Cabinet Manual: Revision (Constitution Committee Report)

Debate between Baroness Barker and Lord Berkeley

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lady Drake and the committee on this fantastic piece of work. It has also set alight a lot of wonderful comments from noble Lords in this debate, particularly about the need to move on from the era of “good chaps”. Nowadays many of us are not good and we are certainly not all chaps. We have to move on from that.

I want to give a small example of a failure of the Ministerial Code which reflects a complaint against the Prime Minister of the day. Maybe the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, will have solved the problem when we hear more about his ideas, but it seems to me that we are ending up with the Prime Minister being judge, jury and defence. That does not help public trust.

I wrote to the Cabinet Secretary in July 2021, asking him to investigate allegations that Ministers had failed to comply with paragraph 1.3 of the Ministerial Code, by failing to give

“accurate and truthful information to Parliament”,

knowingly misleading Parliament and failing to be

“as open as possible with Parliament”.

I was complaining about the Department for Transport. It was very helpful, because the Cabinet Secretary passed the letter to the department for a reply, which was of course not very helpful, because it was a long letter of defence.

I thought I would have another go and asked the Cabinet Secretary what he was going to do about that. He said that he could not do anything because

“the decision to investigate matters, and on the appropriate action to be taken, lies with”

the Prime Minister. So I wrote to the Prime Minister, but of course I did not get a reply. I could try again a year later, but it comes back to the fact that, under the code, the Prime Minister is responsible for taking action, and he did nothing.

Other noble Lords have mentioned other failings and the allegations of Ministerial Code breaches within the last five years. I got rather a long list from the Library when I asked, which I found rather depressing. Noble Lords will know all about them: Michael Fallon, Priti Patel, Damian Green, Amber Rudd, Mark Field, Matt Hancock. I am not going to go into what each one of them was alleged to have done because it does not really matter—well, it does matter, but that is not the point of what I am trying to say now.

The worst examples were the allegations against the then Prime Minister about the cost of his wallpaper and things like that. Again, the subject does not matter particularly, but the question I have is about who deals with this. Who deals with the allegations of failure to comply, misleading Parliament, and so on? Is it the independent adviser or the ethics adviser? I do not think the present Prime Minister has either of those at the moment; maybe I am wrong about that, but if he has, we have not heard much about it. Who is responsible for making sure that these people’s advice is independent? Who enforces this?

When he comes to respond, my question for the noble Lord, Lord True, is this: who is actually in charge of deciding what the Prime Minister does and whether he or she responds, and of ensuring that action is taken? As my noble friend said in relation to the succession Bill a couple of weeks ago, it is all right if the Prime Minister is a good chap, or whatever the female equivalent might be, but some Prime Ministers, and some monarchs, have been seen to go mad, or something has gone wrong, and we need to have a way of solving this problem, even when the final decision is alleged to be at the top level. That is why I have great hope in the new ideas from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—maybe they will solve the problem.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, we will try to re-establish a connection with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport.

EU: Future Relationship

Debate between Baroness Barker and Lord Berkeley

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I address my remarks this afternoon to the frontier controls and customs arrangements because we have three months to the end of the transition. Many noble Lords have spoken about whether we are going to get a deal but many of the frontier issues will be similar, if not the same, whether we have a deal or not. Businesses should still be ready and still expect the Government in their dealings with them to be open, transparent and inclusive with information and with what has to be done.

As is so often the case in this sphere, we have heard lots of good words from the Government which are mostly, sadly, motherhood and apple pie. We seem to be getting into a big blame game, with the Government seeking to blame business, the EU and the electorate for their own failings. I know that the electorate voted in favour of Brexit, but I do not think they voted in favour of the chaos that we are seeing. As many noble Lords know, the devil is in the detail. It can have a massive adverse effect on business, as many noble Lords have already mentioned. We are not told the detail at the moment, nor even the options. In some of the discussions I have heard, I question whether Ministers themselves actually understand what is needed or listen to their officials who clearly do know.

In the Guardian today there is a report of a letter that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster wrote to the haulage industry and customers earlier this month —I have a copy of it—saying that we face some 7,000 trucks in a queue in Kent. Mr Gove claims that the cause of the delay is the traders not being ready. That is blaming the traders again. The Secretary of State for the Environment, George Eustice, similarly blamed other people for the delays. After Mr Gove wrote the letter, industry representatives had a meeting last week with him, the Secretary of State for Transport and the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, from the Treasury. They discussed three separate issues: the need for intermediaries, the readiness of systems, and the physical infrastructure. All these are needed, whatever the outcome of the negotiations. I think about 40 people were at the meeting. A report of the meeting said that there was

“frustration over the lack of clarity and too many unanswered questions.”

On intermediaries, questions were asked about

“how the cap on state aid could be lifted and potential use of government loans”.

It was questioned how systems

“could be made ready earlier to allow training and familiarisation to take place”.

Of course, this should have happened many months ago. The Government are blaming the industry for not having 50,000 intermediaries to do it for them. We do not know who is going to pay for it. It is a serious issue. At the port there are quite a few structures required and arrangements. Who is going to pay for them and when are they going to be in position?

Then at the meeting we heard more motherhood and apple pie when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was quoted as saying that

“he hoped that the EU would not take a rigid interpretation on all legislation”.

Well, isn’t that lovely? Why should the EU give way on this when we are digging our heels in as hard as we possibly can?

In the end, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said, in summing up,

“if businesses haven’t prepared they will suffer against what is a known change”.

Does the Minister know what the “known change” is? Has he told anybody? Has the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster told anybody? It is clearly still a secret.

All the Government talk about now is in the export direction. We have heard very little about what might happen on the French or the continental side apart from the fact that the Government have decided that they will not require all the paperwork to be complete on the incoming direction for six months—but only for certain cargoes. We know that cargoes will not be allowed on to the ferries unless they have all the right paperwork.

It is really wrong that the Government are allowing this to carry on, with George Eustice saying that the queues are down to “slipshod” EU lack of planning. That is not a good way—indeed, it is a very bad way—to conduct negotiations. It is no way to undertake a trade negotiation with our major trading partner. As many noble Lords have said, something like 40% of our exports go to the EU.

I believe that Ministers should know most of the detailed changes that will be required, whatever the outcome, but the Government are failing miserably to share this with businesses so that their systems and their staff can be ready for the changes. Do they really know what has to be done? Should they not be proactive and positive in helping? I am afraid that, if they are not, many businesses will give up and, after a few weeks or months, settle fully on the continent. I hope I am wrong. But I wish the Minister would confirm that the Government will stop blaming businesses, the EU or the coronavirus crisis. It is down to the Government to sort this out.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that the time limit for contributions is a maximum of seven minutes. I call the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza.