Q126 Grant
Shapps: I should just like to put the same
points to Lord Smith initially, if I may?
Lord Smith of
Finsbury: The answer to the question “Do
you think honours are being sold?” is that I do not know. I hope not; I
fervently hope not. I should agree absolutely with the point that Tom made
that the fact of a donation to a political party should not disbar anyone
from being considered for an honorary peerage, a knighthood or whatever.
The decision should be made purely on the basis of their service to their
country and their ability to make a contribution to the House of Lords
rather than on the mere fact of a donation to a party.
Q127 Grant
Shapps: Lord King of Bridgwater said
before that this is all down to the question of perception. Would you agree
that the perception is that honours are being sold?
Lord Smith of
Finsbury: The perception at the moment is
terrible. It is incumbent on everyone to clear it up as rapidly as
possible.
Q128 Grant
Shapps: If honours were being sold, and I
understand Lord King’s view but I just want to check you feel the same way,
presumably you would feel that was wrong. The reason I ask though is that
every political system has to be funded in some way and most of us do not
think it should be done through taxpayers’ money. This is a way of doing it
and if the worst that happens is they get a peerage, then do you think that
would be acceptable as a price to pay?
Lord Smith of
Finsbury: No. So long as we have a rather
peculiarly constituted upper House, it should not operate on such a basis.
In terms of how you fund your politics, I should put three things in place.
One: complete transparency about donations. Two: the encouragement of
small donations rather than huge donations. Three: some element of public
funding for political parties, probably for things like their research work
rather than for their political campaigning.
Q129 Grant
Shapps: I am sure we might do funding of
political parties as a separate thing, so I shall not lead us off down that
route. Would you agree that after all these years from Nolan, you have
these frameworks and codes of conduct and committees, that we are just no
further forward at all and public perception has not shifted at all? So is
there any point in doing this, given that Lord King says that perception is
everything? If it is not solving that simple problem, why do it?
Lord Smith of
Finsbury: The original impetus for Nolan
was cash for questions here in the House of Commons and the appointments to
public boards and public bodies. Actually we have made very substantial
progress on those two issues. The codes of conduct and the provisions for
proper inspection and reporting of the actions of members of the House of
Commons are now in pretty good shape.
Q130 Grant
Shapps: But the public does not agree with
that, does it? That is the problem surely. Tom says that is all that
matters in a sense, but it has not worked.
Lord Smith of
Finsbury: If you focus specifically on
that issue, I think the public would agree with that. There are other
issues that have since cropped up and those now need attention. Yes, it is
important to address issues about, for example, the way in which honours are
granted, but let us not decry the fact that some progress has been made on
some of those initial issues which caused the establishment of the Nolan
Committee in the first place.
Q131 Grant
Shapps: Lord King, you said in your
opening remarks that you were very encouraged when the current Prime
Minister said he would be whiter than whiter and I imagine, at around that
time in 1997-98, public perception actually did improve for a short while.
Nothing to do with committees and codes of conduct, but actually all to do
with the political climate of the day. Anyone who sets themselves up as
whiter than whiter is always going to end up looking dirty and muddied over
a period of time; that is what is happening now, public perception had sunk
back again. In a sense, you are never really going to win with this, are
you?
Lord King of
Bridgwater: You always get problems,
occasionally bad apples. It was Oscar Wilde who said of the House of
Commons that not many of them were worth painting – you have a picture of
Lord Grimond on the wall - but a few of them could do with a coat of
whitewash. So the world has not entirely changed and you will get
problems. There has to be a mechanism to deal with them. I agree actually
with what Lord Smith of Finsbury said about this; in areas there have been
improvements and the register is now tougher than it was, the register of
members’ interests, which was one of the recommendations originally made,
and the issue about public appointments. In fact the way in which some of
these things get flagged up and the way in which the media are on the hunt
is often a more effective watchdog than somebody in Parliament. There are
rules from which they can work, but at the end of the day none of these
rules works unless the example is set from the top that these are important
issues; they are not sideline issues, they are not issues that people are
too busy to deal with or not issues that are decided at too low a level.
Once you get that leadership from the top and the understanding that people
are expected absolutely to perform otherwise they are out, that is what
leadership is about. That is why we put it down as the last principle. It
feeds right through the system. People then know that for their prospects,
their career prospects and all that, they had better keep to high standards
and that is what we ought to see. I very much hope the Prime Minister will
recognise that and show by example that he intends to return to that path.
