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Privileges Committee: Second Report

My Lords, as a member of the Leader’s Group under the chairmanship of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, I would like to follow him in saying that I support unreservedly the entirety of the guide as it is now and the changes made to it. I do not propose to talk about the content, but I should like to say a word about the process, which I think has helped to bring about this improved guide. There were only six of us in the Leader’s Group. We worked at speed; we took as much evidence as we could and we received some representations, but not that many, from colleagues. All of us on the committee were clear and unanimous about the code, and that was accepted by the House in November. In addition, to assist the House, we agreed to a unanimous report on the text of the proposed guide. On the latter, it would be fair to say that in the time available, it was not possible to explore every nook and cranny in detail. Indeed, there was some disagreement on detail among us, but as we did not regard ourselves as the repository of all wisdom, we thought it reasonable to put forward concrete suggestions in order to enable wider consultation and comments on those details before they were finalised. An illustration of that was when we put some of the figures in brackets. In the context of the debate on 30 November, I received a number of comments from colleagues on some of the details. I felt that it right, therefore, to put my submission to the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, and I put forward five changes that should be made to the report that we had all agreed. Four of those were accepted. One on shareholdings was not, but I quite understand that. However, my point is, as the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, made clear, that the text in front of us is the fruit of the labour of many Members. It has been greatly improved as a result of that and is the better for that wider consideration. That leads me to the more general point that I want to make. There seems to be a view in some quarters that when committees are set up to comment on points in relation to either House, we should simply accept en bloc and without question the recommendations of those committees. The noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, has referred to the Committee on Standards in Public Life and I was proud to serve under him for two sessions of the committee. I remember that period very clearly because I was in the other place and had to come and defend our report here in this House. We put forward reports on the House of Lords and on the funding of political parties. Not all of our recommendations were agreed and it was quite right that those with much wider experience and from different elements of experience were able to comment on those reports. In fact, two of us from the other place were on the Committee on Standards in Public Life at that time and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Neill, will agree that there was benefit to the committee in our knowing the inside workings of that place to be able to make recommendations. The point is that this is the view of a committee. I have seen the Committee on Standards in Public Life at work subsequently and I have considerable reservations about some aspects of the report that it recently produced on the other place. I have also had something to do with the Senior Salaries Review Body. Sometimes, I felt that wider experience would have helped it rather more in coming to some of its recommendations. Having been subjected to them as a Minister, I can say that the same is true of royal commissions or committees of inquiry into issues of accidents on the railway and so forth. We do not always accept the royal commission’s recommendations or all the recommendations of the committee of inquiry, and quite rightly. When we debated the Senior Salaries Review Body's report earlier, I said that I supported the broad framework and thrust of the report but had reservations in detail on some of the recommendations. It is entirely reasonable for the longer process that we have taken on the code of conduct to be applied in those other cases too. Of course, we have to bear in mind that self-interest is at stake here and we should not talk in terms of our own self-interest. We should take very seriously the recommendations of these bodies, but sometimes they do not get all the details right. The report that we have in front of us now on the guide is all the better for the wider consideration that has been given to it by others. I hope that we can accept that that should apply in other cases as well.