The letter sent by Lord Geidt to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, on 16 June 2022.
Category: Parliament
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Lindsay Hoyle – 2022 Statement on Government’s Position on Rwanda
The statement made by Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, in the House on 13 June 2022.
I did offer to convert the following urgent question to a statement but I got a message that that was no longer agreed. The Minister will say that he cannot say much at this stage, but we were happy to work with the Department and put on a statement at 7 o’clock. What bothers me is the mixed messages coming out of the Department, which said, “We want a statement,” so I granted it, then, “We don’t want a statement,” so I had to go back to a UQ. There we are; at least we are all now aware of what has gone on today.
There are a number of live court cases on the policy of relocations to Rwanda. Some of them might not formally be engaged by the sub judice resolution, because they concern ministerial decisions, but for the avoidance of doubt, I am exercising a waiver in relation to the sub judice resolution on this matter, on the grounds that it is of national importance. That means that Members are able to refer to the issue on an ongoing basis.
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Fleur Anderson – 2022 Speech on Standards in Public Life
The speech made by Fleur Anderson, the Labour MP for Putney, in the House of Commons on 7 June 2022.
I thank all Members who have contributed to this important debate and to the underlining of the importance of standards, which so many have mentioned. Last night, 148 MPs stood up for standards in public life and it is disappointing not to see more of them in their place today. Each one of us is elected to this place based on trust: the trust of everyone who voted for us; the trust of the British people that we would act with selflessness and integrity in every decision we make; the trust that when the country has to rise to a challenge we in this place would set the highest standards; and the trust that if we were found to be failing to live up to those standards, we would take action, decisively and urgently, with transparency, to rectify that.
The standards system now is broken, so it is up to Labour to bring this motion to push forward the action needed to live up to that trust. The Opposition have tabled this motion now because integrity and trust in politics has never been more under threat. While families up and down the country face the cost of living crisis, they deserve to know who is making the decisions and in whose interests Ministers are acting. These measures are urgently needed to stop the Tory slide into sleaze; to stop the culture of wasting taxpayers’ cash to give a mate a lucrative Government contract; to stop the politicisation of appointments from institutions that have never been political before; to regain our pride as a country that stands up for integrity and decency in public life; and to stop rules being made by convention, which can all too easily become a mate’s rates version of standards. The wink and a nod; the “He’s all right”; the turning of a blind eye; the “Help yourself,” “I’ve earned it,” or “Other people do it”—it is all a short journey from bending the rules to breaking them to bringing all MPs and our democracy into disrepute.
The report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life is the focus of the motion. As the committee says:
“Erosion of standards does affect public trust in the democratic process”.
The polling and focus group research conducted for the committee found:
“The public have a firm belief that ethical standards are integral to democracy itself, and that politicians have a fundamental duty to the public to abide by ethical codes and rules. However, the public lack confidence that MPs and ministers abide by such standards, and see some politicians as possessing neither the core values expected from leaders in public life, nor matching up to the higher ethical standards displayed by other respected public sector leaders, such as judges, doctors and teachers.”
What a state we are in and what action we need to take.
We have heard in the debate excellent speeches laying out the significance of standards. My right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) talked articulately and movingly about grandmother’s footsteps and the stealthy movement to undermine the health of our democracy, and about ministerial standards, control of the media and public appointments.
My hon. Friends the Members for Eltham (Clive Efford), for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer), for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) and for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) all underlined the importance of standards and the Nolan principles; the slow death of democracy by the degrading of those standards; the damage done by partygate; and the lack of action up till now.
Today, Labour asks all Members to support the motion—not to abstain, to support it—to recognise the importance of the ministerial code, which has been damaged by the Prime Minister’s rewrite last month. The publication of a new ministerial code was the opportunity to include many of the 34 recommendations in the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life; instead, we got a watered-down code.
In the week when the Prime Minister’s misleading denials to Parliament about industrial-scale rule breaking at the heart of Government were finally exposed by the long-awaited Sue Gray report, the Prime Minister should have been tendering his resignation, but instead he was rewriting the rules. He moved to introduce a range of sanctions for minor breaches of the code, a new website and an office for the adviser, but he made no move to make the adviser more independent from the Prime Minister, which was the report’s core recommendation.
The Prime Minister’s own anti-corruption tsar, the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who is in his place, resigned yesterday, saying it was “pretty clear” that the Prime Minister had broken the ministerial code and:
“That’s a resigning matter for me, and it should be for the PM too.”
The second focus of the motion is the endorsing of the report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and its 34 recommendations. Back in September 2020, the committee’s review opened with the publication of terms of reference. The starting point was that the existing systems were not fit for purpose and were being increasingly scrutinised and criticised. They were not fit for purpose then and they still are not.
During 2021 there were expert evidence sessions; there was a public consultation; there was an academic roundtable; there was a public sector survey; and there was polling and focus group research. In November 2021, the committee published the report based on all the feedback and all its deliberations. This was not just a small group in a room somewhere, coming up with its own ideas; it was a considered, deliberate report. But we had to wait for seven months for any action at all, and that was the reviewing of the ministerial code. It was seven months of more sleaze and misconduct, including the Owen Paterson scandal, the vote to keep the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) in Parliament and the failure to act against the former Member for Wakefield. We need to clean up this culture of sleaze and cover-up.
The 34 recommendations include: greater independence in the regulation of the ministerial code, which has been talked about in this debate; strengthening the independent appointment and remit of the independent adviser; expansion of the business appointment rules to employment by companies with indirect as well as direct relationships with Government; the introduction of meaningful sanctions such as the five-year lobbying ban, because there are just too many loopholes in the current system; and stopping Ministers from overriding public appointments without having to account for why—side-stepping assessment panels means that things can go unrecorded and unnoticed.
We need to know what is happening behind closed doors. The recommendations also include bringing in greater transparency when it comes to who is lobbying whom. We need a central register; a wider definition of who is a lobbyist; and monthly, instead of quarterly, reporting of all lobbying meetings that includes all methods of lobbying, including those on Zoom and WhatsApp.
Those recommendations came out seven months ago. There has been no word on any action for most of them. Earlier, the Minister told us that he would reflect the thinking of the Committee on Standards in Public Life in the rewrite of the ministerial code, but he should not just be reflecting the thinking of the CSPL; he should be including the actual recommendations. If those recommendations are not in the ministerial code, where should they be? When will we see these changes?
This motion today is just the necessary first step. Once the Committee’s recommendations are implemented in full, the Government should then do more. Labour would go much further. It would introduce an independent integrity and ethics commission—not a convention, not an adviser, and not another Tory MP. And it would not be in the gift of the Prime Minister to decide whether an investigation is carried out.
This independent commission would bring the existing Committees and bodies that oversee standards in Government under a single, independent body. It would have powers to launch investigations without ministerial approval, to collect evidence and to decide on sanctions. The current system is just too disjointed, too convoluted and too little understood, as the report showed in its polling and evidence sessions. It does not have the transparency or the teeth needed to ensure that high standards are met by everyone all the time, and it is too entirely dependent on the integrity of the Prime Minister—the chap at the top.
I hope that all Members will vote for this motion today. I do not see how they could not unless they are against the ministerial code and against the recommendations on standards in public life. The truth is that standards have not just been diluted under this present Government; they have evaporated. A vote for this motion is a vote to endorse honesty, integrity, and decency. Let us mark an end to the current system right now. This is the line that we should be drawing underneath things. We want an end to the slide away from the highest standards; an end to rule-breaking by Ministers; an end to the revolving door between ministerial office and lobbying jobs; an end to corruption and waste of taxpayers’ money; and an end to Members of Parliament being paid to lobby their own Government. Let us clean up politics. Let us win back the trust of the British people and do what we came here to do: to serve the British people without fear or favour and never, ever to compromise on the highest standards of public life. I commend this motion to the House.
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Sam Tarry – 2022 Speech on Standards in Public Life
The speech made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 7 June 2022.
It is somewhat ironic that we are debating standards in public life, given the Prime Minister appears to have no standards and no moral compass whatsoever. It is now blindingly apparent to our constituents that, after many months of rule-breaking, the Prime Minister is fundamentally dishonest, or has at least given the appearance of being dishonest. He is constantly mired in scandal and feels so entitled that he believes his own rules do not apply to him. That is not just Opposition rhetoric or a mere one-off; it is a pattern of behaviour that has emerged not recently but over the past two decades.
A perception of dishonesty, if not actual dishonesty, has been repeated time and again in this House, and it is bringing our democracy into disrepute. My constituents are pretty angry about this. My constituent Dani is angry and contacted me to communicate her disgust at this behaviour. She described her young daughter, who was very unwell during lockdown and who suffers from a rare condition called listeria monocytogenes meningitis and severe mental trauma from her ordeal. She told me:
“I can’t express my anger and disappointment that Mr Johnson thinks it’s acceptable to make up excuses the way he…has done. I no longer have faith… Please pass my story on to whoever that would want to hear it. As I also am raising awareness about listeria meningitis because it’s a strand that is not known much about… Let’s get a Prime Minister in that would treat us as equals. And not feel the need to lie to us. I watch everything, and it doesn’t sit well when we all know his apologies are worth nothing.”
Another constituent, Anuja, wrote:
“At a time when I was forced to go into labour…with my son on my own without a birthing partner, Boris Johnson and his colleagues thought it was an appropriate time to host a party going against all rules they had set themselves. A few days after I gave birth, my closest Uncle passed away and not only were we unable to attend his funeral, his immediate family were not allowed to see him one last time and had to part ways with him all on their own with not a single shoulder to cry on.”
How much more needs to happen before Conservative Members, specifically the 211 who voted to keep the Prime Minister in office, decide to take action and oust him? He has the support of less than a third of the House of Commons. In 1979, before my time, Prime Minister Callaghan, with the support of 310 MPs, called a general election on that basis. Our current Prime Minister has less support than any Prime Minister in living memory.
This situation goes far deeper than partygate. The Prime Minister recently abused the ministerial code by redrafting it to reduce the potential sanctions for Ministers who break rules, and he was castigated by the former local government ombudsman, who served on the Committee on Standards in Public Life for five years until last December. Jane Martin went on to say that Mr Johnson had wrongly used a report by her committee as a spur to weaken the code.
I remind the Minister of the comments made by previous speakers about ACOBA. The Government are yet to respond to Lord Pickles’s letters, sent in July and September, about Dominic Cummings’s breaches of business appointment rules. That is exactly why today’s motion to back the full package of recommendations by the CSPL would strengthen transparency and integrity, and improve accountability in our democratic institutions. It is only by making those necessary changes, in particular, with the independent integrity and ethics commission, that we can safeguard our democracy and look our constituents in the eye. This would, I hope, mean that debacles such as the Owen Paterson scandal could be avoided in future. The Prime Minister not only defended Mr Paterson’s clear and egregious breach of lobbying rules, but, disgracefully, attempted to remove the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for doing her job. That is behaviour we would expect to see in an authoritarian state, not in one of the oldest and proudest democracies on earth. So it is no surprise that the Prime Minister’s own anti-corruption tsar resigned yesterday for those repeated failings.
Just last weekend, the Prime Minister was making obscene hand gestures to shocked members of the public who had taken it upon themselves in the Morito restaurant, Hackney to question his actions. That is the latest in a long line of well-documented offences. What we have seen in the past couple of years is something that, I am afraid to say, has been part of the Prime Minister’s character for nearly two decades. In 1990, he was secretly recorded, in a previous job, agreeing to provide the address of the News of the World reporter Stuart Collier to his friend Darius Guppy, who wanted to arrange for the journalist to have his ribs cracked as revenge for investigating his activities. That is the true mark of the man behind the door of Downing Street.
Then we come to the Prime Minister’s record in public office. In perhaps one of the most scathing assessments of his time as Foreign Secretary, a London Conservative mayoral candidate, Steve Norris, pointed to ill-informed comments of the now Prime Minister that undoubtedly led to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe facing many years in incarceration. Mr Norris’ telling comments were that, in addition to being “lousy on detail” during his time as London Mayor, his consistent failure to “read the paperwork” was exactly the sort of behaviour that led to his sloppy and inaccurate comments about Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe. He is not a jovial character, as many of us have been led to believe; this behaviour has affected people’s lives for decades, most angering, recently, those hundreds of constituents who did abide by the rules and were not able to be with their loved ones, attend weddings or attend funerals in times of need over the past few months and years.
The Prime Minister has said that it will take a tank division to drag him out of Downing Street, which means that, even after last night’s vote, he still is not going to leave of his own accord. So I urge colleagues, on both sides of this House, to continue to explore all options to force this position—to make a change—so that democracy and integrity can be restored, and so that this House can rightfully be restored to its place as a pre-eminent symbol of democracy around the globe. If there is an appearance of dishonesty in our Prime Minister, at a time when the country needs to be navigated through the most economically uncertain years ahead that we potentially face, with misery already being caused to millions, surely that trust has to be restored in one way or another. We cannot have someone with their hand on the tiller steering this country who has no trust, from not only this House, but from the vast majority of people in this country.
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Marion Fellows – 2022 Speech on Standards in Public Life
The speech made by Marion Fellows, the SNP MP for Motherwell and Wishaw, in the House of Commons on 7 June 2022.
If the House divides at the end of this debate, I shall be voting with the Opposition. Standards in public life are a foundation of our democracy. We must be able to have trust in those in public life, and we need Ministers, and especially a Prime Minister, to adhere to the ministerial code. Breaches of the Nolan principles and the ministerial code affect us all. It is fundamental that those in positions of power are honest and truthful; otherwise, we lose the trust of the public who elect us.
Independence is a word I am extremely fond of—indeed, I am wedded to it for Scotland’s sake—but we also need independence because we need a brake on this Prime Minister. He must not be judge and jury on the ministerial code, and I shall lay out my reasoning on this using the Nolan principles. Selflessness—denying yourself what you want for the greater good—is not what our current Prime Minister is noted for. My constituents showed selflessness during the pandemic for the common weal—the greater good. Our current Prime Minister did not. He carried on regardless, and permitted an ethos in Downing Street in which those working for him believed, as he did, that the rules did not and should not apply to them. They allowed guardians and security staff who knew wrongdoing was afoot to be belittled. Nae selflessness, then.
Again, the rules do not apply to the PM. His ethos was, “I want my flat refurbished, but I don’t want to pay for it myself.” But donations and loans were not registered with the Electoral Commission during the statutory time limit. Nae integrity there. This Government acted illegally, as judged by the High Court, by having a covid VIP lane to give money to individuals and companies run by friends and donors to the Tory party. Nae objectivity. Then there was the Owen Paterson debacle, where the Prime Minister tried to condone egregious lobbying and contracts awarded to Tory donors—a running theme. This Prime Minister and his Government believe they can do what they like, and there is nae accountability.
The Prime Minister knew he had attended parties at No. 10, but he used weasel words to try to deny it. He breached the ministerial code by using “terminological inexactitude”. For my constituents’ benefit: that is sometimes known by you as lying.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. We are not having the word “lying”. That was stressed by the Speaker at the beginning of the debate, so please will you withdraw the word “lying”?
Marion Fellows
I will withdraw the word “lying”, and thank you for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I think my constituents struggle a bit with “terminological inexactitude”.
How does this Prime Minister deal with breaches of the ministerial code? Simple. You change it, or ignore it. So, nae openness. Partygate damaged our democracy, according to the Health Secretary, and since St Andrew’s day last year—189 days ago—we have heard nothing but, “We must move on. The Prime Minister saved us all during covid and he will save Ukraine. Nothing to see here, move along.” No acceptance of wrongdoing apart from set-piece apologies that were allegedly recanted at private meetings of the 1922 Committee. So nae honesty, either. To be a good—or even middling-to-good—leader, you need to have a moral compass. This Prime Minister has a well-hidden moral compass—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Was the hon. Lady trying to say that certain members of the Government were being dishonest when she said “nae honesty”?
Marion Fellows
Yes, I think that the Prime Minister—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Were you are accusing the Prime Minister of being dishonest? If so, can you withdraw that, too, please?
Marion Fellows
Sorry. Yes, of course.
Forty-one per cent. of the Prime Minister’s own MPs want him gone, a majority of his Back Benchers want him gone and even the Scottish Tories want him gone. It is worth repeating that former Tory MSP Adam Tomkins, a professor at the University of Glasgow, said:
“When a government asserts that the laws do not apply to it…such an assertion offends not only the law itself but our very idea of constitutional government.”
The former head of the Scottish Tories, Baroness Davidson, said the Prime Minister’s position is “untenable.” The Tory party knew what it was getting when it elected this Prime Minister as party leader, as he has a track record.
The current Tory leader in Scotland, the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), has been doing the hokey-cokey on the Prime Minister: in, out, in, out. He has not been able to make up his mind, but apparently he knows now that the Prime Minister should not be in office because he has not exhibited the correct leadership.
We in Scotland have not voted for a Conservative Government for 60 years, but we keep getting them, and this one is the worst so far. The only way forward is independence. We need to break free of this corrupt Government and their leader, who does not think truth matters and who thinks the rules do not apply to him.
I never expected to be a Member of Parliament, but I have been honoured to be returned three times. During that time, I have seen for myself how the public have lost faith in politicians. We need strong, enforceable standards for those in public life, and we need stronger, more enforceable standards for Ministers, and especially the Prime Minister. We need to build back trust in politics. In Scotland we will do that best by achieving independence; and here we will do it best by supporting this motion.
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Matt Western – 2022 Speech on Standards in Public Life
The speech made by Matt Western, the Labour MP for Warwick and Leamington, in the House of Commons on 7 June 2022.
I welcome the debate because it is important. Like so many of my colleagues, I want to see the full package of recommendations in the committee’s report accepted in their entirety. We must collectively restore transparency and integrity, and improve the accountability of all our institutions. That is why an incoming Labour Government would clean up politics and restore standards in public life, starting by introducing an ethics and integrity commission—a single, independent body, removed from politicians, that would roll at least three existing bodies into one.
Standards in public life should concern us all, as Members elected to public office. It is the highest honour, and the public rightly expect us to exercise the highest of public standards. When one of us breaches those standards, we all lose. One parliamentary scandal reflects poorly not just on the governing party of the time, but on our institutions, our democracy and our willingness to govern in the interests of the British people. That is why the Opposition have tabled a motion asking Members on both sides of the House to back the full package of the committee’s recommendations. We have done so because the ministerial code has been cracked by this Prime Minister and his Government. Until now, the code included the “overarching duty” of Ministers to comply with the law and to abide by the seven principles of public life: the Nolan principles, a set of ethical standards which apply to all holders of public office, with the general principle that
“Ministers of the Crown are expected to maintain high standards of behaviour and to behave in a way that upholds the highest standards of propriety.”
The ministerial code should be important in providing an essential backstop to prevent the degrading of public standards, as indeed it once did. When viewed alongside the Nolan principles—selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership—the code provides a key cornerstone for standards in our public life. What is most damaging is that, at a time when the Prime Minister’s lawbreaking and industrial-scale rule breaking at the heart of Government have finally been exposed, and at a time when he should have been tendering his resignation, he has instead rewritten the code. I am afraid that the Prime Minister is debasing the principles of public life before our very eyes. He is doing so through careful and calculated manipulation of the rules, bending them to suit his own interests. Now, following the publication of the Sue Gray report, in which she concluded that there were
“failures of leadership and judgement in No 10 and the Cabinet Office”,
he has concentrated even greater power in his own hands, while weakening standards in public life.
Far from “resetting the culture” of No. 10, the Prime Minister promised following the report’s publication, perhaps most self-servingly of all, to end the long-standing principle that those who breach the ministerial code should have to resign automatically. That might save not only him, but all those who would be complicit in these acts. Let us recall that, back in November 2020, the then adviser Sir Alex Allan resigned his post after the Prime Minister disagreed with the finding that the Home Secretary had broken the code. We now have an absurd situation in which the person who breached the ministerial code carries on with impunity, while those who are victims of the breaches feel that their only way out is to resign. The Prime Minister has also failed to outline the concrete sanctions for major breaches of the code. Here again we have the ridiculous situation of the more major the breach, the less clear the sanction. On this side of the House, we support graduated sanctions for minor breaches of the code, but the cherry-picking of sanctions to suit the Prime Minister is plain politicking with standards in public life.
By failing to guarantee the independence of the adviser or allow them to open investigations independently, the Prime Minister has gained a stranglehold over the whole process. He continues to retain the power to veto investigations, stripping the so-called independent adviser of any meaningful power. This is utterly wrong. In the Prime Minister’s latest diluted version, integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency and honesty have all disappeared from the face of the code. These changes, and the lack of changes, have hollowed out the ministerial code and created a centralised, authoritarian Government.
I find it telling that, in one of the letters of no confidence published yesterday, the Prime Minister was accused of importing
“elements of a presidential system of government that is entirely foreign to our constitution and law.”
One of the consequences of a centralised presidential system is seemingly the power to do away with accountability, scrutiny and criticism. It is just a shame that more MPs from the Conservative side could not see that last night. If the ministerial code now no longer has the teeth it needs to hold Ministers to account, Labour’s call for an independent integrity and ethics commission becomes all the more powerful. Labour has shown before how committed we are to improving standards in public life and we will show it again. Back in 1997, Prime Minister Tony Blair widened the terms of reference of the Committee on Standards in Public Life to cover the funding of political parties, and more recently my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) agreed to do the decent thing and resign if they were found to have breached the covid rules. That is probity, decency and trustworthiness.
It is a sad day for high standards in public life when we have to resort to taking this out of politicians’ hands because the current governing party manipulates the process to suit its leader’s interests. A failure to act now will see a continuing erosion and degradation of standards in our public life. From Paterson to partygate to allegations of sexual assault, now is the time for Conservative Members to vote for this motion. They could restore public trust in our politics, which would be in all our interests and strengthen the foundations of our democratic institutions.
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Toby Perkins – 2022 Speech on Standards in Public Life
The speech made by Toby Perkins, the Labour MP in Chesterfield, in the House of Commons on 7 June 2022.
Once again, the Labour party has to use one of our precious Opposition days to debate not the cost of living, NHS waiting times, court delays, falling apprenticeship numbers or any of the other manifest ways in which the Government are failing, but the standards and conduct of the Prime Minister. I do not say that critically—I am pleased that we have chosen to use today’s debate for that purpose—but it shows once again why the Prime Minister is not able to get on with it as a result of yesterday’s vote: in fact, he is the distraction that prevents this House from moving on. It shows why the 148 of his Members of Parliament who voted yesterday that they had no confidence in him were right.
British parliamentarians have often been asked to go overseas to nations considered to be less developed and provide them with advice about what a functioning democracy looks like. It is not an exaggeration to say that if we arrived as parliamentarians in another country to find that it had a leader whose response to being convicted of breaking the law was not to set about changing his behaviour, but to lower the standards to which members of his Government could be held, we would take a very dim view of that sort of democracy—but that is precisely what is happening here in the United Kingdom.
I have never had any regard for the political priorities of the Conservative party. I do not expect Tory Governments to be good for my constituency or to share my values. But I have respected the fact that, regardless of the difference in approach to matters such as public services and the economy, when it came to the basic rule of law there were things that united parliamentarians of all parties. Under this Prime Minister, I fear that that is no longer the case. That is why it is so important that Conservative Members are willing to be brave enough to stand up and speak out, because some of these matters are more important than narrow party political advantage, and so it is with today’s debate; and that is why I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Newton Abbott, who resigned yesterday as the Prime Minister’s anti-corruption tsar. I think that his letter was of real significance. He wrote to the Prime Minister:
“The only fair conclusion to draw from the Sue Gray report is that you have breached a fundamental principle of the ministerial code – a clear resigning matter.
Butt your letter to your independent adviser on the ministerial code ignores this absolutely central, non-negotiable issue completely. And, if it had addressed it, it is hard to see how it could have reached any other conclusion than that you had broken the code.”
I think those words are incredibly significant, I think they are brave, and I think the hon. Gentleman should be commended for having written them.
The Prime Minister’s own briefing to Conservative Members, which featured widely on Twitter yesterday, suggests that they must tolerate his behaviour because no one else is capable of leading them. I am afraid that too many people are missing the point here. The hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) said earlier that we were raising this issue because we did not like the Prime Minister, and he advocated a system of self-regulation. I think that if Conservative Members look daily at the Prime Minister and think, “There is no one in our whole parliamentary party with 360-odd members who could possibly perform in this way”, they must have a pretty low opinion of themselves, and I think that they may be wrong. I also think that the question of standards is not about whether or not one likes a person, but about whether the behaviour that that person has exhibited is tolerable in a functioning democracy, and I am afraid that, in the case of this Prime Minister, it is absolutely not.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
One way to cheat is to change the rules. We have seen the rules in the ministerial code being changed, and we are seeing a general levelling down of standards in public life. The idea that the Government can carry on marking their own homework is absurd. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need an independent commission on ethics and standards in public life, so that there is some accountability?
Mr Perkins
I certainly do. That is why I am happy to support the motion today, and why I was happy to support the committee’s recommendations.
I agree with Lord Evans that a graduated sanctions approach must go hand in hand with increasing the independence of the adviser. Recommendation 6 states:
“The Ministerial Code should detail a range of sanctions the Prime Minister may issue, including, but not limited to, apologies, fines, and asking for a minister’s resignation.”
The Paymaster General spoke about that more graduated approach, and I agree with that, but I also agree with Lord Evans that it must go hand in hand with recommendation 8, which states:
“ The Independent Adviser should be able to initiate investigations into breaches of the Ministerial Code”
—the Government propose not to heed that—and with recommendation 9, which states:
“The Independent Adviser should have the authority to determine breaches of the Ministerial Code.”
That seems to be the point: that the independent adviser determines whether the code has been breached, and it is for the Prime Minister then to decide what sanctions should be applied. What we have now, however, as we heard from the Paymaster General, is an approach whereby if the Prime Minister believes that he still has confidence in people—and I suspect that he will have confidence in the Culture Secretary almost regardless of what she says, because of her slavish support—that is good enough, and no standards are relevant.
As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), all of us in this place suffer from the allegation that “they are all the same.” Despair is the most corrosive emotion possible when it comes to politics, because it leads people to disengage and to decide that there is no point in engaging in politics in any way. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) spoke of a cross-party consensus, but how is that possible if the Prime Minister is willing, for political reasons, to overlook breaches of any kind if he thinks that it is in his political interests to do so?
A politically motivated standards regime that allows rules to be rewritten if they become inconvenient, and places the future of Ministers in the hands of the Prime Minister to vanquish or rescue as he sees fit, is not itself fit for the 21st century in a supposedly developed democracy. How can it be that the ministerial code, detailing the way in which those at the very top of the political tree operate, actually lags behind that which applies to MPs, peers and civil servants?
I also support the committee’s recommendation for reform of the powers of the commissioner for public appointments to provide a better guarantee of the independence of assessment panels.
Our politics is suffering from a crisis of public confidence, which is particularly dangerous at a time of national economic difficulty such as the one that we are currently experiencing. Only by increasing the independence and clarity of the rules and the rule arbiters can we have a hope of restoring public confidence in our politics, and it is for that reason that I support the motion.
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Amy Callaghan – 2022 Speech on Standards in Public Life
The speech made by Amy Callaghan, the SNP MP for East Dunbartonshire, in the House of Commons on 7 June 2022.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) on a great speech and on bringing the motion to the House.
We have had cash for honours, cash for contracts and even cash for curtains. This is a Government drenched in dirty money and dodgy deals, and when the truth is laid bare for all to see, they resort to amending the ministerial code, changing the rules to save their skin. The changes made to the ministerial code are transparent and stand in stark contrast to what we have heard from the Minister today. Our constituents can see that the Prime Minister has blatantly amended the code to suit himself and has simply selected the elements of the Sue Gray report that fit his ever-concerning rhetoric. If, as the Minister suggested, all the recommendations had been taken on board, there would have been no need for the motion or for this debate.
The truth is that we deserve better from our elected leaders, and when they do not live up to our expectations, checks and balances should come into effect. They should prevent this very situation. They should maintain faith in our democracy. They should prevent a liar from ever residing in 10 Downing Street. But the system is broken, the scale is askew and only a strengthened ministerial code could set the House to rights.
Where will this end? A lawbreaker is now being allowed to remain as Prime Minister because his own MPs say so. Partying, lying, amending the ministerial code, voter suppression, watering down human rights—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. You used the word “lying”. May I ask you to withdraw it?
Amy Callaghan
I withdraw the word “lying”.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Thank you.
Amy Callaghan
Partying, amending the ministerial code, voter suppression, watering down human rights: that is a worrying path for any Government to go down, but particularly this Government, given people’s lack of confidence in them. “Honour” and “decency” are words of the past instead of the present; they are no longer soundbites that could even be used to describe this UK Government.
This Government have made a mockery of this place, a mockery of the rules that we all lived by and a mockery of us all. Amending the ministerial code to keep in a job is corrupt to the core. I certainly support the motion.
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Karin Smyth – 2022 Speech on Standards in Public Life
The speech made by Karin Smyth, the Labour MP for Bristol South, in the House of Commons on 7 June 2022.
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), who is absolutely right that rules matter. I agree with him, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) that it is disappointing that there are not more Government Members speaking this afternoon, because this really matters to our constituents. Last night, Ministers were quick to say in the media, “Move on; no one cares,” but that is simply not true. No Government Members are here because they also know that this matters.
I have been contacted by several constituents about standards in public life. They think that the Prime Minister has breached their trust, and many think that his actions have been beyond sickening and disgusting. I share their anger about his wilful disregard of the ministerial code and the standards that we expect from our Prime Minister, and about the erosion of public trust in this institution and politics in general.
I serve as a member of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. I do not think that many among the public know much about that Committee or what it actually does, but as Members know well, Select Committees of the House are important bodies. They work well and have long been charged with the scrutiny of Government. We all sit in Committees rooms, off the Committee corridor, week after week, hearing in detail from expert witnesses and, often, members of the public about what is going on in the corridors of power. It is slow, deliberate work that often does not yield headlines.
PACAC continues to run a series of inquiries on propriety and ethics in the aftermath of the Greensill scandal—remember that one? In this debate, we have all resurrected scandals and issues that some of us might have forgotten. It seems incredible that it is only a few months since we had to go through the Owen Paterson debacle. We are conducting a number of inquiries, as well as having one-off regular sessions with leaders of what we can call the post-Nolan landscape bodies.
This is a useful, timely debate in many ways, but in other ways, our Committee wishes that it had come in another few weeks, because we will hear again from the chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments in the coming weeks. We will have Lord Geidt, the Cabinet Secretary and the head of propriety and ethics coming before us. We also recently heard from the former independent adviser, Sir Alex Allan, who resigned, and his predecessor. All that evidence is on the website, and all the transcripts are available. Without putting too much pressure on our Clerks and advisers, we will be reporting, as a result of those deliberations, on the general issue of propriety and ethics later in the summer.
I hope that the Government will heed our work and perhaps use the opportunity of this shameful episode in our country’s history to start working with the Committee more proactively to ensure that the highest standards are pursued. I also hope that the Government will use the great willingness of the leaders of the organisations that I mentioned, and of many Members here from across the House, to try to rescue public trust and pursue higher standards. It is now obvious that the whole edifice of what we might call the post-Nolan framework—reliance on the “good chaps” theory—collapses when the chap at the top and the chaps supporting him do not do the right thing.
We are at an extraordinary juncture of our parliamentary democracy. Lord Evans’s response to the Government agreed with Lord Geidt’s report that there was a “low level of ambition”. The report has been quoted a couple of times today, but for hon. Members who have not read it, it really is worth reading in full. Lord Geidt writes about the ministerial code and the work he was asked to do; without impugning him too much, I think he would pass the test for a “good chap” in terms of how he came into the post.
Lord Geidt describes what would be acceptable in normal circumstances, but goes on to say:
“The circumstances of the period covered by my report, however, have been far from normal. For much of the year, the conduct of the Prime Minister himself has potentially been subject to consideration against the requirements of the Code. Accordingly, and whether unfairly or not, an impression has developed that the Prime Minister may be unwilling to have his own conduct judged against the Code’s obligations.”
He describes the
“test for the credibility of these new arrangements”.
He writes:
“It may be especially difficult to inspire that trust in the Ministerial Code if any Prime Minister, whose code it is, declines to refer to it.”
He mentions the fixed penalty notice issued to the Prime Minister, requesting that the Prime Minister
“respond accordingly, setting out his case in public”
as to why he does not think that it
“might have constituted a breach of the overarching duty within the Ministerial Code”.
It is quite an extraordinary introduction to the annual report. In the circumstances of Lord Geidt’s appointment, it is really the strongest reference he could make to what he thinks is occurring.
The new introduction to the ministerial code, which hon. Members have referred to, essentially rejects the idea of anyone being held to account except by having a general election. Obviously the Opposition would welcome a general election at any point; I love elections, and we have had quite a lot of them. It is right that we are held to account by our constituents, but it matters to our constituents that the Opposition come here and hold the Government to account day by day, in Select Committees and with questions, including questions in response to ministerial statements. Constituents do not expect to have to hold the Government to account themselves every few months or, as has been the case, every couple of years when they think that the Government are not upholding the highest standards. That is why we need to rely on statements made at the Dispatch Box having the authority that the country expects. The new introduction gives us another insight, should we need one, into the mind and attitude of the Prime Minister, the Conservative party and this Government. That is why it was so disappointing, and why last night was so disappointing.
There was a lot of discussion about whether Sue Gray’s report would be independent. Let us stop a moment, stand back and think again about how some of what she reported, as a serving civil servant, was so shocking. She writes that
“events should not have been allowed to happen”
but that some of the more junior members of staff felt that what happened was okay because the
“senior leadership at the centre, both political and official”
essentially allowed it to happen. As she says, they
“must bear responsibility for this culture.”
Because of how our constitution now works and how the Government have behaved, all roads lead back to the chap at the top. The culture emanates from there, including non-attendance before Select Committees, late publication of documents and the many other examples that have been outlined today. However, my assurance to my constituents and the wider public is that the willingness we have shown in this place, in this debate and elsewhere, shows that we do love our country and our democracy. We think it can be better than it is at the moment. We will continue to work across Parliament, in Select Committees and in all our different ways to assure our constituents that the integrity, accountability and respect that need to exist in this place will exist again—with or without this Prime Minister.
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Justin Madders – 2022 Speech on Standards in Public Life
The speech made by Justin Madders, the Labour MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, in the House of Commons on 7 June 2022.
Over the last few days, I am afraid to say that I have heard far too many people seeking to excuse the inexcusable and defend the indefensible from the Prime Minister on the basis that he got the big calls right, or that he is an election winner. Well, I would certainly take issue with the former, and on the latter I simply say that past performance is no guarantee of future success. I do not want to talk about the merits or otherwise of this Government or this Prime Minister, because that misses the point of today’s debate, and misses an important part of our function here. Those factors should never be used to excuse rule-breaking anyway. We are not here just to deliver x or y policy for our constituents; we also have a wider responsibility on the way that politics is done. That is why tolerating the chipping away of our standards because the ends justify the means should never be an acceptable response from the Government. We are custodians of democracy. How we act, what we say and where we set the limits of adherence to the rules all matter. because they form the baseline for the next generation to work from. If we are not careful, bit by bit, the standards and behaviours that we take for granted will be lost.
Our liberal democracy is fragile, and it cannot be taken for granted. It has to be cherished, nurtured and supported by us as its guardians every single day. Every watering down of the rules, every reduction in transparency, every snub to accountability has to be challenged, because many Governments want to maximise control and minimise risk. Many Governments also have a respect for the rules and understand their place in history, but when we have a Government with a track record like this one, it really is up to us to push back. Be it by shutting down Parliament, green-lighting breaking the law in a specific and limited way, trying to wriggle out of treaties they have just signed, changing the way standards rules operate retrospectively or excusing breaches of the ministerial code, this Government have a wretched track record of ignoring the rules when it suits them. But rules matter, and how our politics is conducted should be bigger than any individual Government. This place should be a force for good, for change and for the benefit of all. When the rules are bent, ignored or changed to suit a short-term political agenda, we all pay a long-term price.
This is all about the tone set from the top. It is about leadership. When the Government are led, as they are, by a Prime Minister who behaves as though the rules never apply to him, and who has used every trick in the book to wriggle out of responsibility, we risk slipping into an authoritarian style of Government that we will not easily shake off. Our electoral system and unwritten constitution mean that it is quite possible to have a Government, as we do, who can push through whatever they want and a Prime Minister who believes that he can get away with whatever he wishes to.
Our parliamentary system has relied on people behaving with honour and respecting conventions. However, when people do not live up to those ideals, and are at best agnostic on, or at worst hostile to, standards, the weaknesses in our system become all too apparent. Democracy is then damaged, and it dies not with a bang, but with a whimper over a period of years, with a tweaking of the rules here and a ditching of a convention there. We have a Government who have become arrogant because of the size of their majority and contemptuous about the need for probity.
If people see continual abuse of the rules and ever-shifting sands of accountability, they end up saying that we are all as bad as one another, that no politicians can be trusted, and that evasiveness and avarice are baked into the body politic, and if they vote at all, they do so holding their nose. There is no shortage of people out there who are only too willing to believe that that is true of every one of us here. They are only too willing to call us out for being motivated solely by personal gain, and for lacking any kind of responsibility for what we do in office. We do not need to give them any fuel for the fire. We need to show them that it is possible to govern selflessly in the public interest, that standards in public life matter, and that, when it comes to protecting democracy, we can lead, not just follow.
We have heard how the new code will, in effect, make the Prime Minister judge and jury of whatever process or complaint is put before him. That really grates for a lot of my constituents, who would question whether they have ever had that degree of discretion or latitude in their dealings with Departments, and whether they have had the opportunity to appeal decisions made against on benefit overpayment, child maintenance and the loan charge. People feel that the rules have not been applied fairly to them, and they then see the Government changing the rules as they see fit.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about rules. St Thomas More—a former occupant of your Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker—said that this land is planted with rules, and that those rules, like trees, are there to protect us when the wind turns. This issue is about not just this Administration or this Parliament, but Administrations and Parliaments to come. That is why this debate is so important.
Justin Madders
I totally agree, which is why what we are arguing for today is so important. These rules will change over time, but it is up to us to ensure that the principles of democracy and accountability stand the test of time. I am afraid that they are under severe attack.
When I was a local councillor, a long time ago, we had something called the standards board, which was independent, well respected and robust. There was never any question about whether councillors could go on that and determine their fate or decide whether matters would be investigated. The system upheld the seven Nolan principles and was firm but fair. The Prime Minister does not believe that those kinds of principles can apply to how he judges complaints, but how is it possible that when I was a local councillor, we had a far more robust system? That simply does not stack up.
At the end of the day, the rules should be followed by everyone and should not be changed or watered down in the short term for political convenience. If the Government can avoid the rules whenever they have an inconvenient outcome, how can we tell the public that they have to follow the rules that the Government set? If another lockdown was needed, the incumbent of Downing Street would find it difficult to tell people authoritatively to obey the rules, given what they now know.
Standards should not be seen as something to be avoided or ignored when the going gets tough. Those values have to be central to how we conduct our business. The ministerial code should not be routinely ignored, as it is, nor should it be altered to suit the Prime Minister of the day. We have to be better than that. We have to be an exemplar—a beacon of excellence. We should remember that what we say and do here matters, not just now, but for the future, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) said, because democracy is only as strong as those who are prepared to defend it. Having seen the empty Government Benches, I do not think that there are enough Government Members who are prepared to do that.