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House of Lords: Code of Conduct

My Lords, the House is anxious to hear from the Minister, and therefore I will speak very briefly to say how grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Martin, for his remarks. This House is moving in what is to some extent uncharted territory, and he has had direct experience, not of precisely the same issues but of cognate issues. It has been of value to hear him this afternoon. I, too, entirely accept the general thrust of the Eames report and am grateful to those who have acted, as they had to do, in a relatively short time. The amount of evidence that they took in that time was formidable. None the less, by virtue of the fact that this is broad and concise document, there are some areas of opacity, and we should be as clear as we can possibly be at the outset about how we wish to see this process function. Most important—this point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Martin—is what we expect of the independent Commissioner for Standards. Is it a court of first instance? Is the court acting as judge and jury as well as inquisitor? As things are defined in the report, there is room for doubt. The Commissioner for Standards is to be a finder of fact, but he or she will also say whether there has been a possible breach of the code. Does that mean that it is not the role of the commissioner to pronounce that there has been a breach of the code? Is that judgment to be left to the sub-committee? The role of the sub-committee must also be thought about with some care. It appears that it is not necessarily to reconsider the facts, but may simply be to decide what is an appropriate penalty or sanction. It does not seem sufficiently clear in the report which role is to be discharged, or whether both are. What is helpfully clear in the report is that, at all stages of the triple-tier process, the rules of natural justice and fairness must be followed. If the optimism of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, is to be subscribed to by the House, we shall understand very clearly what is meant by natural justice and fairness at all these stages. Knowing what case you have to answer is part of this. Having an opportunity to state your case in answer to the charges is another. Transparency ought also to be part of it in the public interest. However, the interests of the individual should perhaps be protected by a certain degree of privacy before a prima facie case has been made. These matters are important and are not entirely clear from the report. I hope that, in considering the recommendations on implementation, the Government and others will give consideration to these practical questions of procedure in order to ensure that natural justice and fairness are discharged. For many people, the deprivation of that could not be remedied after the event. I heard with great interest what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott of Foscote, said about the possibility of taking this beyond the House. As we are in uncharted territory, it has to be a possibility. However, even ex post facto remedies would not necessarily save a ruined reputation. We have to consider that very carefully in our approach to setting up the procedures to implement this report, which I wholly endorse for its substance and necessity at this time.