Honesty in Politics

Debate between Richard Foord and Liz Saville Roberts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mrs Murray.

Just one in six people in the UK—17% of the British public—who were polled last year said that they were highly satisfied with how democracy is working. I am afraid that compares very badly with some of our friends and neighbours, such as Canada and Germany, where 36% of the public say the same of their Governments. Clearly, whether we are in government or opposition, we need to take a careful look at issues of honesty and trust in Government.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day). The points he raised about partygate are absolutely central to the issue. I will extend one of those points. On 12 April 2022, the Metropolitan police served a fixed penalty notice on the then Prime Minister and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer for attending a rule-breaking event in the Cabinet Office in June 2020. Newspapers were full of that dramatic news when, just two days later, the Government announced the so-called Rwanda partnership. Whatever one thinks about the Rwanda partnership—the £120-million scheme that would see some asylum claimants having their claims processed while they were in Rwanda—it is, at the very least, newsworthy. My point is that increasingly over the last couple of decades, we have been subject to something that started out as spin but has since become something that verges on dishonesty.

Going back to 11 September 2001, we heard the phrase that it was a “good day to bury bad news”. At the time, that was symbolic of the worst aspects of the dark arts of spin. Since that time we have seen the development of that into an election campaigning technique. We now hear about the dead cat strategy. “Dead catting” is the idea that when something inconvenient is in the news headlines, the masters of spin might slap a dead cat in front of the public—a shocking announcement to divert attention away from those inconvenient headlines. Hon. and right hon. Members, it is time to end “a good day to bury bad news”, and it is time to end the dead cat strategy. It is a good day to bury the dead cat.

We need more honesty in public life, but if the public considered that MPs tell the truth only because it has become a criminal offence to lie, that could reduce trust in MPs. I pay tribute to the people who put the petition together and to the more than 100,000 people who signed it, but if we were to adopt the measures called for, we would need to be careful about a couple of things. First, if it became a criminal offence for MPs to lie in Parliament, what about when MPs are thought to have not told the truth outside Parliament? Could that, by contrast, reduce trust in MPs when they are speaking in other places, such as in the media or in meetings in their constituencies? The other thing that worries me about the idea of making lying an offence for which MPs could be prosecuted is what we see in other countries where political prisoners are made of people who are simply practising opposition politicians. Of course, that is taking the risk to the extreme, but I worry about the idea of opposition politicians getting locked up simply for telling the truth.

We should not need this. We should be able to proceed on the basis of honour, a term that goes in front of our constituencies: we are the hon. or right hon. Member of the constituency that we represent. We need more than a code of conduct or code of honour that binds us to the truth. Back in the days of Boris Johnson, we witnessed the terrible technique of a wild claim being amplified by denial: if a political opponent made a claim that we knew to be untruthful, by denying it we would repeat it, and by repeating it we would amplify it. We have to be aware of these partial truths because they are getting us into great political hot water.

For example, the 2019 Conservative manifesto claimed that 40 new hospitals would be delivered in this Parliament, but since then we have heard that they are not hospitals, there are not 40 of them and they are not new. Instead, the community hospital in Seaton in my constituency is under threat and there are suggestions that part of it might be demolished by a wrecking ball.

We need honesty and integrity to underpin our democracy. As politicians, we have a job not only to call out fake news, but to stand up and act with integrity. Over recent years, we have seen a dangerous rise in misleading statements from political parties and politicians. Clearly, the public feel there is distortion going on. Research from the organisation Full Fact showed that 71% of the public believe there is more lying and misuse of facts in politics now than 30 years ago. Yet the Constitution Unit found that the public admire politicians who are prepared to stand up and admit mistakes, rather than being dishonest about them. On top of that, a wave of sleaze and scandal has emanated from the Conservative party, and it was one such scandal that resulted in me coming to office as the Member of Parliament for Tiverton and Honiton.

In this place, we have a mechanism for correcting the record and inadvertent errors by going before Parliament, but we need a better method for MPs to correct Hansard, rather than things being distorted and going viral over social media. We have to be wary of politicians who cook up half-baked proposals, pretend that they are meaningful policies and then claim they have scrapped them. I take as a case in point the Conservative party conference earlier this year, where ideas about seven bins were magicked up. There was a time when the office of Prime Minister was that of statesman, but to stoop this low is to go to the level less of statesman and more of binman. It is deceitful and against the Nolan principles.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says, but does he recognise that some of his proposed solutions already exist, yet we are still in the condition we find ourselves in? They do not work. Somehow or other, we need to shift the dial and, within the politics of the United Kingdom, stop rewarding those who say what they like and get away with it, and rather reward those who stick by the truth.

[Richard Foord]

The right hon. Member is exactly right. We absolutely need to put on a pedestal those people who are prepared to stand up and admit when they have made a mistake and applaud those who correct their own record.

Before I close, one other aspect that I see increasingly is neighbouring MPs claiming credit for the work and achievements of the community campaigners in my part of Devon. Flattery is clearly at play here; it is sometimes said that mimicry is a form of flattery. However, what we are seeing is against the Nolan principles of honesty and accountability.

Finally, anyone who has joined the House of Commons Chamber at the start of proceedings will remember this part of the prayer that we listen to every day. We pray that Members

“never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind their responsibility”.