declare” £52,000 of expenses. Even old Etonians nowadays do not entirely obey the codes of political and social life.
We have a Government who present themselves as insurgent and anti-establishment. Indeed, they often present the establishment, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord True, approves of, as the “liberal elite.” We have a Government who occasionally describe themselves as post-liberal and even suggest that they have some sympathy with those who have an illiberal approach to democracy. I found the deeply partisan responses to the resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam in the Commons very worrying. There was neither a sense that one had to think about the national interest as a whole nor a recognition that politics and campaigning are different from carrying on the complex problems of government.
The will of the people may establish the principle that we should leave the European Union but it cannot decide whether we should leave the European Aviation Safety Agency or the European medical emergency alert process. That is government; it is complicated and needs officials. Therefore, we need to reconsider some of these fundamental issues. I hope the Minister will say something about the Government’s plans for the commission they have promised to hold on the constitution and democracy, so that we can discuss how to adapt our flexible rules and honour codes to a less British-establishment style of politics—which is what we have now achieved—and how the relationship between Ministers and officials, which is at the heart of that, works in a constitution that we do not want to be on the American scale of constitutional restraints, but which we clearly need to revise.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, many of whose thoughtful remarks struck a chord not only with the House in general but with me. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for giving us this further opportunity to debate the Ministerial Code. I have been a Minister for less than a month; in that time, I have signed the Ministerial Code and responded three times to your Lordships on this subject. I am therefore left in little doubt that it is a matter of importance and one in which your Lordships, quite rightly, take a great interest from a position of great experience.
I will try to answer as many questions as possible that have quite reasonably been raised in the debate, but perhaps I might offer a preface. Here I echo some of the comments made by a number of those who have spoken. We must strive to secure good governance, which means that Ministers and officials work well and harmoniously together. That is the aim of effective administration, and it is from that sense of a shared objective that good decisions and implementation should follow.
I was there in 1992 when Prime Minister Major agreed to publish the Questions of Procedure for Ministers. I suspect that some of us on the political side probably gave similar advice to the noble Lord. However, we must not overdramatise; we must recognise the issues that we have to address, some of which have been raised in this debate. In general, however, the quality of governance in this country—I do not accept, as some noble Lords put forward, that a dramatic new kind of cowboy Administration have come in—and the standards are extraordinarily high, and we do not serve good governance by denying that or overdramatising the situation. I was asked whether I wanted to defend the indefensible: I do not think that I am defending the indefensible when I say that governance generally operates well, and the Ministerial Code is part of that.
When an Administration change and when a new Prime Minister comes in, it has always been the case that there is a challenge. I remember talking to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, two days before the change of administration in 1997, saying to him, “Here you are at this stage of your career; a change of Government will present a great career challenge.” The noble Lord quite rightly relished that. Of course, we all know that history proved that a new Government came in and I am sure that the Conservatives said some of the same things about the incoming Blair Government as are being said today.
That takes me directly to the point made about the position of Mr Cummings and his authority. The cases of Alistair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, who were given direct authority over officials in 1997, is not analogous. Following the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, to which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred—I thank him for his work on that—the position of special advisers was put on a statutory basis, and Mr Cummings’s role is governed by that Act.
Turning to some of the other points that were made, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said about balance and degree. That is inherent in what I just said about not exaggerating the degree of the problem. Every case and every serious allegation that is made must be subject to a testing of the facts. That is the way things are going on currently, which has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords. That must always be the case. In any judgment, at the end of the day—I do not refer to this particular case; I refer to any judgment—an element of degree must always come into it, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said.
My noble friend Lord Young asked me a series of questions, some of which he was kind enough to give me notice of, so I will try to answer one or two of them. As far as training is concerned—this issue was raised by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, at the start—all Lords Ministers have done the Valuing Everyone course or have slots booked to do it. I have done it myself and agree that it is a very valuable and important course; I would encourage everyone to undertake it. There is quite a queue to take the course in this large House, as noble Lords can imagine, but I assure noble Lords that this training is being given. It is vital that all parties in both Houses continue to encourage completion of that training.
On the case of Ms Khan, I cannot comment because it is subject to litigation. I hope that the noble Lord will understand; he has put his point on the record and I am sure that that is there for people to see.
On the point about a story in the Daily Mail, it may surprise some noble Lords in this House that I do not believe everything I read in that paper. I am particularly surprised that my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham is such an aficionado of the Daily Mail, but one lives and learns. I am aware of no such contract. The advice I am given is that Mr Cummings is a special adviser and subject to the special adviser code of conduct.
As far as contractors are concerned—I was away for a week when Mr Sabisky was enjoying his career in government—contractors are subject to the Civil Service code of principles, but again it would be inappropriate for me to comment on a particular vetting status or contractual arrangement applying to an individual. I hope that I have answered, or at least responded to, most of the points that my noble friend made.
The noble Lord, Lord McNally, raised the issue of ministerial training and I have sought to respond to that. On the question of the employment of special advisers, I thought we were discussing the Ministerial Code but I will always try to assist your Lordships. On special advisers, the point has been made that, as set out in the 2010 Act, they are selected for appointment by Ministers, and Ministers are ultimately responsible. However, all appointments must be approved by the Prime Minister, and it is inherent in that that the Prime Minister has a role in ensuring that special advisers are appropriate to their appointment and are conducting their activities appropriately. I see nothing particularly sinister in that.
My noble friend Lady Finn made some strong and powerful points, and I am sure that everyone who heard them will reflect on them. I said earlier in my remarks that I think there is a shared challenge in making good governance work. Sometimes there will be robust exchanges and sometimes friendly ones. When a Government come in with a new approach and a new mandate, or are refreshed by a general election, of course it is incumbent on the system to seek to implement in the most expeditious and effective way what that would-be Government have promised to the people.
Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I am not afraid of using the word “people” because ultimately it is from a popular mandate that a Government’s authority arises. It is always interesting to hear a Liberal criticising insurgency; I thought that the beauty of the Liberal Party was that it had always been insurgent.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I was talking about Conservatives describing themselves as insurgents. I always thought that the Conservative Party was the establishment. It is a matter of puzzlement that we have so many Conservatives now describing themselves as the anti-establishment.
Lord True
I will not ensure that Hansard records that remark from a seated position; I would not like to think that anyone would think that of me.
With regard to reviewing the code, my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth pointed out in a very authoritative speech the progress of the code over time. It is periodically reviewed, and Mr Johnson recently published an update in August. Ultimately it is not for me to say; it is for the Prime Minister if he or she wishes to make a change, but it has recently been revised and reviewed. I believe that the Ministerial Code is strong. It is subject to review and an assistance to good government—
Ministerial Code: Breaches
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, in answer to the second question, any Minister holds office at the wish of the Prime Minister and if he considers, in the case of any Minister on any subject, that that Minister is not performing, that Minister will be subject to the appropriate sanctions. As for the noble Baroness’s first question, my right honourable friend answered this in the other House. Allegations have been made that the Home Secretary breached the Ministerial Code and the Cabinet Office has been asked to look at the facts, as reported.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I fear that this affair may have some further way to go. There are, for example, various reports in the newspapers that there was a hitlist of other Permanent Secretaries that the Government would like to get rid of. None of us, I think, wants to go down the road of Washington, where relations between members of the American Cabinet and its staff are clearly toxic in a number of ways. Do we not now need some sort of investigation that will be published to re-establish the necessary confidence between Ministers and civil servants, without which effective government is very difficult to carry on?
Lord True
No, my Lords, the allegation of a hitlist is false and has been denied. All in this House would agree that good government depends on all the elements of a ministry and a Government working well together. I had the privilege of working in the Civil Service as a special adviser in the past and I know that to be the case. This Government wholly respect the role of the Civil Service; they need the Civil Service to be free to give robust advice and there needs to be proper respect between all arms of government decision-making.
Ministers: Training
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the paragraph that the noble Lord just quoted actually says that the Prime Minister
“may ask the Cabinet Office”.
What is the status of the Ministerial Code? When we had an exchange in this House at the time of the resignation of a previous Foreign Secretary, now the Prime Minister, and it was pointed out that he had been reprimanded for breaking the Ministerial Code in several places, it was also pointed out by the then Cabinet Office Minister that the Ministerial Code is an honour code and based on the idea that Ministers will always act on their honour. Is it now time that we had some stronger sanction than that?
Lord True
My Lords, I repeat: Ministers hold office at the Prime Minister’s request and remain in office only for as long as they retain the Prime Minister’s confidence. I note what the noble Lord says. The current position is that the Prime Minister is the ultimate judge of the standards of behaviour expected and the appropriate consequences. The conduct of any Minister in office is subject to the most absolute scrutiny—that is, public scrutiny—and this Government intend to hold, and do hold, to the very highest standards of ministerial behaviour at every level.