Contribution
My Lords, the speech I am going to give this evening is one I wish I did not have to and did not feel obliged to. I am going to deal with elements of the Bill and the debate which relate to what the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, raised originally but have been covered by many other noble Lords in different parts of the House, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and the question of whistleblowing. It is how you establish the process of candour at a lower level within any part of public service, because the reality is that this Bill should never have been necessary in the first place.
The two cases I will cite are examples of how, at a much lower level, things go wrong but people believe they can cover things up. I am in the fortunate position in the first example of being able to say that I have followed the processes in both cases. In the first case, the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, was present when I was with officials only a few months ago saying, “Will you please answer the questions which I have been raising for four years?” Four years ago, I introduced the Ballot Secrecy Bill and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, advised me that I should seek counsel’s opinion through the Electoral Commission, which they and I did.
Counsel’s opinion was provided in August 2022. I have a copy of it here. Only one other organisation was provided with a copy: the officials handling the Ballot Secrecy Bill. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, touched on the matter earlier in relation to advice to Ministers. A whistleblower provided me with a copy of the advice given to Ministers on 29 September 2022, a month after counsel’s opinion had been provided to the Electoral Commission, me and the officials in the department. What did the advice from the officials say to the Minister? It said:
“The Electoral Commission have obtained Counsel’s advice to seek to bring clarity on this issue”—
whether legislation was necessary or not—
“and have shared it with Lord Hayward”.
They conveniently omitted the fact that they had had the advice, which I have established. I asked to meet officials over and over again. I asked questions in statutory instrument debates. I never got a reply.
The advice goes on to say:
“We have been given some headline information”.
They had not been given “some headline information”; they had been given a full copy of counsel’s opinion.
Only a few weeks ago, as I indicated, I made another effort, and during the recess, I communicated with the current Minister’s officials to say that I was going to raise this. That is precisely what we are facing here and what, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, and others have identified, we should not have to be dealing with. It is the belief that people at a lower level will give up in the end. I have been looking round the Chamber and thinking, “How many of us as Members of Parliament dealt with cases when we did not believe the officials that we were dealing with, but there was just no way of finding a solution?”
In this case, what I find interesting about this ministerial advice is that there is no name at the bottom. There are loads of names of those on the write-round who will receive it, but there is no signature. I recommend that all advice to Ministers should be signed off by one official, because that would make that person responsible for the duty of candour.
The other example, sadly, is even closer to home, or “It couldn’t happen here”. A number of noble Lords will remember that I pursued over a long period the cost of traffic marshals, which involved millions of pounds. I notice one noble Baroness nodding, because she sat through my evidence to the Finance Committee: I will come back to that in a minute. I was seeking to establish how much money we were wasting on the traffic marshals, who are not legally required. As I explained to the Finance Committee, I was director of safety in a major industrial establishment employing 3,500 people and knew what the legal responsibilities were. On 6 December 2023, having asked for the cost of traffic marshals, the figure was given to me in an email from officials in this building: a traffic marshal would cost £65,613.50.
I told the officials, out of courtesy, that I was putting down a Question and would be drawing the answer, which I expected to be that, to the attention of the press. A few days later, I went to a meeting with officials and was told, “Oh, no, it’s not possible to calculate it”. I said, “Well, how was it possible to send me an email giving me a sum?” I was told, “Oh, no, it’s not possible”. I said, “Well, have I misphrased the Written Question?” I was told, “Oh, no, it’s not possible”. As far as I was concerned, that was a clear attempt to hide embarrassing data from the public eye because we were costing the nation millions. I was told it was not possible, but I waited. Fifteen months later, in a paper given to the Finance Committee, the cost of each individual marshal was identified. We have to ask ourselves: even within our own organisations, do we actually demand a duty of candour adequately?