Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, for giving us this opportunity and for the brilliant way in which she has carried out the chairmanship of this committee, which I hope will go on for many more years. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, who is very wise—and I think that we are all grateful for the work that she has done. However, the world has changed a bit, and we need to reflect that. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, said at the beginning that the code was too long and too detailed, and I could not agree more. It is not just that it takes a long time to read it. Incidentally, the copies that have been provided in the Printed Paper Office do not include the appendices that were in the original document, including appendix B on page 56, paragraphs 19 and 20 of which were frankly just offensive. I hope that the fact that they are not included means that they are going to disappear for the foreseeable future. There are trivial complaints made that should really be dealt with by the usual channels and not by the commissioner, and an abuse of the complaints system for political purposes is now happening, often through social media. The reputational damage done to an individual who may be subject to a vexatious complaint when the complaint is made public is enormous. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, urged us not to talk about individual cases, but I am going to talk about one. We can see what has happened to the noble Lord, Lord Alli. Someone apparently made a complaint that he had not declared a particular interest. I do not know whether that is right or wrong, but it has resulted in pages and pages and day after day of coverage about him, and he is in a position where he is not allowed to comment on this or defend himself, which to my mind is neither fair nor right. One sees people doing this again and again. I do not make this accusation about any one party; we all have people in political parties who think that this is an appropriate way to behave, but I do not. The other issue that worries me, which is again to do with Members’ vulnerability, is that if the commissioner is investigating a particular complaint Members are not allowed to have any legal representation.