Contribution
My Lords, when the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, talked earlier about protecting people from improper pressures, I thought that there is a different aspect to that from that which we have heard in the many varied speeches so far, which it would be helpful to explore a bit: the importance of ethical standards and processes to protect impartiality, for Ministers and lobbyists.
Good Ministers, just like good leaders in any sort of organisation, inspire and lead, and they see challenging advice and robust critique of their ideas as a strength, or even as being essential to them to do their best. Weak leaders or poor Ministers can get annoyed by it and can feel threatened when not surrounded by compliant yes-people. Sadly, we have had a series of scandals, particularly those involving allegations of bullying, which highlight the problems of the shortcomings in the Ministerial Code as an effective safeguard both for impartiality and, frankly, for treating people decently and well.
The Ministerial Code is a slightly unusual document in that it is not a law; it is not even in that more nebulous but important category of a constitutional convention. As the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of the House of Commons described it earlier this year, it is very much “the Prime Minister’s document”. At its heart, it is very dependent on the Prime Minister to decide what it says, when to change it and how to apply it. Indeed, as that House of Commons committee complained earlier this year, albeit when talking about it in a slightly different respect, it seems to be possible for people to break the code, sometimes with impunity. That was not a partisan but a cross-party conclusion.
It reminds us of the importance of having stronger foundations for the Ministerial Code in future, and stronger enforcement, because protecting the Civil Service’s impartiality is in part about protecting civil servants from improper behaviour by Ministers. There is a similar risk with lobbying. The examples I have given so far have highlighted the risk of civil servants perhaps deviating from impartiality because of the threat of the stick. With lobbyists, it is perhaps more a case of the carrot—the lure away from impartiality.
As we heard in the debates earlier this year on the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on the regulation of lobbying, we often talk about the significant loopholes in the current protections in the context of Ministers and lobbyists, but the interaction between lobbyists and civil servants can be just as important as an area of risk. The Ethics and Integrity Commission’s report earlier this year set out a very good road map for improving the regulation of lobbying.
I say this as somebody who, in a previous role, was for a period covered by the existing lobbying regulations. I have to say that they were very light-touch. At the time, I quite enjoyed the fact that I did not have huge amounts of paperwork to fill in or hugely detailed records that needed keeping. Unfortunately, however, we have seen from practical examples the risks that come from that very light-touch approach and from the exclusion of in-house lobbyists and lobbying firms that are not VAT-registered. If there is an improper conversation between a lobbyist and a civil servant, the questions of whether the lobbyist is in-house or out-house, or whether the lobbyist firm pays VAT, are not really germane to whether there is something in that conversation that is a risk from which we need protection.
I hope that, in due course, we will hear from the Minister what steps the Government are taking to continue the initial progress they have made—to be fair—in improving the regulation of lobbying and strengthening the Ministerial Code.