Ministerial Code

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, as I said in my original Answer, Ministers are personally responsible for deciding how to act and conduct themselves in the light of the code, and for justifying their actions and conduct to Parliament and the public. I refer the noble Lord opposite to the statement that my noble friend Lord Goldsmith put out yesterday, in which he said:

“I did not authorise & do not support anything that would have put animals’ lives ahead of people’s … I never discussed the … charity or their efforts to evacuate animals with the”


Prime Minister.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, did the Minister by any chance see the strapline comment by Guido Fawkes over the video of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, leaving the Chamber, which read, “We have now reached the point where Ministers have to explain which scandal of the Government’s they are resigning over”? We have another scandal here—an apparent contradiction between what one Minister has said and what it appears from the official record—which needs to be cleared up. We have a Ministerial Code which is effectively policed by a Prime Minister who has now lost public trust. Could not the Government begin to regain public trust by accepting recommendations from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that the Ministerial Code should be placed on a firmer statutory basis?

[Lord True (Con)]

The noble Lord started off with “scandal” and retreated to “apparent contradiction”. I would advise him and others to refer both to the statement put out by my noble friend Lord Goldsmith and the official statements put out by No. 10 Downing Street and the Defence Secretary at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee yesterday.