Vetting Social Media Accounts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
To ask His Majesty’s Government what policies they have in place for vetting the social media accounts of speakers invited to address Civil Service events, and cancelling invitations where past postings are critical of His Majesty’s Government; and what assessment they have made of the compatibility of any such policies with their commitment to free speech.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are not in the business of limiting free speech. It is the Conservative Party that has consistently defended free speech against attacks from across the political divide. The only guidance we have produced is for cross-departmental diversity networks, to ensure that they conduct checks on external speakers before inviting them to participate in Civil Service events. The guidance helps to maintain impartiality, given that these events take place in Civil Service workplaces and workspaces. For anything beyond that, it is for departments to set their own approach.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I find that a little difficult to accept, because we have slowly begun to hear about who has been cancelled. A chemical weapons expert was cancelled from a chemical weapons conference because of some social media tweets he made two or three years before on other aspects of government domestic policy. If we are going to cancel experts from expert conferences—experts on medical research, digital research or whatever—the Government are going to lose a lot, and not just freedom of speech. The Minister in the Cabinet Office said in the Commons that it is concerned only with
“speakers linked to abhorrent organisations”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/5/23; col. 421.]
The chemical weapons expert, whom I have met, is an active Liberal Democrat and an Anglican: I do not know whether the Government regard those as abhorrent organisations. Does the Minister accept that it may now be time to have a free-speech champion in Whitehall along the lines the Government insist on having for universities?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I like to think that we are free speech champions. Unfortunately, the matter the noble Lord raises is now the subject of ongoing legal correspondence, which means it would be inappropriate for me to comment at this stage.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
We certainly are not. I think the noble Lord does not understand what we are trying to do. In the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, the Prime Minister recently stressed the importance of freedom of speech, and we have taken action through it in universities because challenge, debate and free speech are a vital part of British life and the British constitution.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I am confused by all the references to the diversity network. My understanding from at least two of those who have been cancelled in this way was that they were invited, in their capacity as experts, to expert conferences. The chemical weapons expert was invited to speak again to a Ministry of Defence-led conference on chemical weapons at which, on the previous occasion, he had spoken alongside a Chinese Communist official who was also a chemical weapons expert. Importantly, the relevance of their views on domestic politics to their expertise is low and should not be a reason for cancelling them. If we are going to go down that road, the Government will be denying themselves a great deal of expertise which is valuable for policy development. Is that the direction in which we may be going?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
Of course we need expertise in policy development—I am as keen on that as the noble Lord—but the guidance was developed by the Government People Group for the specific use of the cross-government diversity networks. I cannot comment further for the reasons I outlined at the beginning of the debate, although I believe the Ministry of Defence is looking into the circumstances of one of the cases the noble Lord mentioned, and I will keep him updated when I am able to do so.
Covid-19 Inquiry
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My noble friend speaks powerfully, as always. However, this is a matter for the inquiry. We have set up this wide-ranging inquiry so that these points can be looked at. It is right that different witnesses are recounting their experiences and that the inquiry is able to call upon the sorts of findings that my noble friend has mentioned.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister recall an earlier government-appointed judicial inquiry in which the Government chose what material to release to the judge rather than allowing the judge, under the rule of law, to choose for himself or herself? Also, does the Government’s recourse to judicial review mean that they have now reversed their previous attitude to limiting the judicial review and that therefore we can expect not to see ouster clauses in any future Bills under this Government?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
Although this is a much wider inquiry even than other previous important inquiries, the process that has been followed by the Cabinet Office and across Whitehall is very similar in terms of providing information to the chair. There is a judicial review because of a specific technical point raised by the Section 21 notice that has been issued. In terms of judicial review, the noble Lord is right that judicial review must be used with circumspection. However, there is an important technical point here about whether it is right to provide unambiguously irrelevant material to the inquiry which is the subject of the review.
Covid-19 Inquiry: Judicial Review
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
The Government set up the inquiry for exactly the sorts of reasons that the noble Baroness outlined. These questions need to be answered. As I said, the Government are making available all relevant information—anything related to Covid or decisions about it is being made available. The judicial review is on a narrow technical point about unambiguously irrelevant items, and I assure the noble Baroness that the Government seek to ensure that the inquiry and its chair have all the information and access to witnesses that they need, to ensure that the very important questions that the chair is asking are answered. That is why we are having an inquiry. Of course, we want it to get on, and we look forward to learning the lessons as soon as possible.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister recognise that this is a particular example of the confusions and contradictions into which the Government have now slipped, in terms of our constitutional conventions and of maintaining public confidence in constitutional government? After all, we are being asked to accept that what the Cabinet Office decides is or is not relevant to the inquiry should be accepted, rather than what a judge who is heading the inquiry considers.
According to recent public surveys, public trust in government is now lower than it has been in my lifetime; this is not a decision that would help to restore public trust. I spent the last 24 hours leading a very interesting new Constitution Unit publication on the executive prerogative. This is, after all, an issue of executive dominance, or acceptance that the rule of law is dominant. We have had a number of arguments in this House over the last two years about executive dominance versus parliamentary scrutiny. We have also had a parallel argument about the rule of law, the role of the courts and the influence of lefty lawyers—as is so often said in the right-wing media—and of the damage that excessive judicial review was doing to decent executive government. Now, we have the Government reversing and wanting to use judicial review, which they have been arguing about limiting for a good time, so that they can defend themselves against their own inquiry.
Does the Minister not agree that, after we come out of this, this Government or the next Government need to have a very thorough examination of the relationship between our courts, the rule of law and the Executive, and between the Executive and Parliament, to determine how they will restore wider public confidence in the balance between the institutions which hold our Government together?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his thoughtful comments. Issues about the Executive and Parliament are ones that we debate. We have set up a very broad inquiry to learn the lessons and do the right things for the future. The Cabinet Office and other departments—because other departments are also party to the inquiry—have followed procedures that have worked well on a series of other inquiries. What we have found here is that there has been an issue about some unambiguously irrelevant information. That is not going to stop us making available all relevant material in relation to Covid. I think that people have just mistaken our intentions, but I am sure that it will be quickly resolved—obviously, that is my hope.
Ministerial Code: Investigation of Potential Breach
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, the Ministerial Code sets out the standards of conduct expected of Ministers and how they discharge their duties. As the noble Baroness said, the Prime Minister is the ultimate judge of the standards of behaviour expected of a Minister and the appropriate consequences of a breach of those standards. That is indeed why he decides, as she has explained, but in light of advice from the independent adviser. The Prime Minister moved quickly to appoint an independent adviser, Sir Laurence Magnus, on whose advice he relies.
The noble Baroness asked why this system is not set up independently. This subject has been looked at by committees. Indeed, last year, as we discussed before, we did make some changes to the independent adviser’s powers and gave him more support. We believe that having an independent system would be a problem. An independent commission or system would amass considerable unelected power over the workings of government in somebody who does not have an elected mandate, without the checks and balances and accountabilities of elected politicians. We are here to debate, in a democratic way, circumstances that have gone on including, of course, the Home Secretary and the issue of the speed awareness course, which was the subject of this Question earlier in the week.
The criteria for investigating a breach, of course, depend on the circumstances. As the noble Baroness will know, the Ministerial Code is very wide ranging. It is the Prime Minister’s code, so he is rightly the decision-maker. The criteria for a particular investigation will depend on the issue being investigated.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, this is a small issue concerning a larger problem, which is the unconstrained and unaccountable prerogative powers of the Prime Minister and the deterioration of relations between the Civil Service and Ministers, which has come up again and again in recent years. I am puzzled and disappointed by the Minister’s reply to the Leader of the Opposition. The Answer in the Commons made a very strong point of saying, “This is the Prime Minister’s code and the Prime Minister is, in effect, the judge and jury of everything that happens”.
Toward the end of the last Labour Government, there were some rather good committee reports in the Commons on whether we now needed to limit the Prime Minister’s prerogative powers. I wonder whether, if the Conservatives found themselves in opposition again, they would not perhaps wish to revive that debate. I would hope that a Labour Government—or another Government of some sort—would begin to address that problem. If the independent adviser is really independent, why does he not have the ability to start his own investigations and then present them to the Prime Minister?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I will not speculate on what might happen under a different Government. I remind the noble Lord that there have been a number of reports on ethics and integrity, including from Nigel Boardman and the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and, as I said recently, we will lay our responses in Parliament in due course. However, I draw the House’s attention again to Sir Laurence Magnus, who has been appointed and has set off in a robust way. His report, which I promised would come out in May, is due to be published today—it may already have been or will be any minute.
I also draw attention to the fact that we strengthened the remit of the independent adviser in 2022. Slightly contrary to what the noble Lord was saying, the adviser now has the ability to initiate an investigation under the Ministerial Code after consulting with the Prime Minister, and the normal expectation is that the Prime Minister would agree to such an investigation. We have also updated the code to include more specific references to the duty on Ministers to provide the independent adviser with information reasonably necessary for carrying out the role. As I said before, we have also strengthened the arrangements for the office of the independent adviser, providing him with a dedicated secretariat of civil servants. However, I come back to the point I made before to the noble Baroness: this must be elective—it has to be democratic. That is why the Prime Minister decides on these matters.
List of Ministers’ Interests and Ministerial Code
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
The Government’s work on reforms to strengthen ethics and integrity in central government is now nearing conclusion and we hope to publish our response soon. There have been a number of reports, including Upholding Standards in Public Life, the recommendations of Sir Nigel Boardman’s report on supply chain finance, and PACAC’s fourth report, so we can look forward to a response.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we welcome the belated publication of the latest version of ministerial interests. There is a related document which we are also impatiently awaiting, which is the Cabinet Manual. The Government have promised that they will publish it within the foreseeable future, and I understand that there is already a draft in Whitehall. Can the Minister give us any indication of when that Cabinet Manual draft will be complete and will be published?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
Work is in progress and it will be published in due course.
Parliamentary Democracy in the United Kingdom
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I am very happy to welcome the right reverend Prelate to this House. He comes from an interesting background. Apart from being a priest in the south of England, Leicester and Staffordshire, he has also worked in Japan. He was involved in setting up the national Christian Muslim Forum and now chairs the Council of Christians and Jews. I gather he is also one of the Church of England’s team of bishops for prisons. That is a good range of expertise from which to speak with authority in this House. We look forward to that, and to him, as with his colleagues, bringing his diocesan perspective to this sometimes rather overly metropolitan House.
Anyone who has read Anthony Seldon’s account of the Johnson Government in the Times in recent days must doubt whether parliamentary democracy has been saved or strengthened since 2019. We should all be worried by the quality of democratic government in the UK and the damage that has been done to its conventions. The events in Washington two years ago have shown how delicate commitment to constitutional democracy can be.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Norton, I worry about the depth of public disillusion in the UK about democratic politics, above all about Westminster and how it operates. I worry even more about the depth of disillusion among the young, few of whom now vote, let alone join political parties, and turn to the streets instead to campaign.
I worry about ministerial attacks on the rule of law—that essential part of democracy. I worry about the colonisation of the Conservative Party by US Republicans, national conservatives and Christian nationalists, with their well-funded organisations, dragging the Conservatives towards an illiberal authoritarianism. I worry that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, has become more of a national conservative than a Conservative, although I am happy that the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, seems to have resisted some of that tendency.
I worry about the creeping spread of conspiracy theories, which inspire and energise anti-democratic fantasists, of allegations about a hidden deep state or a controlling liberal elite. I worry about the willingness of our right-wing media to help spread such theories. I worry about the fringe of right-wing extremists, fired up by social media, who talk about violence, some of whom, sadly, have gone on to kill politicians.
I worry about what would happen if we had a change of Government who then failed to change the way British politics works, leaving at the following election the only effective alternative: a Conservative Party that had drifted further to the right. None of us should be complacent about the strength of our constitution or democracy. We need more than a change of Government; we need a change of political culture and structure.
House of Lords: Regional Representativeness
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
There are indeed different sources from which representation of this House can be drawn. That includes, of course, former politicians— I draw your Lordships’ attention to the diversity of the current Cabinet. I also ask noble Lords to look around them. I am glad to be one of many women who serve on the Front Bench in this House.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as someone whose registered address is in London but whose allotment is in Saltaire. Pending the introduction of at least an elected element—directly or indirectly—in this House, would the Minister agree that some of the most effective and useful Members are those who have formerly been the leaders of councils all over the United Kingdom, and that greater attention to nominating Members of this House who had local government experience would be a good thing?
Civil Service Impartiality
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
But, in my own case, I left to go to Tesco, where I served for 15 years. I then took a different path. I served as a civil servant with due impartiality and indeed confidentiality of everything that I did and learned there, and that will be a requirement for Ms Gray.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as the husband of a former civil servant and the father of a civil servant. To repeat what William Wragg, the chairman of PACAC, said in the debate yesterday in the Commons:
“It is important to ask”
the Minister
“whether he shares my concern that it is wrong to impugn an entire civil service for political bias, and that it is important that he asserts that from the Dispatch Box”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/23; col. 26]
Is that not the most important thing for a Minister to do? As for the current concern, this was a leak by Sky News. I would have thought that we were all interested in ensuring that, if there is a change of Government after the next election, it is competently prepared and served. After the relative chaos we have had over the past five years, of too many Ministers moving too quickly, with some members of the Government deeply suspicious of the Civil Service all the way through, should we not welcome this achievement?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
It is for the Civil Service of the day to prepare for Governments, as I remember doing in 1997, with three lots of policies. It is very important that ACOBA looks at this appointment. The business appointment rules govern the process by which civil servants take up new employment—it is part of their contract. As my right honourable friend the Paymaster-General said in the other place, there are various sets of rules and guidance designed to make sure that impartiality is observed in the Civil Service, particularly with the movement of senior Ministers or civil servants into other jobs.
Civil Service: Digital Skills
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
It is a pleasure to see the noble Lord in his place; I congratulate him on his return and on his daughter’s eminence. The answer is that of course Ministers need to be educated in digital and data matters as well. We are doing our own small part in the Cabinet Office by ensuring that the induction that Ministers are given on security, for example, has a suitable data element. There is the broader point of what data can bring to growth and science. I earlier referenced the new department, DSIT, which is symptomatic of the change that we are trying to make in government to think more of AI, the cloud and data. To go back to the noble Baroness’s point, we are also trying to make sure that we are thinking about people and values at the same time.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the British Government are lagging behind several of their European counterparts in digital transformation. Can the Minister say what she regards as the other obstacles, apart from lack of skills? Are there still legal obstacles, in that the way data is handled by different departments is different under existing Acts, or are there other obstacles that we need to tackle in order to catch up with the Baltic states and others that have gone a great deal further in moving towards efficient digital government?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I used to sit on the Competitiveness Council in Brussels, in the days when we were in the EU, and learned a lot from the Estonians—but of course they have a much smaller country and they were able to start everything digitally. I think people have admired us for the step we took, now 10 years ago, with GOV.UK, hosting all government paperwork and data. That now has 99% recognition across the UK, which I find very surprising. To answer the question, there are of course difficulties. Digital skills, which is the subject of this Question, is probably the biggest difficulty, but data sharing is also very important. We are finding this with all the various data initiatives we are doing—for example, I am working on borders—where being able to share data between companies, or to share individuals’ data between departments, is extremely important. We are gradually making sure that we are getting the right powers to do that in different areas as Bills come before your Lordships’ House.
Emergency Planning
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
As the noble Lord suggests, we have a well-developed system of local resilience through the 38 local resilience forums. I have received no reports myself of particular concerns they have raised on this matter. It is more a matter for DLUHC than for the Cabinet Office, but I will look into it and get back to the noble Lord.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, what lessons have the Government learned from the failure to anticipate a major pandemic of the sort we have now faced with Covid? Have the Government initiated any new proposals for contingency planning ahead of major predictable crises of that sort?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
The Government had the advantage—or disadvantage—of the lessons from Covid, when they were conducting the review I mentioned. Since then, they have published the UK Government Resilience Framework, which shows a lot of frameworks. A completely independent review is also going on, the Covid inquiry, which I am sure will teach us more lessons on what to do in serious emergencies in the future.