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House of Lords: Code of Conduct

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for what she has said and for taking some time and trouble to explain what lies behind the Motion that she has put before the House. The fact that she has laid out so much allows me to be considerably briefer in what I shall say. I strongly support what has been said by the Leader of the House and I hope that it will not embarrass her if I say that her handling of this issue ever since the first shock of the allegations against several noble Lords has been sure-footed and wise. She has very much included the House in her thinking, she has taken the actions necessary to defend the House, and she has also led us, quite rightly, to review whether the code that we had was sufficient for the standards required. I make no secret of the fact that I believe that self-regulation and the sense that a Peer acts on his or her honour must still be at the core of how we behave. How demeaning it would be to act on the assumption that Members of your Lordships’ House lack the qualities to manage our own proper behaviour. However, we need clarity and transparency about what those standards are, so I strongly supported the invitation to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, to review the code of conduct, and I greatly welcome his authoritative report. The House should be grateful to him and to the other noble Lords involved in preparing what will remain a guiding standard for the House for many years to come. The House will also know that in the past I have rather opposed the idea of an independent commission. However, I now accept the proposition that there should be a commissioner to assist the House in the investigation and enforcement of allegations of misconduct by Members. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, has tabled an amendment that would remove the commissioner from the code, and I speak to the amendment now only because I shall not be speaking later and do not want to prejudice anything that the noble Lord will say. I have changed my mind on the case for an independent commissioner because, over the past 12 months, the world which we now inhabit has changed dramatically, not just because of what has happened in another place but also because of how that has impinged on Lordships’ House and on individual Peers. Therefore, I believe that we need someone to come forward to act as commissioner. However, I hope that that appointment will be structured in such a way that it is a resource which can and will be used when, and only when, it is necessary to use it. It should not be the beginnings of a permanent office, which has a growing staff paid for by taxpayers and which looks around for something to do. We need the resource to be able to crack down on misconduct which, as your Lordships showed so firmly last Session, we are ready to do. We do not need to create a new bureaucracy at a time when the public are looking for the cost of politics to be reduced. I know that was not the aim of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and I agree with the emphasis which he has put on the differences between this House, which is unpaid and which draws so much on the expertise of its Members, and another place. There are some who believe that both Houses of Parliament should be treated identically in respect of registration and regulation. I am very concerned by that belief. The Houses are not identical; they are very different and they should be treated differently. I believe that the noble and right reverend Lord has struck the right balance in the code between our duty to protect the House and to reassure the public and the avoidance of what the report calls "regulation creep". I welcome the reining back of some of the more intrusive and unenforceable elements in the previous code, such as the need to register the interests of friends. I very much welcome paragraph 5 of the code which is the requirement that every Peer should sign the code at the start of every Parliament. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, has tabled an amendment to remove it; it may be that he has a very good reason. I assure him—this is not an invitation for him to speak on it now—that I shall listen very carefully to the arguments he puts forward. I thought that all Peers being required to sign the code was a rather welcome point. I hope that the House will agree to endorse the code as recommended. We could spend a great deal of time this afternoon picking it apart with no great gain to ourselves as individuals or collectively or in terms of reassuring the public. I do not think that there is any real lack of clarity about what is proposed. However, I agree with the suggestion of the noble Baroness that the detailed guide to the rules issued with the code should be remitted to the Privileges Committee for further detailed consideration. There are aspects of this that some noble Lords have highlighted outside the House; for example, the de minimis levels of registration of hospitality or the practicality of restrictions on the use of computers for various types of personal messages. No doubt, there are other details that need further consideration without breaking the fundamentals of the code before us, but they need not and should not hold up the adoption of this reformed code. The House needs to show in its resolutions, as it has shown in its actions, that it takes misconduct by any Peer extremely seriously. Let us demonstrate that clearly again today, as the noble Baroness has proposed. I support the Motion.