Lord Skidelsky (CB)

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I commend the efforts of the noble Baroness and her committee to shorten and simplify the code and guide. That they have not altogether freed themselves from the bureaucracy involved in all this is more a sign of the times than of any lack of effort on their part. I welcome the obligation to register non-financial interests and reduce registrable interests from 10 to seven, but I still struggle to understand the purpose of the register. This is a fundamental point. What is a relevant financial interest? The only guidance that we are given is what a reasonable person might find relevant, but that is very vague. For example, in what way might a reasonable member of the public think that my own occasional income from writing or lecturing might constitute a financial motive strong enough to influence my parliamentary activities—except, of course, for the better? Would the noble Baroness and the Conduct Committee consider transferring occasional income from category 1 to miscellaneous financial interest in category 7? The Conduct Committee has taken on board criticisms of the Privileges Committee’s Standing Order 68, dated 2019, mandating that reports and sanctions from the Conduct Committee be decided without debate in this House. The Conduct Committee’s report says that it has considered whether to limit that prohibition to cases arising from bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct, and that is a step forward. Allowing the House to question the judgment of the Conduct Committee in a particular case puts teeth into the otherwise empty declaration that the decision of whether to impose sanctions rests with this House. Unless a particular thing can be properly debated, that statement is empty or wafer thin. Will the noble Baroness tell us whether the committee is, in fact, asking the Procedure and Privileges Committee to scrap the prohibition on debating its reports in this House? Thirdly, contrary to what noble Lords may believe, the Commissioner for Standards is not limited to investigating complaints. We have complaints, complaints, complaints, but it can investigate disclosures. That is wrong. An anonymous disclosure may trigger a process that ends in a sanction without any complaint having been made to the Commissioner for Standards. The investigatory procedure should be triggered exclusively by a complaint. Fourthly, the report acknowledges but does not resolve the potential contradiction between the requirement for Members to act on their sense of personal honour and the reputational damage rule—a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Newby. Behaviour that Members consider honourable may breach the sense and culture of the House. I repeat my complaint of October that the appeal to personal honour does no work in the code at all. A Member is required to follow the code irrespective of whether they think it is honourable for them to do so. If the committee wants to preserve the personal honour requirement, it must give up telling Lords what their personal honour should tell them to do. Finally and fifthly, the report states: “Whether conduct constitutes bullying will depend on both the perception of the person experiencing the conduct and whether it is reasonable”. This is an incredibly slippery slope. If personal offence is inserted into the equation, it will inevitably crowd out the test of reasonable behaviour—we had an example of that recently. On this I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton.