Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)

My Lords, this report is the culmination of the Conduct Committee’s review of the Code of Conduct and the Guide to the Code of Conduct, launched last spring. We chose to embark on this review—and sometimes I wondered whether that was a wise move. We were not asked to do so by Members of the House and were not required to do so by others, but we felt that it was the right thing to do. The existing code is 15 years old, and I hope the House agrees that we have made a number of improvements to it. I start by thanking the committee—Peers and lay members—for their work on the report and, of course, the staff of the House who gave us wonderful help. It was clear, as we began to take evidence, that many Peers had not actually read the code, and I do not altogether blame them: it was too long, a bit repetitive and parts of it were very unclear. But we have been helped by the comments and thoughts from the debate in the Moses Room in October and from extensive evidence given to us by noble Lords, in person or in writing. I am not just being polite—that has been immensely helpful to us—although, going on, I will try to be polite. I am also grateful for the feedback that we have had since the report was published. I have spoken to many noble Lords individually and to the main parties. Of course, we are not satisfying everybody. We cannot. There is a price paid when you try to achieve compromise, but I sense, from the feedback that I have had, that there is widespread understanding of and support for the report. At this stage, I remind noble Lords that our aim was to simplify and clarify the rules. We have tried to make them shorter, clearer and less bureaucratic. We have also sought to uphold the current code’s twin objectives. I will quote them: “to provide guidance for members of the House of Lords on the standards of conduct expected of them” and—this is important but has sometimes been overlooked— “to reinforce public confidence in the way in which members of the House of Lords perform their parliamentary duties”. These two objectives were the test for every change that we considered. We asked ourselves, “Is this helpful to Members?” Secondly, “Does it reinforce public confidence in the House?” Sometimes those questions yielded different answers, so we had to strike a balance. I shall give the House one example: the registration of non-financial interests. Public confidence in the House requires transparency over Members’ outside financial interests; I think we are probably all agreed on that. If Members failed to disclose outside employment or other major financial interests, that would undermine public trust and confidence in the House. However, the public interest in requiring the disclosure of Members’ unpaid roles—for example, with voluntary or charitable organisations—is far less clear. Over the years, the rules governing non-financial interests have become wider and more complex, resulting in several Members falling into inadvertent breach. We want Members in this House to have a wide range of interests, so this is quite a difficult area. We concluded that the bureaucratic burden of the rules on declaring non-financial interests was disproportionate when compared with a small potential benefit to transparency. We therefore recommended ending the requirement to register and declare non-financial interests. Members will still be able to declare them in debate, if they are relevant to the matter under discussion and if time allows, but in our view that is not an enforceable rule. I have dwelt on that example of our thought processes to try to help the House to understand why we have made the changes that we have. We went back to first principles, restated the most important rules of conduct as clearly and as succinctly as we could—noble Lords will notice that the code and the guide are substantially shorter—while stripping away rules that we considered disproportionate. Noble Lords have had the chance to read the report and the new code and guide, so I am going to touch on only a few key points. On enforcement, we have introduced a minor cases procedure to allow the commissioners quickly to dispose of allegations of minor technical breaches, the details of which will be published only once the case has been resolved. We have restated in the code that, in investigating alleged breaches, “the Commissioner and the Conduct Committee must … act in accordance with the principles of natural justice and fairness” We have made it clear, as has been the case for many years, that Members under investigation are entitled to consult friends or advisers, including legal advisers. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, would go further, requiring the Conduct Committee to reverse its conclusion in paragraph 38 of the report and instead proposes a wholly independent investigatory and decision-making process with no Member of this House or any Conduct Committee report. I am grateful to the noble Viscount for letting me know last year that he was going to raise this issue. But my view, and that of the committee, is that this proposal strikes at the heart of the House’s culture of self-regulation. It would take the regulation of a Member’s conduct away from that Member’s peers, entrusting it instead to a quasi-judicial process with full cross-examination by lawyers, presumably representing both sides. The process would be long and more costly, and would deter some victims, in particular of bullying and harassment and sexual misconduct, from coming forward. Over the years, many legally eminent Members of this House, former Lord Chancellors and Supreme Court justices, have sat on the Conduct Committee and its predecessor committee, which I chaired at one stage, including two former chairs: the late Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance. The committee that undertook the review also included three KCs, including a former law officer, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. These committees over the years have all rejected calls for a fully adversarial system, and the House has just as consistently agreed with its committee. Of course, it remains a matter for the House, but I hope that the noble Viscount will not press his amendment to a Division. Returning to the report, I have not got much more to say, because I know the time is tight. The committee resisted calls to extend the code further into Members’ non-parliamentary lives. We understand that, in a small handful of cases, Members’ behaviour in their private lives has hit the headlines, creating a perception that the House’s reputation has been damaged. But we need to be clear that the purpose of the code, consistent with the principles of self-regulation, is to help the House in regulating Members’ parliamentary conduct. Members are not full-time; they have jobs and lives outside the House, and we need to respect that separation. Similarly, we have restated again the existing protections for Members’ freedom of speech. The code is clear that the constitutional principle of freedom of speech in parliamentary proceedings is a primary consideration, and the enforcement procedure underlines that policy matters or Members’ views or opinions wherever expressed, whether inside or outside the House, are not within the commissioner’s remit. Before concluding, I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom. He does not seek to reject the report in its entirety but would instruct the Conduct Committee to bring forward proposals that would “remove the entitlement of members of either House to bring complaints of harassment against members of the House of Lords”. The amendment would therefore exclude a relatively small group of people, Members of one or other House, from the possibility of making a complaint of alleged harassment by a Member of this House. This strikes at the heart of the changes and improvements in the culture of Parliament that have been made since 2017, when the then Prime Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, personally intervened to support the establishment of an independent complaints and grievance process. That led to the behaviour code agreed by both Houses, which protects everyone who works here. I remind noble Lords of the original mandate, which was for a behaviour code that applies to all persons working for or within Parliament. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, would create a situation in which Members of this House could still bring complaints of harassment against MPs, but MPs could not complain against Peers. I doubt that the Commons would stand for that. So we risk a tit for tat and a potential unravelling of the behaviour code. Harassment in the workplace is unlawful. The offence is defined in Section 26 of the Equality Act 2010. I do not believe that a Member of this House who is subject to harassment by another Member should be deprived of the right to complain about unlawful behaviour. I shall listen to the noble Lord but if he presses his amendment to a Division, I hope the House will strongly reject it. Finally, what will happen after today’s debate? If they are agreed, the new rules will come into effect on 5 April and new versions of the document will be available then. Members’ entries in the Register of Lords’ Interests will be automatically updated to reflect the simplification of the registration categories. No action is needed by Members on this point. I look forward to the debate and, with that, I beg to move. Amendment to the Motion