Standards in Public Life

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, when I first came into this House, I was told, pretty much, you could say anything you wanted as long as you were polite about it. That is actually quite a serious point. I think sometimes the tone of our debate and the politeness that we deploy when speaking lower the temperature, so we do not get the rudeness that we see in some other political forums.

On trust in public life, it is the bad apple syndrome, is it not? One person does something wrong and we are all tarred with the same brush: people think, “You’re in it for yourselves; you don’t believe in what you’re saying”. Yet we know that most people—the overwhelming majority of people in your Lordships’ House, as I said earlier—are here because of public service and they believe in what they do. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, mentioned about trust in public life, we do have a duty. The noble and right reverend Lord is right that we have a Code of Conduct and we should stick with that, but if he is asking me whether there is no area in it which can be reviewed and possibly improved, then I think, yes, we should say it can be reviewed and there is always room for improvement.

I take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on one point, though. When he was speaking earlier, he described this as a part-time House. We are not a part-time House. We do not expect all Members to be here full-time; it is a full-time House where Members contribute when they can. I always wince slightly, when we sit longer and later than the other end of the building, that we should ever be called part-time.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I certainly echo that final point and I suspect many of us regard this as a full-time House, in addition to which we do lots of other things, so it becomes a double full-time House from that point of view.

This is a very wide-ranging Statement, and a fairly eclectic range of questions have been asked by your Lordships. I would like to pick up just two points. First, there is sometimes a collective desire to rush forward in judgment about individuals. Sometimes those individuals perhaps deserve that judgement, but we must surely—and I hope the Leader of the House will confirm this—make sure there is proper due process about any decisions being taken about any individual in this context. Secondly, she has expressed the view that the Cabinet handbook and the guidance and so on are long overdue an overhaul, and I think many of your Lordships would welcome that. Could she also say what she thinks is the appropriate level of core skills and training that should be given to Ministers and prospective Ministers?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The due process point is important—I have tried to come back to that several times during the answers I have been giving this afternoon. That is why I declined to answer in detail the question from the noble Lord, Lord Harper, as well. There has to be a process in place so that, whatever the circumstances, we know the route to take. My noble friend is absolutely right to say that, and that is why I wanted to comment on some of the questions more thoroughly.

Core training is really interesting. I have been put in charge of training for Ministers. I am not aware of any core training for Ministers; other noble Lords who have been Ministers may think differently. It can be a bit patchy. Sometimes there is very good training. I remember having resilience training and crisis training in the past. I have had other issues where we have had to look in detail and see how we might react in certain circumstances. It is one of those jobs where there is no blueprint and Ministers do it differently depending on the job they have and the role they have. But one of the things I would advise any new Minister to do is to talk to somebody who has done the job before, from either party, because I think you would always get good advice from people who have experience.