Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who is very wise, and to echo her remarks about the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, who is a glutton for punishment; she actually extended her term of office in order to deal with this issue and it is a very important issue. I am sorry that we have only four minutes—although it is advisory—to discuss very important questions. I have a number of comments, which I hope the committee might give consideration to. First, what is the definition of a “minor case”? It is not clear from the report to what that relates. Secondly, the idea of extending the terms of appointment to six years, although not really a matter for the committee, is undesirable. My main concern is the extension of the committee’s remit into social media. In particular, I find some comments from the report quite worrying. For example, paragraph 24 says: “as a self-regulating chamber the House of Lords has the right to determine that egregiously offensive statements made by its members on public-facing social media may in certain circumstances fall within the scope of the Code”. It is hard to argue with that in principle. I do not do social media, because I think that it is a revolting place and what people say about each other is not to my taste, but the idea that the committee should get involved in social media is a very big step. To be fair, the report hedges around the circumstances, but the hedging is rather vague and it needs careful consideration. My other point is that, although it is fantastic that we no longer need to declare a non-financial interest, the report makes it quite clear that getting up and saying, “I refer to my interests in the register”, which people in this place do every day at Question Time, is a breach of the code. However, they are still required to continue to declare their financial interests. I do not think that is practical. Question Time is already difficult because some people make very long questions or give very long answers—or responses to questions, certainly. Having to declare an interest at Question Time without being able to say, “I refer to the register”—it is a waste of time anyway, because nobody has a clue what is on the register—would just extend the length of Question Time. That should be given further consideration. Paragraph 49 relates to Members who have left the House. The suggestion is that, if a former Member were to breach the rules, it would be for the commission or the Clerk of the Parliaments to use their powers. I mean no disrespect to our distinguished clerk, but I think it should be for the commission and not for the Clerk of the Parliaments. The noble Baroness and her committee have produced a document in which I can pick holes, but it is a great leap forward from what we had before. They took evidence—I gave evidence—and they considered it very carefully. It would be quite wrong for the House not to support this unanimously and with great gratitude to the noble Baroness and her committee for their work, which cannot have been easy.