Conduct Committee — House of Lords, 2021-04-20
Topic: Mixed Topics
Rita Donaghy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am very glad that we have had this debate. I shall thank one or two people before I reply. First, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston. It is always very nice to have a former Leader of the House backing you up. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who hit the nail on the head about the decisions we are taking today. I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, for his collegiate approach, which is very much appreciated I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in today’s important debate on what is a difficult issue. The views expressed are strongly and sincerely held. I cannot promise to address all the points made, but I will answer as many as I can, not necessarily in the order of those speaking The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, raised points about his long and ongoing arbitration. I think the committee, in keeping all this under constant review, will also keep an eye on the grace period. If it becomes clear that there are a lot of difficulties like those that he outlined which cannot be resolved by the end of 2021, I am sure it would consider extending the period. I am rather sorry that one noble Lord criticised the grace period and said it did not mean anything, because the intention was to make life easier, particularly for the lawyers. On the noble and learned Lord’s point about arbitration, it needs to be registered in either category 1 or 2, not both. It will almost certainly be category 2 in his case, but we mentioned it in category 1 just in case an arbitrator set up an arbitration company of which he was a director, which would make it a category 1 entry I will deal with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, echoed by the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, in the previous speech. When we say "services", we do not mean it in the sense of the services sector; we mean literally anything provided in return for money. A one-off sale of something might be caught if the Member worked on achieving the sale. We will keep things under close review and, if employed Members are suffering a detriment from their employer because of the new disclosure requirements, we will look to see whether we can address that. The noble Lord gave the example of software, and I think the noble Viscount did as well. There would have to be substantial and direct contact with the client to make it subject to these rules. It could be either the revenue received by the firm or the money received by the Member. If any clarification is required, I am sure that the registrar of interests would help out where there is any lack of certainty I turn to the issue on which some noble Lords felt very strongly: that we consulted Members and their professional bodies but then appeared to have ignored the results or gone against their advice. The response to our consultation covered the full spectrum of opinion, from wanting no exemptions whatever to objecting to the scheme on principle. There was no consensus on the right thing to do. With regard to the representations made by professional bodies, we gave those from the legal profession particular consideration. We recognise the duty of confidentiality that lawyers have to their clients, and have therefore proposed specific provisions to account for them. Not only will lawyers benefit from the grace period for existing clients and the prospective nature of the new requirements, they will also have a special provision allowing them to delay disclosure of clients until they have been paid I am the first to say that the UK is top of the tree when it comes to our legal expertise and arbitrators; I had experience of some of that when I was chair of ACAS. Preventing Members of this House, many of whom are leading members of the UK’s legal profession, from doing this would seriously undermine that reputation, they maintain. The Conduct Committee believes that the public interest requires absolute transparency when it comes to Members of the national legislature working with a foreign power. We do not dispute that many Members who are of great benefit to this House are also of great benefit to their professions and, by extension, the UK’s reputation in those areas. There are, however, very many more outstanding lawyers and arbitrators who are not Members of this House, and we doubt that the UK’s reputation in these fields will be seriously undermined I could try to pick up all the points made by noble Lords, but in view of the time I will not cover most of the points; I hope that I have done the ones that people were most concerned about. I reassure noble Lords of what I said in my introductory remarks: the Conduct Committee will keep this under review, and advice will be available from the registrar of interests. The House knows that the time is right for this reform. I have deliberately not mentioned all the headlines that have been in the papers for the last week or so; this is an issue affecting us, it is a recommendation from the Conduct Committee, and I am not getting involved in those areas. The time is right for this reform; I hope the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, will feel able to withdraw his amendment in the light of some of the assurances that I have given.