Cabinet Manual: Revision (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, start by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, back. It is tremendous to see him again. We have missed him greatly. I gather he was compared to Bagehot, not Dicey. I have also always doubted the value of Dicey as a constitutional expert since I first read his views on Irish home rule. They seemed to bias his entire approach to sovereignty, the rule of law and almost everything else. Unfortunately, he still takes rather too much credit for the values which some address to the idea of unified sovereignty.

I recall being one of those who in 1996 invited the then Peter Hennessy to give a lecture on how to form a coalition Government, just in case we needed to have some obiter dicta when it came to the 1997 election. Indeed, I looked in the Cabinet Manual again to see what it says about government formation because I note that the report says:

“it is in the processes of elections and the formation of government that the Cabinet Manual most often comes out and is used.”

That probably adds to the argument for wanting to update it in the coming period.

We may or may not be about to face an election that will not lead to an overall majority, but I think we are now clear that coalition does not lead to chaos and single-party government does not necessarily lead to stable government. We have had the chaos of single-party government over the course of the past year, and to move, perhaps, back to a coalition would at least mean that formal meetings would have to take place between both sides. We shall see.

There were a number of things that were not right in the coalition. Indeed, I remember an occasion when the Secretary of State of the department to which I was attached changed, and the new Conservative Secretary of State, who obviously had not quite understood what a coalition meant, said that he did not need to have ministerial meetings inside the department more than once every six weeks just before Commons Questions and appeared not to be at all fazed when I pointed out that I was there in the department partly to make sure that arguments between the two parties did not escalate to the quad. So, there were problems with the coalition, but it does suggest that stable government is one of the things that it produced.

I have just read the excellent review of Sebastian Payne’s latest book, on the rise and fall of Boris Johnson, in the House magazine, by my good friend, Keith Simpson, a stolid Conservative MP. He remarks on how shocked he was by the degree of chaos that existed in No. 10 and, in the heart of the chaos and the atmosphere, the belief that conventional rules did not apply to him. I have on my study table The Bonfire of the Decencies to read over Christmas, and I have no doubt that that will have more to say on the same subject.

We may now hope that, with the Sunak Government, the chaos will subside and we will perhaps return to the constitutional government which, in his accession oath, the King swore to uphold. One of the things that pained me over the past 18 months was to have to witness the noble Lord, Lord True, defending some of the chaotic and convention-bucking behaviour of the Government, which I suppose he felt he had to do. I also welcome him back to constitutional conservativism, and I am sure that he will feel much more comfortable in that position.

The UK is a parliamentary democracy, as the Cabinet Manual sets out. It is not a populist democracy in which the Prime Minister owes his accountability only to the people—whoever they may be. Government is a complex process in which dialogue with other parties and scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament, and by others, is a necessary part. That is part of the complexity in which we live. We know the damage that the populist surge has done to our convention-based parliamentary democracy, and the Cabinet Manual, as well as the Ministerial Code and the associated codes, are part of what has begun to set out those conventions rather more clearly than they were.

Although the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has now gone, I cannot resist saying that I could not find anywhere in the Cabinet Manual a conventional principle that was quoted at me by the Cabinet Office some weeks ago as a reason why I could not put down an amendment—the principle of the indivisibility of the Crown. It was not a convention I had heard of before. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, assured me that it existed in the 17th century, but I am not sure that it needs to be referred to any longer now.

There is a range of things which we need to reassert as regards conventional behaviour, and we need to make sure that they are agreed among the parties. As the report says, it is important that this, as an operating manual,

“has cross-party recognition and political legitimacy.”

So consultation, as the Cabinet Manual is revised, is also an important point.

We recognise that, if there is a change of Government, in no time at all we shall have the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, leaping to his feet to tell us that they are behaving unconstitutionally, as he used to do. But he will need to be able to quote sources in order to be able to say that they are behaving unconstitutionally. The Cabinet Manual is, for that purpose, extremely important.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, mentioned many of the things that have gone wrong: the relations between Ministers and civil servants, which are worse than I can ever remember since I started my career; bullying and harassment, and low morale in the Civil Service; and breaches of conventions and codes in public appointments. That all now needs to be addressed. The noble Lord, Lord True, shakes his head but I hope he agrees that we need to make sure that the standards are maintained, even if he wishes to insist—I understand why he might wish to try to do so—that these standards have not been breached as badly as we all consider them to have been.

There seem to be some incremental changes which we could pursue. Training for Ministers is desirable. The Institute for Government is developing some, and training for the Opposition and before an election is clearly an important part of that. A reduction in ministerial churn is vitally important. One of the things that is most unfortunate about the culture of government is that ministerial reshuffles have now become an aspect of party management, so that many Ministers are not in office for more than about nine months at a time, when we all know it takes 18 months to two years to master a subject when you are in office. Let us hope that ministerial churn will now be resisted.

I very much appreciate the suggestion of a prime ministerial oath, and I hope that that will be pursued further. A new Parliament will need to look again at the whole concept of the prerogative and how far prerogative power now extends. There were a number of Commons Select Committee reports on that in the late 2008-09 period, and it is time for us to go back to that.

I hope that noble Lords will be looking at the Private Member’s Bill in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, on public service, ethics and integrity. It is unfortunately rather low down the list of Private Members’ Bills at the moment, but it sets out a process whereby we would make the independent adviser to the Prime Minister, the House of Lords Appointments Commission and the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments more statutory and firm in their basis. Those are incremental changes that we could make, but let us start with a clear commitment that the Cabinet Manual will be revised before the end of 2024, that there will be adequate consultation with committees in both Houses and with the Opposition, and that we are returning to constitutional government.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the committee for what I was going to call its timely report, but of course it has been published for some time now. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lady Drake for her excellent introduction to what is a relatively short and concise report. Its recommendations are pretty concise too. The fundamental question to which I hope the Minister will be able to reply is the one on timetable and consultation; he has already conceded that there will be a revision.

As the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, correctly said, one of the problems is this “from time to time revision”. But we now have the relevant technology, and in the previous debate we talked about how technology can be used for efficient government. One way to do that, as it is a manual and not a code, would be to revise it on a weekly basis, which could be done. There is no need for a delay, especially as it does not need the sort of approval that a code might need.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said, the manual is a survey map of existing codes and laws. I too welcome back the noble Lord; I am pleased to see him here. One of his excellent skills was being able to sit down with me and make sure I gave him all the secret information I could from my conversations in the party and within politics; he is very good at that.

We have talked about the connections of codes, the Nolan principles and why they were developed, and where boundaries are drawn. I was struck by the reference made by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, to “good chaps” government. As a historian, where do you learn most about what happened? I do not think you learn from codes, laws and manuals. As the noble Lord knows, we learn the most from the published diaries of politicians. I have mentioned on previous occasions that I am currently ploughing my way through three volumes of Chips Channon’s diaries. If anyone wants to know about hypocrisy in Parliament and among politicians, they should certainly read that. Having failed to do so on previous occasions, I pay tribute to Simon Heffer, who has done an amazing job of editing those diaries, making sure that for all the nasty references there are good footnotes. One amazing thing is that I have been able to speak to many noble Lords in this House about what was said about their families.

It comes back to the fact that our system of government has become far more transparent, and the transparency that we now have places a bigger obligation on us to abide by codes of practice. In the past, the things that Chips Channon talked about would never have been published, especially as most of the media that people read at that time was controlled by six of the politicians who were in this House. It is an amazing thing that we now have to face up to; that transparency places an obligation on us all.

I like the idea the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, had for an oath. We would expect every Prime Minister to abide by certain standards—it is a given—especially the Nolan principles. An oath places greater transparency on the person; the public would know that certain behaviour is not acceptable and that that person is breaking it. One of the issues of a written manual is the point that the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, mentioned: when does a precedent become a convention? That is a difficult one. I was listening to a Radio 4 programme “Archive on 4” about when an original phrase becomes a cliché. The issue is when it is repeated, and that is what we have to expect. Some of the best speeches are now clichés if they are repeated often enough.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, talked about stable government and coalitions. In Chips Channon’s diaries you learn a lot about the coalitions in our political process, which are not coalitions formed from different parties. The biggest coalitions we have in our political system are political parties themselves—which is why we have many of the problems. One of the tensions in our parliamentary democracy—I suppose I am entitled to say this—is that the political parties have to learn the lesson about the temptation to engage with their party memberships on how they elect their leaders. It imposes all kinds of problems on our parliamentary democracy in terms of collective responsibility. I said in an earlier debate that I was old-fashioned new Labour. Some things we have to learn from. I do not suppose that the Conservative Party will be too tempted to turn to its party membership again to elect a Prime Minister. Of course, that is what we are doing when we elect leaders of our political parties.

To return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on coalitions, one of the problems with coalitions is that with a single-party coalition at least we know who takes responsibility when things go wrong but with multi-party coalitions parties never want to take responsibility when things go wrong. I certainly found that with the Liberal Democrats, but I am sure the Minister will remind us of that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Yes, certainly.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

In conclusion, this is a good, straightforward report, which requires a straightforward response. One thing about the standards of Prime Ministers is the question of the independent ethics adviser, which I know the Minister has responded to. In a previous debate, we had a long debate with his ministerial colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about the problems of recruitment in the public sector. This is certainly one post which seems to have a big problem with recruitment. Why has it taken so long? It is a very important part of the range of codes and responsibilities. Issues are now not being addressed by an ethics adviser—who should have been appointed—but we are getting to the stage of employing casual labour, as it were, to do the job. If there is a specific complaint, they bring in someone to deal with it. Surely that cannot be right. We need somebody who can be properly held accountable. I hope that the Minister will respond not only on the timetable on the Cabinet Manual but on the timetable for appointing an ethics adviser to the Prime Minister. We have waited too long for that.