House of Lords Commissioners for Standards

Motion to Approve

Moved by

That the House approves the appointment as House of Lords Commissioners for Standards of (1) Martin Jelley QPM for a period of five years beginning on 1 July 2021, and (2) Karimullah Hyat Akbar Khan for a period of four and a half years beginning on 1 June 2021.

My Lords, the Motion standing in my name invites the House to appoint two new Commissioners for Standards. It does not relate to membership of the Conduct Committee, a subject that was recently raised by several noble Lords. I have written to them separately to address those points. Today’s Motion concerns only the appointment of two new Commissioners for Standards.

The office of an independent commissioner investigating breaches of the code and guide goes back to a decision of the House in 2009. The first commissioner served two three-year periods. The current commissioner, Lucy Scott-Moncrieff, has served a five-year period and was engaged to commit five days a month. Her term expires at the end of this month.

I take this opportunity to say a word of thanks to our current commissioner for her work during her term in office. In her time, the work of the commissioner has changed radically, in particular with the introduction, in 2009, of provisions relating to bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct which, sadly, have received quite a bit of attention in the commissioner’s reports since then. The size, nature and complexity of her case load is therefore quite different from when she was appointed in 2016. She has dealt with several challenging investigations, some of which have come to the Conduct Committee on appeal, which could not have been foreseen by her, or by anyone, when she took up the post. It is the changing nature and volume of the work of the commissioner that leads us to recommend the appointment of two commissioners to replace Ms Scott-Moncrieff, each with a basic commitment to five days a month. By having two commissioners, we are building greater capacity and resilience into the enforcement of the code.

I chaired the recruitment panel, which was made up of three Members of this House in addition—the noble Baronesses, Lady Anelay of St Johns, Lady Donaghy and Lady Hussein-Ece—and two external members of our committee, Cindy Butts and Vanessa Davies. After a detailed process, guided by recruitment experts and accompanied by a shortlist, and consideration of the dozen shortlisted and interviews of five, we concluded that Mr Martin Jelley and Mr Akbar Khan should be appointed.

I will now call the following Members to speak: the noble Lords, Lord Cormack, Lord Balfe and Lord Hamilton of Epsom.

My Lords, I am grateful to you and apologise for speaking on a similar topic three times in as many weeks, but I am profoundly concerned by the manner in which the retiring commissioner handled the issue of noble Lords who had failed to complete their compulsory training within a certain time. On both occasions when I spoke before, I raised the insensitive way in which the case of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, in particular, has been handled. It seemed to be a mixture of gracelessness, insensitivity and ineptitude. If we are to continue to have a commissioner—I accept that we are—I would like to address one or two questions to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance. I am delighted that he is with us in the Chamber on this occasion, so that we can talk to him directly.

I am not entirely persuaded that we need two commissioners. I wonder why we cannot have one doing 10 days a month, rather than two doing five. In that way, the person concerned would surely get to know your Lordships’ House rather better. The basic problem, until now, has been an inability fully to understand the nature of your Lordships’ House and how it works. I regret that we have to have outside commissioners, but I accept that what has happened will continue to happen. Within its membership, this House has an enormous range of wisdom and experience. It is unlike any other institution in the country in its size, complexity and the variegated wisdom of its Members. It is very important that, whether one commissioner or two, he or they—they are both men in this case—should get to know what we are all about.

It is a very small thing, but I am somewhat put off by the biographical notes. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, rightly referred to Mr Khan and Mr Jelley, but they are referred to by their first names throughout the biographical details that we have been given. It is a small point, but there has to be a degree of formality and it is not here.

My Lords, I will not repeat what my noble friend Lord Cormack said, except to say that I did not disagree with anything he said. I also echo that it is a pleasure to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, in the Chamber.

My first question is why we need the commissioners to spend 10 days a month looking at the standards in the Lords. Have they slipped so far? Secondly, why do we need two commissioners? Will they each have a caseload? I would have thought that it would be better if we had one commissioner, who would get to know the House better by doing 10 days a month. I would rather that he was doing the days necessary to do the job, up to 10 days a month, because I am aware, from a long life of bureaucracy, that it tends to expand to fill the gap available—he would then say that it should be 11 days, because 10 days is not quite enough. I am always concerned at the length of time set aside.

My noble friend Lord Cormack referred to the former Speaker of the Commons and the difficulties there. One of the first things that should be done is to publish, for the general public to see, this course that we have all taken, because I found it patently ridiculous, frankly. It taught me absolutely nothing, apart from the fact that there is some very easy money to be made out there by designing courses that are pretty irrelevant.

I came into contact with the commission over a much more minor, but fundamental, case; that of the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis. I always felt happy defending the noble Lord, because there was absolutely nothing I agreed with him on in politics. I did not agree with his attitudes to divorce, abortion, Northern Ireland or anything at all, so I always felt that I could look at his case as a straightforward one of whether or not he should have been suspended. To me, the way in which the procedure worked, with no opportunities for any input and no appeal, was unsatisfactory. Maybe we need some sort of private hearing—maybe we do not want it on the Floor of the House—but we cannot have a system that is quite as closed as that one.

Before I call the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, I will let the House know that the list has been growing exponentially. After him, I will call the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham of Droxford, then the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, then the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, and then the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin.

My Lords, I also welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, being in the House today. I have two questions for him to do with Valuing Everyone. I apologise, because I know that the Motion he moved has nothing to do with that, but there are very rare occasions when we can question him and his committee on what they are doing.

When I last spoke on this issue, the Valuing Everyone course was costing the taxpayer £750,000. That now seems to have gone up, and is little short of £900,000. That seems an awful lot of taxpayers’ money to spend on a course of extremely dubious value. When the noble and learned Lord’s committee were spending this amount of taxpayers’ money, why did it not get the people it was commissioning to come and give the course to it before it signed the contract to spend all this money, so that the committee at least knew what course it was inflicting on everybody in your Lordships’ House and in the other House?

The other question is this: is this really the right reaction to a handful of people behaving in a very bad way? It seems an incredibly broad-brush approach to send everybody on a rather questionable course, when most people in your Lordships’ House behave, I would have thought, pretty immaculately. We are talking about a very small minority of people, yet we subject everybody in your Lordships’ House to going on this course and to facing certain restrictions if they do not attend. This is where I might fall out with my noble friend Lord Balfe, but I wonder whether exemplary punishments of the few people who do misbehave would be a much better use of resources and save the taxpayer enormous sums of money.

My Lords, before I call the next speaker I will rehearse the order in which noble Lords will be called. It will be the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, next, then the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, then the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham of Droxford, and finally the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark.

My Lords, I declare that I am a member of the Conduct Committee and have been for the past year. I was on the appointments sub-committee which appointed the two commissioners that the Motion before the House seeks to recognise.

I want to respond to a couple of points. The appointments were made in line with the Nolan principles of public life. In addition, I want noble Lords to note that we followed the principles of the Governance Code for Public Appointments, which set out another layer of principles based on merit that should underpin all public appointments. I ask noble Lords to have confidence in these appointments. I understand that there is some disquiet, but I give that reassurance. I was involved very vigorously, right the way through the process, and the appointments were based purely on merit. I have no hesitation in supporting the Motion.

Turning to “Valuing People”, which was questioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and others, there were certainly questions about it and its cost during the debate on 13 May. According to the report that we received and the House approved, the cost is for the entire Palace of Westminster, not just the House of Lords. If that has not been made clear, I am sorry, but I ask noble Lords to note that it is the cost for the House of Commons and the House of Lords. All Peers who are members of the Conduct Committee had the training at the beginning. I found it helpful, as others have said they did. The feedback from the vast majority of Peers who went on that course has been extremely positive.

Of course, there have been comments on how we could improve and update things, and we have taken them on board. I have my own comments on how we could make it more relevant to noble Lords who do not employ staff. That is something that we must look at, but every other publicly funded institution—local authorities, the police, the NHS—are all training people in these matters: how we value our staff, how we value each other and how we respond to each other. There is no suggestion that the vast majority in your Lordships’ House are disrespectful to staff or to one another, but the staff are also consulted. They are part of the process, and the feedback that we get from staff is that they want Peers to go on this training. They want to be valued.

These things do not all take place in plain sight. Some cases that have come before us have been unfortunate. Staff have been mistreated and we must respect how they feel. To suggest that we should not have training, and should somehow not be in tune with what the staff are asking us to do, would be remiss. We must be sensitive, not only to each other, here in your Lordships’ House—we are all very privileged to be here—but to the staff who keep this place working and functioning, if they are telling us that they want training and for Peers to be more respectful and to understand the sometimes difficult circumstances that they work in, and the power imbalance.

We must also respect that some staff have found it very difficult to report misdemeanours. I ask that we are mindful that we are not only talking about and among ourselves, but to our staff and to the general public. We all know that we are not much loved in the media or by the general public, and we must enhance our reputation in how we do business. Therefore, I ask noble Lords to support the Motion and to bear in mind that we are being scrutinised more than ever and must uphold these very high standards.

My Lords, I echo almost everything said by the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece. Given the number of questions raised so far, may I draw the House’s attention to the formal training in equality matters, which has been embedded in the mainstream practice of most institutions and their governance? I welcome its inclusion for all Members and found it most informative. Given our desire for a more diverse management team in this House, I particularly welcome the appointment of Mr Akbar Khan, who will bring significant experience of managing very diverse heads of Commonwealth Governments. I hope we will give him all our support to ensure that his work is effective.