Public Office (Accountability) Bill - Committee (2nd Day)

House of Lords, 19 October 2026.

Amendment 31

Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, on the first day of Committee we discussed amendments to ensure that records, physical and digital, are explicitly added to the application of the duty of candour, because we know there have been a number of egregious cases where information was hidden. For example, I spoke of the nuclear veterans’ medical records that had been hidden in a Ministry of Defence storage centre—hidden because nobody knew they were there, and they were not on any index. One of the reasons the Bill is necessary is that there are too many cases of public officials, regardless of department or organisation, trying to hide or even destroy key information that would demonstrate clear intention to mislead.

In July 2025, Andy Burnham, at that point still Mayor of Manchester and a passionate supporter of justice for the Hillsborough law, said that parts of Whitehall were

“fighting hard to preserve the status quo”.

Even then, he felt that Ministers and civil servants were misleading the public with “false” and “unfounded” claims about the then proposed legislation that has now changed positively into this Bill. It is now much clearer and stronger. The former Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, agreed that introducing criminal sanctions for dishonesty was key to making this Bill work.

However, I agree with our new PM that there is still an issue with the culture of the status quo. For decades, at its worst, including in recent years, this has included some public officials—those who would be accountable under the terms of this Bill—who have destroyed information that would have been important evidence for inquiries, inquests and investigations, especially police investigations.

My Amendment 31, signed by my noble friend Lady Hamwee, creates the offence of destruction of information or records that are relevant to an inquiry, investigation or inquest. It is a stand-alone clause that says that a public authority or public official commits the offence not just if they deliberately destroy information or records that would be relevant, but if

“they know that, or are reckless as to whether, the information is relevant to or required by an inquiry, investigation, or inquest”.

Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause then sets out that the offence under this clause is, upon conviction, liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding the general limit in a magistrates’ court in England and Wales—not exceeding 12 months in Scotland or six months in Northern Ireland—and, on conviction and indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years. Each of these sub-categories is liable to a fine, or imprisonment and a fine.

It is vital to specify the details of this crime—including “recklessness”, a phrase used earlier in the Bill—because of the history of behaviour of certain public officials who have destroyed information. That has not only re-victimised the victims because the evidence could not be produced at inquiries or investigations, but it has too frequently meant a delay to justice. This delay has cost the victims and the nation through scandal after scandal and successive inquiries on the same issue. It has also cost the state considerably more in the costs of inquiries and appropriate compensation to the victims, which was delayed.

Volume 7 of Sir Brian Langstaff’s infected blood inquiry report has an entire chapter on the disappearance and/or destruction of documents over the many decades. There is a box on page 2 summarising how documents were destroyed over the years and then denied. In 1988, Lord Owen’s files record that the destruction of his paper by the Department of Health was:

“Normal procedure after 10 years”.

We will return to that in a minute. The report continues. From 1990-91,

“relevant documents are identified as missing during the HIV litigation. February-March 1993: registered GEB/1 files relating to ACVSB sent to the DRO. September 1994: registered file GEB/1 volume 4 is destroyed in advance of its review date. June 1995: Dr Rejman notifies Solicitor’s Division that one of the ACVSB files ‘has apparently been destroyed’. May 1996: documents relating to the settled HIV litigation are identified as missing. October 1997-November 1998: remaining GEB/1 volumes are destroyed. April 2000: the report of the internal audit of missing ACVSB documents. March 2004: Department of Health informs Lord Owen that its review into self-sufficiency ‘does not address why papers from your Private Office at the time may have been destroyed’. April 2005: meeting between Nigel Crisp and Lord Jenkin to discuss missing papers”.

I have quoted those headings at length to demonstrate that this is not just a one-off error of destroying papers too early—this is a culture of destroying important information. This list does not even cover many of the doctors’ own files and patient files that were quietly destroyed as it became clear at the turn of the 1980s that illegal blood products research had been carried out on children without either their or their parents’ consent. The first infections happened in the 1970s. The known destruction of documents started in 1988. That destruction of papers has cost Governments in this decade billions of pounds.

Then there is Hillsborough. The Lord Justice Taylor report was about the arrangements on the day of Hillsborough and did not focus on the behaviour of the police, although he did have some concerns about that. However, the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, published a quarter of a century later, was able to remedy this, and Chapter 11 starts at paragraph 2.11.1, saying that

“statements made by South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officers in the form of handwritten recollections of their experiences on the day of the disaster underwent an unprecedented process of review and alteration before their submission to the official inquiry”—

namely, Lord Taylor and his inquiry. At paragraph 2.11.6 it says:

“In contrast to their professional training, officers were instructed not to record their experiences in pocket books and ‘anyone who was involved yesterday take time to sit down and make some notes’. The briefing officer asked if officers had ‘made a pocket book brief’. None had. The briefing officer continued: ‘Do not start making pocket book entries. Yesterday was the most traumatic experience of my life and large chunks of it I cannot remember. I am sure it must be the same for many of you’”.

Both of these two egregious examples demonstrate actions by individual public officials as well as their corporate organisational behaviour.

Last year, Inquest’s report on the Hillsborough law family listening day, known as All or Nothing, powerfully set out how key the destruction of evidence was for the victims and their families. One Hillsborough family member said their loved one

“was not afforded the truth he should have been. It was traumatic. It [the inquest] should have been the end”.

It was not.

As well as in the Hillsborough tragedy, the destruction, hiding or changing of evidence is key to the Post Office Horizon scandal, the Covid inquiry, the nuclear test veterans, the infected blood scandal and many more. This is not a one-off; this is cultural. We cannot have the further destruction or hiding of evidence. That is why this amendment would make it clear to public officials, public organisations and, above all, the public that this must change. I beg to move.

Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench)

My Lords, I support Amendment 31, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and Amendment 82, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie. The noble Baroness has made a very compelling case. I would like to delve deeper into two of the examples which she has given to the Committee this afternoon. One concerns, of course, the Hillsborough disaster itself, but the other concerns British service personnel who were exposed to radiation during atomic tests.

One reason why, in 1989, I tabled a Parliamentary Question in another place to establish what warnings had been given before the football match at Hillsborough on 15 April, when Liverpool and Nottingham Forest were drawn to play in the FA Cup semi-final, was that I was worried that the letter which I had sent to the Sports Minister before the match on 22 March would disappear into the ether. I was glad that an archive such as Hansard would ensure that that would not take place. It records that:

“The hon. Member wrote to me on 22 March about the arrangements at the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough on 15 April. No other representation was received. The arrangements for the match will be among the matters to be considered by Lord Justice Taylor’s inquiry”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/4/1989; col. 414W.]

That I was right to have worried that important information would disappear or that records would be destroyed or altered was more than borne out in the decades which followed, with the destruction, falsification and alteration or withholding of records. There were decades of dissimulation and decades of deceit. Outrageously, that became a hallmark of the response to Hillsborough, until, finally, it was exposed how crucial evidence was either destroyed, altered or hidden from official oversight.

Recall that Ken Sutton, one of the officials involved with the Hillsborough Independent Panel, testified that when they requested original police notebooks from the South Yorkshire Police, they were explicitly told that they “no longer existed”. Years later, during the statutory inquest, these same notebooks magically reappeared, with no explanation provided for why they were previously withheld.

Last week, during our proceedings in Committee, I referred to the systematic altering of police statements: 164 police officer statements were altered. Content that criticised senior police command, highlighted faulty police radio communications or mentioned historical stadium safety issues was intentionally crossed out and deleted before being forwarded to the original Taylor inquiry. Note, too, that unverified allegations and outright calumny regarding the behaviour of Liverpool fans were left intact and framed as facts.

Concealment went to the highest levels of Government, with the Cabinet Office restricting access to vital records. In 2009, a freedom of information request by the BBC, seeking minutes of meetings and briefings provided to the Prime Minister in April 1989, was refused by the Cabinet Office, citing policy formulation exemptions to keep the files hidden from public view.

In 1989, I asked a Home Office Minister

“at what level the publication of statements on 18 April by South Yorkshire police concerning the conduct of Liverpool fans at the Hillsborough semi-cup final was authorised”,

and if he would

“publish a copy of that statement and the name of the officer who made it; and … make a statement”.

I received this reply:

“Statements made by officers of the South Yorkshire police are a matter for the chief constable. It would not be helpful for me to publish statements or counter-statements which have been made about the circumstances leading to the tragedy, or to name those who made them. It is for Lord Justice Taylor's inquiry to establish the facts”. —[Official Report, Commons, 24/4/1989; col. 404W.]

The names of the officers who gave the authorisation were not made known. The falsehoods were allowed to stand. Taylor did not establish the facts, nor did he discover the truth. It was left to the grieving families to continue to demand answers and to insist that justice should be done.

As the years went by, I made repeated requests for the legal cases to be reopened. In June 1992, the then Solicitor-General, Sir Derek Spencer, responded that the Attorney-General would

“take a decision on an outstanding formal application for consent under section 13 of the Coroners Act 1988 as soon as possible”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/6/1992; col. 644.]

Three years had already elapsed since the tragedy. If Ministers had acted in 1992, telling the coroner to reopen the case, it would not have become possible to hide behind the excuse that “the passage of time” impeded accurate recall of the details of what had occurred.

In 1998, in your Lordships’ House, I asked what account the Home Secretary and Lord Justice Stuart-Smith had taken

“in deciding against a fresh inquiry into the Hillsborough tragedy, of missing video tapes, changed statements by police officers, conflicting medical evidence and complaints of lack of impartiality in the original coroner’s process and in the granting of immunity from prosecution to police officers upon taking early retirement”.

The Minister replied:

“Lord Justice Stuart-Smith considered all the material evidence submitted to his scrutiny about the Hillsborough disaster. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary”—

Jack Straw—

“accepted his conclusion that there were no grounds for a fresh inquiry”.

The Minister told us that

“there was no new video evidence and the only missing video tapes were two tapes stolen on the day of the disaster, which remain missing. They were not police tapes and the judge was satisfied that they would not have shown anything significant”.

The Minister said that

“allegations of irregularity and malpractice are not substantiated”

and that the Lord Justice Stuart-Smith

“found no grounds to suggest that the original inquests were flawed or that complaints of bias against the Coroner were justified”.—[Official Report, 23/3/1998; col. WA 232-33.]

No substantial irregularities and no malpractice—of course, we all know otherwise now.

As Prime Minister David Cameron then told Parliament, the Liverpool fans had suffered a “double injustice” in both

“the failure of the state to protect their loved ones and the indefensible wait to get to the truth”.

In offering a full apology, he also admonished those who had denigrated

“the deceased—that they were somehow at fault for their own deaths”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/9/12; col. 286.]

In 2012, the Hillsborough independent panel report, led by Bishop James Jones, made nine recommendations on systemic archive reform that would prevent future destruction of critical records. These amendments underpin that.

I will simply turn to another example; I will not do so at great length. Back in the 1980s, I raised the position of former British servicemen who had been caught up in the atomic tests that had taken place on Christmas Island and in places such as Maralinga in Western Australia. I have taken the trouble to print off the speeches. It is notable that—I can perhaps say this as someone who once served as a Chief Whip—organising government business is always in the hands of the Government of the day. It was not really surprising then that just a handful of us attended those debates: one took place at 3.49 am and another at 4.31 am.

Truths can be buried in different ways. Nevertheless, the archives substantiate many of the complaints that have been made over the years about the destruction of records and the refusal to provide information to those who sought to achieve justice in their own cases. During those debates in the 1980s, I said that the then Minister’s failure to release all the data

“will run the risk of being accused of cooking the books”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/7/1983; col. 957.]

I complained about attempts to push the issue into the long grass and the commissioning of a survey by an organisation that veterans themselves believed would serve the department’s interests rather than the pursuit of truth.

Anyone who saw Victoria Derbyshire interviewing the former Veterans Minister on 2 September this year would have been shocked to hear him say that he had misled Parliament in 2018, when he had been given false information by the Ministry of Defence that no such radiological monitoring records existed. He described that as “an absolute cover-up” designed to delay the truth until the ageing veterans died.

So these amendments matter. They are about these situations—the atomic test victims and Hillsborough—but also about the infected blood scandal, Primodos, Horizon, the Post Office and many other instances. Records matter. Members of Parliament matter too, and we should have great cause to be concerned about their denigration for simply trying to shine a light on the truth. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will say where we are up to in the new inquiries taking place into what happened to those atomic test victims. I strongly support these amendments.

Baroness Butler-Sloss (Crossbench)

My Lords, statutory inquiries are very expensive. I was chairman of a statutory inquiry at about the same time as Lord Taylor. It really depresses me that, if you chair a statutory inquiry and you are given a whole lot of false information or not given the relevant information, the report you make will not be correct. That happened to the late Lord Taylor, who was later Lord Chief Justice of this country. Just think how he would have felt if he was alive today to find that he had written a completely useless report. Another aspect of this is that state money is spent on statutory inquiries. If you cannot get the truth, what on earth is the purpose of having them?

Baroness Hamwee (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, my noble friend’s amendment, which I have signed, should not have needed examples to back it up, because I think it would stand without them, but those we have heard are very telling. The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, has not yet had an opportunity to introduce her noble and learned friend’s Amendment 82, but perhaps I can ask her a question before she does: does it not narrow the obligations? Clause 13(1)(b) provides that:

“A person who holds public office commits an offence if … they know, or ought to know, that doing so is a seriously improper act”.

I emphasise “know, or ought to know”. The proposed Clause 13(1)(c) is about the deliberate destruction of documents which “they know”—not ought to know—

“to be relevant to the inquiry”.

I am concerned that he is seeking partly to repeat paragraph (b), which I do not think needs amplification, and that his amendment would narrow the obligation.

Lord Carlile of Berriew (Crossbench)

My Lords, I am not sure, in supporting these amendments, that I accept that they go far enough. There is one word missing from Amendment 31—“conceal” or “concealment”—and the same is missing from Clause 12 of the Bill. I respectfully suggest to the Minister that Clause 12(3) needs to be amended, if Clause 12 is to remain part of the Bill, to include concealment. Surely, what we are trying to achieve here is that it is a given for all public officials that they do not conceal, destroy or remove any document which is an official document; they do not know whether it will be needed for an inquiry, but it has that imprimatur of officialdom that should be the preservative that it is never removed.

There are so many categories of document. We have had examples eloquently given of inquiries in which such behaviour has caused difficulties, but let us just think about the wide range of categories in which such difficulties can be caused: deleting emails; destroying paper files; erasing WhatsApp messages; destroying meeting notes, diaries or notebooks, which featured very strongly in the Hillsborough case; removing metadata or audit logs, which has happened in relation to many subjects of inquiries; deleting calendar entries or call records; overwriting backup tapes or archives; shredding draft documents, which revealed the real truth until they were amended by others who did not want the real truth to be disclosed; destroying CCTV footage, audio recordings or photographs; and, most egregiously, and as has happened in police cases—I referred earlier in these debates to the “Cardiff Three” case—senior police officers instructing others to delete records and deleting other records to avoid disclosure. It took years to unravel the truth as a result of those deletions.

These are just examples of some of the categories attempted to be remedied by the two amendments we are debating now. I suggest that they do not go quite far enough, but we really need them if we are going to achieve our purpose of ensuring that public records are sacrosanct against dishonest or reckless removal.

Lord Beamish (Labour)

My Lords, I welcome this amendment that would make it a criminal offence to deliberately destroy documents that could be relevant to an inquiry, but there is another side of this that we need to look at: the policy within organisations on which documents are kept. We would have thought that notes on decisions, minutes, et cetera, are kept; but, having spent many hours as chair of the ISC reviewing the Mandelson papers as part of the humble Address, I say, depressingly, to your Lordships’ House that systems for civil servants to keep records using meeting notes and action notes, which we perhaps got used to many years ago, no longer seem to be the way in which our Civil Service, for example, works.

Therefore, if we are going to have this amendment, which I fully support, we also need some recognition of how organisations not only make decisions but note them, because, quite clearly, in the papers on Mandelson that my committee reviewed, there were some large gaps. Some departments were better than others, the Foreign Office being the worst, at keeping notes or action notes—if they did exist—on decisions that were made.

The other area—and we are talking about Hillsborough in a pre-digital age, obviously—that has just been referred to is the digital space, which is far more complicated and from which it is far easier, I would argue, to delete information. One thing that concerned my committee was the use of WhatsApp and disappearing WhatsApp, which you would think would be very important if you wanted to keep a record of what happened. What surprised me and other members of the committee were the types of decisions that were being taken over WhatsApp, and there was no record of those at all. Was that a deliberate attempt to frustrate the system? I will leave it to your Lordships to draw their own conclusions but it is a matter of concern if you have that type of process and do not have any strict rules around what should be kept or what should be transacted on WhatsApp in the first place. My committee also raised some issues around the level of security in relation to WhatsApp, where, certainly, decisions and conversations had taken place which should never have taken place apart from over high-side systems.

There seems to be a lax culture developing and if we are going to make sure that future inquiries have full access to how decisions are made, and the material behind it, there needs to be a radical overhaul in the current culture within Whitehall to ensure that proper records are kept and, as I said, on the electronic side, that some robust procedures are put in place. Without that, not only could it lead to people deliberately deleting things but things could be deleted because, for example, on WhatsApp they disappear after so many days. I do welcome this, but I think that, alongside this, organisations are going to have to have a clear set of guidance as to how records should be kept.

Baroness Finn (Conservative)

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for opening our debate on this group. As she will see from my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie’s amendment in this group, there is, happily, some common ground between us. Although both amendments in this group relate to the destruction of documents, they differ in the time at which the offence would apply.

My noble and learned friend’s Amendment 82 seeks to create a specific offence as part of the broader new statutory offence of misconduct in public office for the destruction of documents by a public official that are relevant to an inquiry. Although the Minister has suggested previously that this would already be covered by the new statutory misconduct offence as set out in Clause 13, we are seeking clarity on that point and, ideally, it would be included in the Bill.

We thank the Minister for his engagement on this issue since Second Reading. However, we continue to believe that the most effective way to solve this is to include the proposed offence in the Bill. Indeed, the severity of the impact of the destruction of documents relating to a major incident on victims who deserve to know the truth is sufficiently severe to warrant clarity. Victims always deserve to know the truth. The Government should not rely on previous case law for their belief that this proposed offence would be covered. They are creating a new statutory offence that will replace existing legislation and, as such, previous case law may not apply in the same way to the new Clause 13. This is not something that should be left in doubt, and so the amendment is a sensible way to avoid any such situation.

In a similar vein, Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, relates to the destruction of documents ahead of an inquiry. As drafted, the amendment in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie applies only after an inquiry has been opened, which is perhaps too narrow, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, suggested. However, Amendment 31 appears to be rather broad, with insufficient limits about what may be relevant. I think there is a middle ground that would probably be the most suitable solution. Given the consensus in the Committee on the need for a clear offence of the destruction of documents—and I take note of what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said about concealment—I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be willing to work with us ahead of Report on an amendment that gets the balance right, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Lord Lemos (Labour)

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate. I note that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, said, there has been a deal of consensus. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and others set out a depressing and dispiriting litany. I do not underestimate at all the importance of these amendments and the behaviour, the mischief, they seek to address. This is clearly central to one of the main aims of the Bill. It is paramount that public officials who deliberately delete or destroy information in advance of an inquiry or inquest are properly held to account. If this type of offending is not stopped, relevant and important information may no longer exist to be considered. I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Beamish about—if I may describe them as such—lax procedures in keeping information.

We are confident that the Bill already protects against the destruction of documents, in two separate ways, which I want to set out. First, Clause 2(4)(a) requires authorities and officials to provide information likely to be relevant to an inquiry or investigation if requested. They will not meet this obligation if they allow the information to be lost or destroyed when they ought to be providing it. Intentionally or recklessly destroying documents in order to impede an inquiry or an investigation is an offence. In addition, the individual in charge of an authority must take all reasonable steps to secure the authority’s compliance with the duty, including ensuring that documents are accessible.

Secondly, in appropriate circumstances—I think this goes to the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, asked—in appropriate circumstances and where the other elements of the offence are met, the destruction of documents could also be caught by the new “seriously improper acts” limb of the misconduct in public office offence. I hope that that is clear. For example, a public officer could commit this offence if they use their position with the intent of obtaining a benefit or causing another to suffer a detriment and when doing so they know or ought to know that their conduct is seriously improper. A benefit could include seeking to protect themselves or their organisation from reputational harm or damage. Actions such as shredding documents or ordering that information be destroyed could therefore potentially be caught.

The criminal law can already capture this type of conduct through offences such as perverting the course of justice. In March this year, for example, a serving police officer was convicted of perverting the course of justice for deliberately disposing of digital evidence— a number of noble Lords raised digital evidence—contained on a mobile phone. Contempt of court could also apply where records are destroyed in contravention of a court order. This type of conduct can also be, and has been, caught by the existing common-law misconduct in public office offence, and I have already commented on how the replacement might apply. The two new misconduct offences are intended to cover the same breadth of offending as the existing common-law offence. It is important to remember, nevertheless, that the key point of the new offences is the purpose for which a person carries out the act. This ensures that the criminal law captures those who act with improper intent.

Bespoke or unnecessary duplicate offences can risk creating confusion for those enforcing, prosecuting and seeking to abide by the law, so we should try to avoid them, though I note the strength of feeling in the House and I should be happy to continue the discussion on this and other matters between now and Committee. On the question from the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, about the atomic tests, I promise to write to him with the latest position.

The Government consider that both the existing law and the provisions in this Bill already provide suitable mechanisms for addressing the deliberate destruction of relevant records. Creating additional or overlapping offences when the conduct is already capable of being prosecuted perhaps risks unnecessary complexity and confusion for investigators, prosecutors and public officials alike. With those reassurances, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will withdraw her amendment, though, as I say, I promise to carry on the conversation.

Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this medium-sized debate—not terribly short by our standards on the first day. I think it has really helped the debate on what happens when people destroy documents. I am grateful in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has been working on Hillsborough and the nuclear veterans for many years and saw at first hand some of the things that I reported as historic data deletion. That has been enormously helpful. The point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was equally important.

I am very mindful of the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, who cannot be in his place, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn; I thank her for responding. The one point that has come up in the varied debate we have had this afternoon is that there is much debate to be had on how we get this right between Committee and Report. I hope that the Minister will agree to meet everyone who has spoken in this debate, all together, to see whether we can start to draw it out. I am grateful for the very particular comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, about concealment. I think concealment is equal to destruction; that was certainly one of the issues with the nuclear veteran records.

The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, rightly raised the issue of how on earth we cope with data that is not on paper and stored in paper archives. I thought the recommendations from volume 1 of the Covid inquiry were quite helpful, in that WhatsApp must never be used to make formal decisions. However, we are discussing the soft areas on either side of that. This is not just a matter for civil servants or your Lordships’ House. This is a wider issue—for example, in contract law between businesses—about where decisions are made and information is held. The Government are going to have to get a grip on that.

I was very interested to hear the response from the noble Lord, Lord Lemos. Clause 2(4)(a) and the other clause he quoted are not explicit about the destruction of documents, and I think he accepts that. He cited a number of other areas in which prosecution might “potentially” occur; that word always slightly worries me. To date, how many prosecutions of officials have happened under the various routes that he has described? My gut feeling is not very many. That is the whole problem, and the reason why we need this Bill. We should ensure that the Bill is so clear that officials and their teams will be trained in what they can and cannot do long before an issue comes up. That way, cultural changes will happen. On the basis that there will be meetings between Committee and Report, I am very grateful and withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 31 withdrawn.

Amendment 32

Lord Carter of Haslemere (Crossbench)

My Lords, Amendment 32, which kicks off this second group, would require any Government to lay before Parliament the details of action which will be taken in response to a public inquiry’s recommendation or to explain why no action is to be taken. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for adding her name in support of it.

The UK has spent £1.5 billion of taxpayers’ money on completed inquiries since 1990, with active ongoing inquiries continuing to cost taxpayers upwards of £200 million a year. These are eye-watering sums. It has become something of an industry to set up a public inquiry that goes on for years and costs huge sums of money, yet the Government are under no legal duty to explain why they are not implementing an inquiry’s recommendation after it has reported. How can a Government be free to spend millions or hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on an inquiry initiated because of public concern— that is in the Act—but then be under no obligation even to give reasons to the public for rejecting its recommendations?

The Bill is supposed to be about public authorities acting with “candour, transparency and frankness”. It is designed to increase public authorities’ accountability and openness. Government Ministers and departments are defined in the Bill as a public authority, so it is entirely in line with the Bill that the Government should be required to be open with the public and give reasons if they decide not to implement inquiry recommendations—not a duty to implement inquiry recommendations, but simply a duty to give reasons for not doing so. That is plain common sense, and there is no reason on earth not to do so.

This is not a purely theoretical point. The NAO has estimated that 55% of inquiry recommendations are not accepted by the Government or are, somewhat equivocally, “accepted in principle” but with no recorded follow-through. This is extraordinary when an inquiry’s recommendations are made on the basis of months or years of painstaking evidence gathering to establish the facts and to hear from real experts. For the Government then to be able to hold back the reasons for declining to accept the inquiry’s recommendations demonstrates a lack of accountability entirely at odds with this Bill. It is also at odds with the recommendations in prevention of future deaths reports issued by coroners, where the Government are under a statutory duty to respond within 56 days and to give reasons if they choose not to implement them. Since inquiries are often initiated because of events that have resulted in fatalities, there is no good reason on earth why there should be this disparity with coroners’ prevention of future deaths reports.

Our new Solicitor-General seems to be of a similar mind, since on Report in the other place, just a week or so before he was appointed, he tabled amendments to the Bill to examine the merits of a new independent oversight body to follow up on the conclusions and recommendations of inquiries to improve implementation of them. As he said, without

“candour and transparency in how public authorities respond to, and act on, findings and recommendations … these costly, lengthy legal processes are futile

In 2024, the House of Lords Select Committee on Statutory Inquiries, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, similarly recommended that the Government be under a duty to give reasons for not implementing inquiry recommendations. In a Bill about openness, candour and accountability in relation to inquiries, a duty on the Government of the day to give such reasons is obvious. I beg to move.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (Crossbench)

My Lords, I have a few remarks on Amendment 32, which my noble friend Lord Carter has so ably introduced.

I have conducted some independent inquiries of a sort that would fall within this clause, though none of them cost millions or hundreds of millions. In some cases, my noble friend was legal adviser to those who commissioned them, whether in the Home Office or in No. 10, so it is refreshing to see him, having been on the other side of the fence, championing the undoubted public interest in the recommendations of such inquiries receiving a prompt response. His solution is an attractive one but, as I have discussed with him, there are a couple of reasons why it would not always be feasible, at least in its current form.

First, a fixed requirement to respond and lay those responses before Parliament within 56 calendar days could not easily be met if, for example, a report was submitted shortly before the calling of a general election and the arrival of a new Government. Perhaps that difficulty could be accommodated by the substitution of “parliamentary sitting days” for “days” in the amendment. In other cases, though, what used to be called pre-election purdah may have an impact on the timing of any response, making a 56-day limit too rigid in an unpredictable range of cases.

Secondly, there are times when more than one report is commissioned on the same issue. A recent example is my report on the failure of the Government’s Prevent programme to divert the Southport attacker from the path that led him to murder three young girls in the most appalling circumstances. I sent my report to the Secretary of State last July. An informal reaction was given, and work began immediately on some of my recommendations. But the Home Secretary chose to delay her formal response until she had the report of phase one of Sir Adrian Fulford’s Southport inquiry, which was published in April this year. Our two reports made some overlapping recommendations, with implications across central and local government. A consolidated response was a rational solution in the circumstances, even though I had to wait almost a year for it.

My final point relates to the importance of the timely publication of independent reports. It is publication that enables Select Committees, parliamentarians, media and NGOs to bring the findings of an inquiry to the attention of the public and to put pressure on Governments to implement them. As an independent reviewer, I was always more concerned by delays in publication than by delays in the Government’s response. It must be demoralising to submit a report to a Secretary of State which simply disappears, only to be published so long after the event that its impact is diminished. Unless the matter is a high-profile one, there can be no guarantee that parliamentary committees or the media will be much exercised by the delay or interested in it.

If the Government’s reaction to recommendations has to be published within 56 days of receipt, as this amendment would provide, that must imply that the report itself has been published within 56 days. A Secretary of State could hardly lay before Parliament a response to recommendations of which Parliament and the public were ignorant. So, while the amendment does not on its face require timely publication of reports, it would appear to have that benign—I would say—side-effect. Perhaps the noble Lord could comment, when he closes this debate, on whether this is a feature of his amendment rather than a bug—I rather hope that it is. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about the importance of timely publication as well as timely response.

Lord Beamish (Labour)

My Lords, I welcome the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Carter, on a very important issue: what happens to the outcomes of very lengthy and expensive inquiries? The noble Lord raised what has been spent on public inquiries since 1990 and I suspect that will grow even further.

The problem we have got into—as a parliamentarian I am possibly as guilty of this as anyone else—is that, as soon as something goes wrong, we call for a public inquiry as though somehow it will get to the truth and change things. I have spent a long time with the victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal. What do people want? They want two things. First, they want the facts out there and, in some cases, they quite rightly want compensation. But, more than anything, most of them say “We don’t want this to happen again”. It is about changing things in the future.

Let us deal with compensation. The Public Accounts Committee report a couple of weeks ago was very good. It said we need to set up a permanent body to deal with compensation. I should have declared an interest: I sit on the Post Office Horizon advisory board. We have five different schemes just on that one scandal. We are inventing these things every single time. It leads to a waste of effort and delays in getting victims compensation. The call for a permanent government body to deal with compensation is important.

I have sympathies with this amendment, because it comes to something that I and Professor Chris Hodges, who chairs the advisory board for Horizon compensation, have been doing some work on: how do you ensure that public inquiries’ recommendations are implemented and accepted by government?

I welcome the debate. It is good that we are having it. The problem is how it is framed: Governments could hide behind this very easily by saying, “Well, we note the report; things are going to be looked at possibly in the future”—or, if there is a change of Government, it just gets lost. My personal preference is: yes, we need timely reports of inquiries, but we also need actions on behalf of the departments to implement the recommendations. This is where it falls down. I remember, for example, Sir John Saunders’s inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing, which made some very good recommendations. One of his concerns was how they would be followed through afterwards. He wrote to the ISC asking whether we could monitor: well, we did not have the capacity and nor were we set up to do that. That showed me that there was a gap there.

I think the only way to do this is by doing two things. First, we need to reform inquiries; we need a permanent new body, perhaps a super-ombudsman-type organisation, which sits permanently to look at these scandals and make timely recommendations. Secondly, we need parliamentary oversight alongside that. You could perhaps have a Joint Select Committee of the two Houses or whatever, which would not only be able to look at the work of the inquiry organisation that I am envisaging but also, more importantly, look at the implementation of the recommendations of inquiries. Without some type of parliamentary oversight and pressure on the Executive, there will always be a default position where, once something is out of the headlines, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has just said, it is a matter of, “Do we really need to worry about this?”. That is the problem.

Public inquiries get a lot of heat and light when the recommendations come out. But what is the follow through? Some will take a long time and a lot of detailed work to implement—as well as cost. That needs to be monitored and should be a role for Parliament. Otherwise, we will have a lot of publicity when we get the recommendations of inquiries, then a lot of disappointed people afterwards, because they do not get the understanding that things will change in the future, which I believe is more important than anything for them. You talk to a lot of the victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal and what do they want? What you hear more than anything else is, “We don’t want this to happen again to anybody in the future”. That is a common tenet among a lot of the victims of a lot of these scandals. They want meaningful change and for their suffering to have some effect in terms of changing things for the future.

Lord Bichard (Crossbench)

My Lords, I too have sympathy with this recommendation and I hope that the Minister when replying will commit to having some further discussions, because I also have some sympathy with the comments that have been made—not all of them, but many of them. When I chaired the Soham inquiry, I included in the recommendations a recommendation that Parliament should require the Government to report back in six months. The Home Secretary on behalf of the Government accepted that. The reason I said six months—this would be an amendment I would make to the amendment—is that, as has been said, 56 days after a report has been published, it is very easy to agree it, or agree much of it.

What we are all really interested in is the action that has been taken. I felt that six months was a sufficient period for the Government to show that they were acting on my recommendations for a new national police intelligence service and a new vetting service. It worked very well. One of the reasons it worked really well was that civil servants—of which I was one at some point in my past—take very seriously the prospect of a Home Secretary reporting to Parliament in six months’ time on the action that they effectively have taken. Therefore, I found that they were very keen to keep me in the loop and to talk to me. We would not have achieved anything like the success we did as a result of the Soham inquiry had I not done that. Fifty-six days is a staging post, but it is too early to be sure that the recommendations have been acted on, and that is what we should be looking for.

Lord Faulks (Non-affiliated)

My Lords, I was on the committee of your Lordships’ House referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, looking into the future of public inquiries. I have to say that public inquiries did not get an overwhelming endorsement. Many of us thought they went on too long, were too expensive, were often insufficiently focused and were very much over-lawyered. One of our conclusions was that we should try, unless they are absolutely necessary, to get rid of judges, excellent though they are, and focus inquiries on those who perhaps have more specific expertise. Some of those conclusions were not welcome, but I think that the time to look at public inquiries is very much here. There are too many of them. The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and others, who were also on the committee and will remember those debates.

One thing we were clear on was very much in line with the recommendation contained in this amendment. If we are going to have these very expensive inquiries and if there are recommendations, which there should be, those recommendations should be responded to swiftly. The noble Lord is quite right—that is entirely reflective of the theme of this legislation, which is one of candour. Subject to the changes that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, makes to tidy this up, I would respectfully say to the Committee that an amendment such as this is important, consistent with the theme of the Bill and reflects recommendations made by a number of different bodies.

Baroness Butler-Sloss (Crossbench)

I cannot resist following on from the noble Lord. My inquiry started in 1987 and I presented a report in 1988, so some judges do not take a lot of time.

Turning to the amendment, the principle behind it is excellent, although the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has pointed out some difficulties, and it may well need a degree of rewriting.

What is depressing is that, as anyone in this Chamber who has run an inquiry knows, often, the Government do not respond to the recommendations for a long time; but much more depressing is that they are not in fact carried out, as other noble Lords have said. My particular inquiry dealt with children. There have been endless inquiries ever since mine, all dealing with aspects of children and all coming largely to the same result without any action at all. Best of all, one of my recommendations was that social services and everybody else should listen to children. Do you know, I heard at the beginning of this year a Minister in this House stand up and say, “We should listen to children”.

Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)

My Lords, I have not run an inquiry, sat on an inquiry or been on the committee. However, over the weekend I chaired a discussion involving Maggie Oliver, the ex-detective whistleblower who came out and spoke about the grooming gangs. Also on the panel was Emma Webber, whose son Barnaby was killed by Valdo Calocane. As I mentioned at Second Reading, she has personally done so much via social media and other media to reveal the details for laypeople, as it were, about what has happened in the Nottingham inquiry to date.

This was an event at the Battle of Ideas Festival, involving a discussion and debate about the accountability of public officials and state bodies when things go wrong and there are preventable deaths—an issue very much at the heart of this Bill. I was really taken aback by the reaction of the audience when I mentioned the Bill and trying to ensure that the law is brought to bear and there is truth and candour in inquiries. There was an overwhelming feeling in the audience—of hundreds—at that discussion that public inquiries are a waste of time and money. There was a sense that, whatever comes out of public inquiries, they are just about defusing public anger and setting up an infrastructure to kick the issue down the road.

There will be people here who will say that public inquiries are very important, and I have often demanded a public inquiry; I certainly did in relation to the grooming gangs. There is merit to this very important amendment, even if the details need to be ironed out, such as whether it is too rigid. I think the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, was saying that no Government are obliged to act on all the recommendations of an inquiry, which is fine; that would be ridiculous. But if they do not, they should say why not. It is simple.

If state bodies go through eye-watering amounts of money, time and energy to put on an inquiry to come to a series of recommendations, surely there is a duty of candour—if ever there was a need for a duty of candour—to be truthful to the public about what the Government of the day think about that inquiry. What do they think of the recommendations? Are they going to do this or not do that, and why not? That is surely a very minimal demand. Therefore, I suggest that this amendment is a no-brainer for the Government, because it will strengthen the real commitment of the Bill to being more than just a box-ticking exercise.

There is cynicism about this legislation, despite the great enthusiasm for its aims. The danger is that people will think that it says there will be more accountability and an ethos of truth-telling, when in fact it is being used to compensate for building a different kind of culture in all public authorities. In some ways, it could end up being a bureaucratic box-ticking exercise unless we get the details right. I therefore fully support this amendment.

Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I have signed Amendment 32 from the noble Lord, Lord Carter, which he set out clearly. We have had a fascinating debate, as with the previous group, on what is probably a Goldilocks issue—there are some things we clearly need to do, but others are problematic and we do not want to do them. Have we found the sweet spot? I apologise for mixing my metaphors.

Throughout the progress of the Bill, we have had a great deal of debate on how we tackle the culture of public organisations that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, just mentioned, in order to prevent future scandals. We have already heard about Hillsborough, infected blood, Post Office Horizon and Windrush; I do not think anyone has mentioned Grenfell yet today, so I will.

The amendment is one of the tools in the box to show that both the structures and the culture must change. Whether it is 56 days or longer—the noble Lord, Lord Carter, will respond on this point—we are trying to find a mechanism to prevent the current practice, which we should not refer to as a culture, of the Government usually taking a year to respond to an inquiry or other major report, deciding that they need to consult on various parts of it, and then coming back with their recommendations. Often, it is two years or more before practical changes are discussed.

It is clear from all the problematic disasters we have been discussing throughout the Bill’s passage that things have got stuck in a rut, leading to the public sector mindset of deflecting and not doing anything, because there have been no targets for the Government to respond to. That is why I like this amendment. It may need changing slightly, but the most important element is that the Government would have to give an initial response. If other reports are coming as well, that might alter the situation, but the whole point of the Bill is transparency and accountability, which means that if things have to change, the Government should not be afraid to say so. It has not been government culture to say, “Oops, we got this wrong”, or “Things have changed; we need to change this”; but if we are going to get these complex, difficult issues right, we must learn to take that approach.

I was interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, said about one compensation body: my Amendment 115 will be discussed on the next day in Committee, and I am passionate about having one compensation body. Part of the problems is that we move civil servants who have been responsible for the problem into the compensation body because they are the only other people who know about it. We have to move away from that.

We really need to focus our thoughts on the immediate response to make sure that things are not lost. We keep going on about cultural change, but part of the cultural change inside our public official organisations and with our public officials is feeling that you do not have the time to ignore something because it might go away if nobody does anything at all.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Crossbench)

My Lords, I have come late to our debates on this Bill. I was unable to be here for Second Reading, but I was here last week for the long day we had discussing it. I do, however, apologise to the House, and I beg its indulgence to allow me to participate today and onwards.

I have a few questions about the very commendable amendment from my noble friend Lord Carter. There are a couple of things I would like to pick up on, because they are pertinent and important to the heartfelt support there is in this House for this amendment and to the desire of the House to—as the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, put it—reflect the public’s desire that some action is taken: what has come of all of that time and money and inquiry?

The comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on the grooming gang scandal are a case in point, where the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse—which is the formal title of the Jay inquiry—took several years and finally reported in October 2022. To pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, we then had a little bit of action when a couple of the recommendations—out of a large number—were accepted. Then, there was a general election.

After that, the Government decided—for whatever reason that was never clear to those of us who were following it carefully—that the Jay inquiry had not been sufficiently deep or wide ranging, or whatever, and they decided to run parallel inquiries into the criminal actions in certain towns and cities in the original inquiry but also to commission the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, to do an overall approach. That was announced, I think, as long ago as 2024, shortly after the Government came in—or perhaps it was early last year. However, we are told nothing will happen in terms of recommendations until at least next year, though potentially longer given that the rather overworked noble Baroness, Lady Casey, has several other pending items in her in-tray.

My noble friend Lord Carter of Haslemere made the very good point that when inquiries such as that, where palpable injustice and criminal acts have happened, take decades to complete, we need to hear from Ministers as what they are going to do. We certainly need an explanation of why they have decided to dismiss part of an inquiry or not take any action —because that was the other lot who were dealing with it and now there is a new lot and they want something else. The explanation required in subsection (2)(b) of his proposed new clause

“as to why no action is to be taken in response to the recommendations of the inquiry”

is profoundly important, but I really do not believe that eight weeks—56 days—will be adequate, particularly if pre-election purdah, a change of government or any other hurdle were to be erected. Perhaps my noble friend in summing up would be able to tell us whether he is minded to give a little bit more leeway to government and extend that period so there is a reasonable amount of time that allows it to respond.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Conservative)

My Lords, I can speak briefly on this group. First, the government amendments consist primarily of amendments to clarify drafting and application to Wales. For fairly obvious reasons, I am not going to oppose them. I do look forward, however, to the day when Bills as originally drafted fully take into account the position of Wales rather than amendments coming in halfway through the process. I confess that the last Government were probably as guilty on that point as this one, but it is something we ought to think about.

More substantively, Amendment 32 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to respond to recommendations of inquiries related to the actions of public authorities within 56 days. Respectfully, we think the amendment makes a very sensible point. We agree that there should be some sort of scrutiny after the fact if a Government choose not to accept recommendations. Of course, the Government always hold the pen. There is no requirement that the Government should accept all or indeed any recommendations of any inquiry, but we suggest that it stands to reason that they should at least provide reasons for not doing so.

I was very encouraged by the reference made by the noble Lord to Mr Andy Slaughter supporting this proposition, until I heard the disheartening words, “A few days before he joined the Government”. There is the famous line:

“Presume not that I am the thing I was”.

Shakespeare tells us that that applies to somebody becoming the monarch. I do not know whether it also applies to somebody attaining the lofty office of Solicitor-General, but we will wait to see whether there is a volte-face in his personal position. We think there is a lot of force in the underlying point, for the reasons given by the noble Lord and a number of other contributors to this debate. Therefore, we look forward to the Minister’s response to the substantive point.

On the timescale, we respectfully think that there is a lot in the point—made by a number of noble Lords, in particular the noble Lords, Lord Anderson of Ipswich and Lord Bichard—that 56 days might not be the right period. It is not self-evident that putting a particular period into law is necessarily the right way to go about this. There may be other pressing issues that need addressing as a priority over responding to an inquiry. Of course, inquiries ought to be responded to in a timely manner, and there must be a form of drafting which is capable of capturing that essential point.

Therefore, we look forward to the Minister addressing three separate questions which seem to arise. First, as a matter of principle, do the Government agree that they should respond to all inquiry recommendations? Secondly, if so, do the Government agree that when they do not accept an inquiry recommendation, they should give reasons for their decision. Thirdly, if the Government are, like us, not persuaded that 56 days is the right period, what period do they have in mind, and what are the reasons supporting that period?

Lord Lemos (Labour)

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to the debate. I note, with some humility, the enormous experience that has been demonstrated in the debate from noble Lords who have chaired inquiries. I will come to those in a minute.

I will first deal with the government amendments. These are technical amendments to make sure that statutory and non-statutory inquiries established by Welsh Ministers are subject to the provisions in the Bill regarding the conduct and reporting of conduct of public authorities at inquiries and the engagement and conduct of legal representatives. This will allow Welsh Ministers to set out an overriding objective regarding participation and maintain the inquisitorial nature of proceedings in relation to statutory inquiries. We are also making an amendment to the Government of Wales Act 2006 to ensure that should the Senedd subsequently legislate to remove the relevant concurrent functions, it would be able to do so without requiring the consent of a Minister of the Crown. I commend these amendments to the Committee.

I turn to Amendment 32, from the noble Lord, Lord, Carter. The Government entirely agree that there should be a clear and consistent expectation on public authorities to respond to inquiry reports and their recommendations. The question from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, goes to the point about timely publication; long delays, at any stage of the process, are a significant problem. I note the comments from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about the risk of inquiries overlapping with each other, and the many inquiries about children—including her own distinguished inquiry. She referred to the last time she heard someone in your Lordships’ House say, “We do not listen to children”. I think that might have been me, so I plead guilty as charged. The only thing I would say in my own defence is that we still do not listen to children.

I think everybody would agree that it is vital that public authorities have enough time to fully consider an inquiry’s recommendations and support Ministers to make informed decisions about how to respond. Once inquiry recommendations are accepted, they become government policy that must be delivered—that is a really important point. I note the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, about the delivery of the agreement to the recommendations, not just the agreement to the recommendations. I am very familiar with his work on the Soham inquiry and the importance of the changes that were made.

I entirely share the sentiments of my noble friend Lord Beamish. Having talked to the victims of many kinds of disasters over the years, I know that the pressing feeling of the survivors, victims, bereaved families and so on is that they do not want this to happen again, and the way to make sure it does not happen again is to deal with it promptly. We slightly go round in circles on that point, but it is obviously right.

As the noble Lord, Lord Carter, may be aware, we are taking steps to improve the Government’s delivery of accepted inquiry recommendations, including through the inquiry recommendation dashboards. However, the Government agree that the noble Lord is right to raise this issue, and we note that there has been some discussion in the other place. I will take away his proposal to consider it. I note the comments and questions that have been raised by other noble Lords about the deadline and so on. We will take away the noble Lord’s proposal to consider how we can establish a clearer and more consistent expectation on public authorities to respond to inquiry recommendations.

In my response, I think I dealt with the three questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, but I am very happy to do so explicitly. The Government should respond and give their reasons, and they should do so in a timely fashion. As I say, we will take this away. I think the feeling of the Committee is that there is a bit more work to do to get this right. In the meantime, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Carter, to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Carter of Haslemere (Crossbench)

My Lords, I am very grateful for all the encouraging support that this amendment has had. I entirely accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, about the 56-day period. The reason for that, as I said in my speech, is that that is the period that legally applies to coroners, so I seized on it. Of course, there may be circumstances where that is too short—the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, gave some very good examples of that—and I am entirely flexible about that. However, there needs to be a meaningful and timely response—that was the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson—and it has to have some sort of legal authority behind it; otherwise, we will end up with these pat phrases, such as “in due course” and so on.

As the amendment stands, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beamish—that the Government could simply note the report—would not tick the wording of my amendment, which is about giving an explanation as to why no action needs to be taken. There needs to be some finality. The point on finality also addresses a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about things coming around again and again—a point that has been made a number of times. We are wasting public money when these things happen. There needs to be a finality to them, so that action can be taken and the Government can be seen to deliver what an inquiry’s experts and chair have reported. I entirely accept that point.

Quite simply, noble Lords have got the point. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, made it very well. She and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, understood entirely the substance of my amendment: that the Government must be under a duty to respond and must give some sort of explanation for not accepting a recommendation if that is the outcome. That is what I am getting at. I will think carefully about the wording of the amendment and discuss it with noble Lords. Let us come back to this on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 32 withdrawn.

Amendment 33 not moved.

Clause 8 agreed.

Amendment 34

Baroness Finn (Conservative)

My Lords, Amendment 34 was tabled in the name of my noble friend Lord Keen of Elie. This amendment seeks to probe the level of guidance and support that will be made available to officials for them to navigate the duty of candour set out in Clause 2. The amendment seeks to ensure that the Bill is effective in practice and that civil servants are properly supported with their legal responsibilities.

For this legislation to be as effective as the Government intend it to be, it is essential that officials know how to comply with the duty of candour and are given any necessary support in fulfilling that duty. This matters most in the case of more junior officials, who may lack experience engaging in inquiries or other similar affairs. Can the Minister say in his response what assessment has been made of the difficulties that officials at the most junior level may face in complying with Clause 2(3)(a)? Those officials who are more senior, especially those who have experience engaging with investigations and inquiries, will surely be far better equipped to comply with the duty of candour. Will the Government make specific provision for those officials who lack that experience?

The Government have chosen to proceed by imposing a broad, disparate duty of candour on all officials. We understand why they have sought to proceed in this way, given the evidence of South Yorkshire Police altering hundreds of police statements and plain paper accounts following the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. A disparate duty removes the role of the central body, preventing that body altering statements and evidence to the inquiry. However, it cannot be right that junior officials and other officials who lack experience of such engagement with inquiries should be left to navigate their legal responsibilities alone. What legal support will officials be able to draw down either from their department directly or from lawyers funded by their department?

The Government might, not unreasonably, say that Civil Service trade unions will take on the responsibility of providing officials with legal advice where an inquiry of relevance to their work is established. I cannot imagine that trade unions would want that responsibility, but it is not unreasonable to think that they might be able to provide officials with the support that they need. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister has discussed the duties in this Bill and their consequences for officials with representatives of the trade unions. Can he tell us what role the trade unions intend to play? Having said that, not all public servants are members of a trade union, and it would not be right for the Government to impose legislation that makes it virtually an occupational necessity to join a trade union. In the circumstances where an official is not a member of a union, as many are not, the question remains: what support will their sponsor department provide?

Departments may have even more wide-ranging support to offer. With the broad duty of candour, there is a significant risk that a junior or inexperienced employee might want to have their department provide instructions on what they should and should not provide to an inquiry. What assessment have the Government made of the possible greater role that could and should be played by individual departments, or perhaps a central unit in the Cabinet Office, to ensure that our hard-working public officials are not left to navigate what is clearly a complex law alone? I beg to move.

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee that I was unable to be here for either Second Reading or the first day of Committee and so have not spoken before on the Bill.

As we all know, Clause 2(1) insists on “candour, transparency and frankness” in dealing with inquiries and investigations. They are rightly identified in the Bill as the crucial requirements for honest dealing. However, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, who so ably moved this amendment in their place, are also right that the standards which effectively state the Nolan principles are expressed in the Bill in general terms only. We and the officials of whom these standards are demanded need to be clear about what follows from the Nolan principles in terms of their practical application. The Bill would benefit from elucidation in that regard. That can be given by guidance. We would ordinarily expect guidance. The Bill introduces a specific and express duty of candour and assistance, which amounts to a new area of public duty—certainly a new expression of a duty that might always have been implicit but is now to be explicit. Furthermore, Clause 5 establishes a new offence of failing

“to comply with the duty of candour and assistance in respect of an inquiry or investigation”.

That of itself is a strong reason why clear guidance is particularly necessary. Therefore, we think it right that guidance should be compulsory.

I note that the explanatory statement for Amendment 34 describes this as a probing amendment. We on these Benches would be more forthright. The amendment is in no sense didactic about what should be in the guidance, but a compulsory requirement for guidance from government would provide a great deal. The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, talked about the possibility of guidance from trade unions. That is as may be, but what is required is guidance from government to provide clarity on what is to be required of officials and what support they will receive in abiding by the duty. It would provide consistency across different organisations and between different areas of the country and different areas of operation. There is no indication in the Bill now as to how consistency is to be achieved.

Such guidance would provide clear assistance to officials who above all need to know what they must do to comply with the new expressed duty and to avoid falling foul of the criminal law. It would provide assistance to the courts and to the judiciary when they come to interpret the law and, from the judges’ point of view, direct juries as to the requirements of the new law. Above all, perhaps, I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, said in the last group on the implementation of the recommendations by inquiries. It would provide clear guidance on what is required of officials to be bound by the assistance in helping them, as officials, avoid repetition of past failures, which is part of what the Bill is all about. For all these reasons, we regard this as a sensible amendment and invite the Government not merely to be probed by it but to accept it.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Crossbench)

My Lords, I have some questions to do with this amendment which relate to those public bodies that would not necessarily have access to adequate legal advice and information. In doing so, I support the amendment entirely. I want to make that clear up front.

My questions are to do with non-departmental public bodies and arm’s-length bodies, of which I have some experience. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, has pointed out, frequently the duties of this Bill would fall on relatively junior officials who may not, despite the training they might have received, have the capabilities to provide the necessary information in the format and order—and with the alacrity—that would be required.

My question to the Government relates particularly to Part 4 of Schedule 6, which deals with parity. We will come to that later in the Bill, but I want to pick up the point here. Would it relate to external legal advice, frequently from independent counsel, where an arm’s-length body may not have the internal capacity to get it? Many of them, in dealing with inquiries such as the Covid inquiry that entail long and detailed responses, have to hire independent counsel to advise them in any event. Part 4 of Schedule 6 says that public authorities must “have regard to guidance” promoting candour and supporting the “inquisitorial” character of inquiries, may use public representatives only where “necessary and proportionate” and must answer concerns raised about their conduct. What is the meaning of “necessary and proportionate” here? How would we ascertain that? That is the reason why the guidance is so important.

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour)

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, for moving the amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, which seeks to require the Government to publish guidance on the duty of candour and assistance within one month of the offences coming into force. I agree with the noble Baroness that it is essential that officials under the duty understand what is required of them and where they can seek support regardless of their seniority.

While, broadly speaking, the intention of the duty of candour is to enforce the behaviour already expected of public officials and authorities, it is important that there is clarity about the new law. I can therefore assure the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that we will provide guidance to public officials about the duty of candour and assistance and that our intention is for this to be ready for the commencement of the duty.

In response to the resourcing questions raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Finn and Lady Falkner, departments currently provide legal advice to officials, and we would expect the same for arm’s-length bodies. We expect this to continue upon commencement of the Bill. In light of these reassurances, I hope the noble Baroness will be content to withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Finn (Conservative)

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, for their support for this amendment and for highlighting the need for clear guidance, particularly from the Government, to support officials, especially more junior ones, in abiding by the duty. I thank the Minister for acknowledging the importance of this issue and welcome the commitment to bring forward guidance on this matter. In light of that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 34 withdrawn.

Clause 9 agreed.

Clause 10: Expected standards of ethical conduct

Amendment 34A

Lord Hendy (Labour)

My Lords, I have five amendments in this group. If it is convenient to your Lordships, I propose to speak to all of them and then formally move the first. I will be brief.

This group concerns the involvement of workers in the fulfilment of the Clause 2 obligations, with the exception of the last amendment, which deals with impact assessments. I use the word “workers” with precision, because your Lordships will have observed that in Clause 10(1) the obligation of ethical conduct is to be observed

“at all times by people who work for the authority”.

As somebody with some experience in employment law, to me that means employees, limb (b) workers, self-employed workers, bogus self-employed workers, agency workers and workers under a personal service company. It may even involve those who volunteer for nothing. So, it is a very broad concept.

My first amendment, Amendment 34A, is simple. It seeks to insert “all reasonable” in Clause 10(1), which currently reads:

“A public authority must promote and take steps to maintain high standards”,

and so on. The amendment would make it “take all reasonable steps”. That phrase is used in reference to public authorities in Clause 2, which says that

“the public official who is in charge of the authority must take all reasonable steps to secure that the authority complies with those obligations”.

My second amendment in this group, Amendment 37A, would require that each public authority, in drafting its code of ethical standards, consults ACAS, as experts on disciplinary matters, and the recognised trade unions. We are talking about public authorities; the public sector has a very high level of collective bargaining coverage, meaning that public authority employers do negotiate with trade unions and that the recognised trade unions are genuinely representative. Of course, this would not prohibit consultation with anybody else, but it is important that the recognised trade unions’ workforce representatives have a say in the code of ethical standards, as that not only imposes standards of conduct but may be the cause of disciplinary measures against the workers concerned.

My third amendment is Amendment 40A, which seeks to make it clear that a worker alleging that the code of ethical standards has been breached on the basis of their “reasonable and genuine suspicion” should not be subjected to

“dismissal or detriment … including … bullying and harassment”.

There should be adequate protections for those who draw attention to what they genuinely and reasonably believe is a breach of the code. That goes beyond the current protection for whistleblowers. However, in Amendment 43A, I have looked at the reverse of the coin to make sure that the protection given to whistleblowers under the current statutory regime is extended to people in this situation.

Finally, Amendment 42A is intended to impose, among the other explanations that the Bill currently requires of public authorities, the obligation to give an explanation of how the protection of workers will be delivered.

With that, I beg to move Amendment 34A.

Baroness Featherstone (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, Amendments 41 and 43 are in my name. Amendment 41 is about what happens when serious concerns are raised within a public authority and particularly what happens when those concerns are not acted upon.

We have seen scandal after scandal when warnings were given, sometimes repeatedly, but nothing was done. In some cases, those at the top of the organisation were never properly informed; in others, concerns were dismissed or allowed simply to disappear. Too often, protecting the reputation of the institution seemed to take priority over protecting the people whom it was supposed to be serving.

One of the most troubling aspects of these scandals is that, when the truth finally emerges, it can be remarkably difficult to establish who knew what, when they knew it, and who decided not to act. Responsibility becomes blurred, decisions are attributed to processes or committees rather than individuals, and, sometimes, there is simply no proper record of why a serious warning was ignored.

My Amendment 41 is intended to address that problem. It would require public authorities to set out in their codes of ethical conduct how credible information about serious wrongdoing, systemic failure or a continuing risk of serious harm should be handled. It would make clear when concerns must be brought to the attention of senior management or those responsible for governance. Importantly, it would require decisions to be recorded, including whether a matter was investigated, who was responsible for the decision, and, crucially, why no further action was taken if no further action was taken.

That last point is particularly important, because there may be perfectly legitimate reasons why an authority decides that a particular concern does not require further investigation, but that decision must be made consciously by someone who can be identified, and with their reasons properly recorded for public record. Otherwise, it is far too easy for serious concerns to fall between the cracks or for responsibility to be passed from one person to another until nobody is accountable.

This amendment is not intended to create unnecessary bureaucratic burdens, and nor does it require every allegation to result in a full investigation; it simply requires a clear process with proper escalation and a record of the decisions made. We cannot prevent every failure, but we can make it much harder for warnings to be ignored, for responsibility to be avoided or for institutions to claim afterwards that nobody knew what was happening.

I hope the Government will recognise that this is a practical and proportional way of strengthening the Bill. I would particularly welcome the Minister’s view on why any public authority receiving credible information about serious wrongdoing should not be required to record what it decided to do about it and why.

Amendment 43 deals with another straightforward problem: what happens when serious concerns are raised about an organisation but the people responsible for investigating them are themselves part of the problem? We have seen this happen in a number of public scandals: concerns are raised, investigations take place internally, and the organisation concludes that there is little or nothing to answer for: case closed.

Sometimes, that conclusion might be justified, but sometimes it is more about protecting the organisation and its reputation than about finding out what went wrong. If senior management is implicated, it is particularly difficult to see how an internal investigation can be impartial.

My amendment would require public authorities to provide a route for independent consideration of serious concerns in three circumstances: where senior management is involved, where similar concerns have previously been raised but not adequately investigated, or where there is good reason to doubt that an internal investigation would be impartial. In those circumstances, the authority’s code of ethical conduct would have to identify an independent person or body to whom the matter could be referred.

This is really not about requiring every complaint to be investigated externally, nor is it about creating another layer of bureaucracy. It is simply about making sure there is somewhere independent to go when the normal internal processes cannot reasonably be relied on. We know that staff can find it difficult to raise concerns about those above them and that institutions can become defensive when their reputation is at stake. An independent route would help ensure that serious warnings are not simply dismissed or contained within an organisation.

I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether the Government believe that the existing arrangements provide sufficient independence in these particular three circumstances. If an organisation is accused of serious wrongdoing, we should not expect it to be the sole judge of its own conduct.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Conservative)

My Lords—

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour)

My Lords, I think the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, might want to speak to her amendment.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Crossbench)

My Lords, forgive me: I am slightly lost. Am I speaking to Amendment 63A? I beg the indulgence of the House for a moment while I find my papers.

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour)

Sorry, that is my fault. I apologise. The amendment has been moved from this group.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Crossbench)

I thank the noble Baroness: near heart attack averted.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Conservative)

If the noble Baroness quite rightly is not going to speak to her amendment, I will speak to mine, which is in this group. First, I will address Amendment 147 in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie, to which I have added my name. It seeks to require an impact assessment of the cost of implementing the policy outlined in Clause 10: a policy that would require public authorities to publish a code of ethical conduct.

The reason for this probing amendment is that the existing impact assessments for the Bill do not make any mention of the expected cost of implementation of these proposed measures. It seems to us that there must be a cost of drafting and publishing such a code, so this does seem to be an omission. If, of course, the data exists and just did not make it into the impact assessment, we would of course be very happy to withdraw the amendment. Can the Minister share that cost with the House? If it has not yet been calculated, why has it not, and can it please be calculated and then shared?

More generally, there is limited evidence in fact to indicate that the existence of codes of conduct is sufficient to prevent scandals occurring. There are numerous scandals in recent history that have happened within institutions that already have codes of conduct, such as the NHS. The underlying issue is really conduct, not codes of conduct, and it is not clear to many of us that you change the former by instituting the latter. As it stands, there is every possibility that the cost could be considerable, with every public authority expected to draft their own individual code. How have the Government come to the conclusion that Clause 10 is the right way forward without, it seems, having undertaken an impact assessment on the costs of this new duty? I appreciate here that we start to touch on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that call for a single code. I will deal with those in the next group, although of course the points overlap to an extent.

On the other amendments in this group, those in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, broadly seek to protect those who raise concerns, but we on these Benches would be wary of amendments that seek to add unnecessary consultation burdens, which would be costly and would also delay implementation, as we think Amendment 37A does. On Amendment 34A, which seeks to require public authorities to take all reasonable steps to promote ethical conduct, we understand where the wording has come from, as the Explanatory Note indicates, but the context is vastly different from the specific offence in Clause 2, so it seems to us a little clunky to use that drafting in this case as well.

Amendment 40A seeks to create protection for employees, but we wonder whether that is not already covered sufficiently in the existing Employment Rights Act 1996. Amendment 42A would require a public authority to explain the protection it provides, which would again take more time and money to implement. We already have a huge amount of regulation in this country. Generally, on these Benches, we think we need less rather than more regulation.

I turn to Amendments 41 and 43 from the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. Although she is, with respect, right to probe how organisations will in fact undertake their responsibilities to behave ethically, we are concerned that these amendments risk being somewhat overly prescriptive, and we already have concerns, as I have said, about the cost of the implementation of Clause 10. That said, I hope that the Minister will be able to give the noble Baroness some more clarity on what the Government in fact expect of organisations that will be subject to the duties set out in the Bill.

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Labour)

My Lords, first, I apologise, if I may, to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner. Her amendment has moved between groups in the past 24 hours, and that was my error. I apologise.

I thank all noble Lords who contributed to the debate on this group, which includes Amendments 34A, 37A, 40A and 42A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Hendy, and Amendments 41 and 43, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. I want to be clear that the Government agree that, where wrongdoing occurs, public officials should be able to raise concerns in confidence and be protected from retaliation. However, without repeating arguments I made from this Dispatch Box on the first day of Committee, the Government’s view is that existing legal protections already provide safeguards for officials under the Employment Rights Act 1996. This Bill will require public authorities to maintain codes of ethical conduct that must ensure that workers are made aware of their whistleblowing rights. Further, the Government are seeking views on the operation of the whistleblowing framework via a consultation that was launched last week. We have already discussed the details of that consultation in Committee and, in the interest of time I will not repeat those points today.

I recognise the concerns expressed by noble Lords about the time required to move from consultation to reform. However, it is important to be reminded that the scope of this Bill applies only to the public sector, although whistleblowing is not an issue confined to the public sector. We would not want to introduce changes through this legislation that create inconsistencies within the wider whistleblowing framework. For those reasons, we believe it would be premature to legislate in this area before the consultation has concluded and the evidence has been fully considered. However, as I mentioned last week, I am looking forward to meeting noble Lords to discuss how we can use the code of ethical conduct to make clearer existing protections, and I ask that those interested feed into the government consultation. I look forward to that meeting with both my noble friend and the noble Baroness.

I want to provide additional reassurances to my noble friend Lord Hendy regarding his Amendment 43A, which seeks to make clear the definition of a qualifying disclosure. The Bill already provides for this by referring to the definition of protected disclosure in the 1996 Act, which, in turn, defines qualifying disclosure. Therefore, we do not feel this amendment is necessary—although I am very aware that I am having an argument with an employment rights lawyer, so I am sure the conversation will continue.

I fully recognise the intention behind Amendment 147, highlighted by the Opposition Front Bench, and the importance of ensuring that Parliament and the public understand the impact of these measures. However, bereaved families and victims rightly expect the Government to implement the provisions in this Bill promptly and effectively. The Government are therefore keen to maintain momentum towards implementation and are not persuaded that additional measures are necessary to achieve that objective.

As noble Lords will be aware, the Government intend to publish a revised impact assessment following Royal Assent, which will provide an updated assessment of the measures contained in the Bill. In the light of that commitment, the Government do not consider the amendment to be necessary, but, given the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, I think it will be helpful if I highlight what the current impact assessment says about the estimated cost to public authorities of delivering Clause 10.

The code of ethical conduct provisions will create new burdens on public authorities, including local authorities. The provisions have deliberately been drafted to allow maximum flexibility in implementation. Given that most, if not all, public bodies will already be covered by a form of code, it is not anticipated that the cost impact will be substantial; some lawyers’ time to assess compliance, management time and training— I am not, however, underestimating the cost of lawyers, given who sits in your Lordships’ House.

The scale of these costs will depend on the number of public bodies within scope and the implementation plans informed by the legislation, the extent of the codes, how much can be standardised and so on, which can be fully determined only after Royal Assent, once Members of your Lordships’ House have done their job of scrutiny. A further assessment of impact will take place alongside the development of our implementation plans and underpinning guidance, and a new burdens assessment will be developed at the appropriate time.

I hope that answers the questions raised by noble Lords. I respectfully ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Hendy (Labour)

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for her amendments, which appear consistent with those that I have put forward. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, for his amendment and contribution. I will say no more about it, in the light of what has fallen from my noble friend just now, except that the protection currently given by the whistleblowing legislation is not considered to be adequate by many who practice in the field. Given that the code of conduct that is proposed is only for the public sector and only in the circumstances required by Clause 2, it appears to me that there is real justification for a higher degree of protection than that offered to whistleblowers.

I thank my noble friend the Minister for her contribution. In the light of what she has said about ongoing consultation and conversations to continue, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 34A withdrawn.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Labour)

I advise the Committee that, if Amendment 35 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 37 to 49 for reasons of pre-emption.

Amendment 35

Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench)

My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Wolfson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, have provided the Committee with a very good curtain-raiser for Amendment 35.

This amendment stands with Amendments 51 and 61, in my name and those of my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead, and the noble Lords, Lord Murray of Blidworth and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames. I am grateful to them, and indeed to other Members of your Lordships’ House who spoke at Second Reading and between then and now on this issue of one central ethical code.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, for his unfailing courtesy and engagement. He met my former Liverpool constituents, the mother and the sister of Andrew Devine, the 97th fatality at Hillsborough, and heard their anxieties about a plethora of conflicting and inconsistent codes of conduct, instead of one clear central code, capable of adding codicils or variations but clear on its essential elements. I acknowledge at the outset the importance of securing the enactment of this Bill without unnecessary delay, and I certainly have no intention of adding to that delay. I might say that I have just spotted the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, also in her place, and she too met the family of Andrew Devine. Both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, as Ministers, have been exemplary in the way that they have dealt with the families still suffering grief after all this time.

The proposals in these amendments rest on three linked pillars: first, a single core code of ethical conduct; secondly, an effective framework for considering civil sanctions for serious non-compliance, and, thirdly, education and cultural change. In a way, each one reinforces the other. Clear standards should be understood, serious breaches must carry credible consequences, and our ambition must be to prevent misconduct in the first place.

Although Hillsborough brought us to this point, the Bill must serve far more than those affected by Hillsborough or by other disasters involving many victims. We have heard many of them referred to during earlier parts of our proceedings today. The protection afforded by a core code and the means of securing accountability for its serious breach must never depend on the number of victims or the profile or the publicity which their case receives.

I want to acknowledge a letter which the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, sent me only this morning, following a question that I raised last week in Committee and also at Second Reading concerning the duty of candour on universities where a student or academic may have died by suicide. That letter has been placed in the Library, and I hope that we can consider its implications on another group of amendments later in our proceedings. It obviously also has some relevance on a code of conduct that should be applicable to all.

The first pillar I have referred to is the core code, a single national code that would state the obligations everyone exercising public functions should recognise: honesty, integrity, candour, accountability, the proper keeping and disclosure of information, the correction of known error and service to the public. The Government said in answer to my Question HL3290 that approximately 6 million public sector workers are within scope of the requirement of codes. That is a powerful reason to make the common ethical foundation clear, accessible and consistent. In Answers to HL3135 and HL3136, Ministers have emphasised flexibility for individual authorities. I accept that need, but why should flexibility prevent a common minimum standard? If approximately 6 million people are covered across a large number of authorities, it makes little sense for each to reinvent substantially the same fundamental ethical obligations.

The common core should be worked out, consulted upon, as the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said a few moments ago, and approved nationally. Authorities could then add specialist provisions. That would promote consistent understanding, avoid near identical codes and simplify future revisions. The code need not be fixed for all time in primary legislation. The Act can provide the authority, purposes, consultation duties and safeguards as our amendment seeks to do. The detailed core code and subsequent revisions could be made by, as we have argued, delegated legislation subject to affirmative approval by both Houses of Parliament. Parliamentary control and practical flexibility can then reinforce one another.

The second pillar of the amendment concerns sanctions. We are not asking Parliament now to fix the amount of a civil penalty, prescribe pension-related consequences or enact a completed sanctions scheme, but we do ask for a proper process of consultation and legislative development addressing the nature of sanctions, independent investigation and decision-making, fair procedures and appeal. Any eventual penalties must have adequate statutory authority and proper parliamentary scrutiny.

In November 2025, Sir Keir Starmer referred to disciplinary sanctions, including gross misconduct. At Second Reading on 1 September, the noble Lord spoke of expectations and consequences for breaches. The Government’s 2026 February annual report responding to the Grenfell Tower inquiry referred to departmental discipline and sanctions for egregious breaches. The outstanding question is how to make the principle effective where present mechanisms leave gaps. If enforcement is wholly at the discretion of individual authorities, common standards may be enforced inconsistently. One authority may investigate rigorously while another does not. Institutional self-interest, reputation or seniority may influence decisions or appear to do so.

One gap we might consider arises when serious misconduct does not appropriately lead to criminal proceedings, but internal employment discipline is inadequate. Another arises where the individual has retired, resigned, transferred or otherwise left office before a complaint is resolved. In reply to my Question HL3137, the noble Lord said that authorities are responsible for disciplinary consequences for those who work for them, but that does not answer the question of what happens when they no longer do. The consultation should address that question expressly with fair time limits and protection against retrospective punishment.

In HL3138 I asked how an individual could obtain an independent investigation and a remedy where internal discipline was inappropriate. The answer was that methods and outcomes depend on the circumstances and the authority. How, then, are the public to have confidence in consistent and independent enforcement, particularly where the authority itself is implicated? What common minimum safeguards will prevent serious cases being overlooked? Honest mistakes promptly disclosed and corrected should not be treated like deliberate concealment, obstruction, retaliation or persistent misconduct.

The third pillar of these amendments is education and sustained cultural change. The ambition should extend beyond instructing current public servants about employment obligations. The national core code should become a common civic standard. Its principles of honesty, candour, accurate records, fair treatment, correcting mistakes and raising concerns should be taught progressively from an early age. Citizens would then know what to expect of those exercising public power. A junior official could refer to a recognised common code when questioning an improper instruction. I ask the noble Lord to involve the Department for Education in considering teaching materials, consultation with teachers, a modest pilot and evaluation, building on existing citizenship education. Education alone is insufficient. Sanctions cannot create ethical culture. Together with leadership and fair enforcement, they offer a prospect of prevention.

Let me also briefly cite international comparisons, which offer useful experience, not ready-made templates. The United States has common federal executive branch ethics standards and ethics training; Canada has a federal values and ethics code with organisational supplements; Australia has statutory public service standards and graduated employment sanctions; New Zealand has an updated public sector code, effective in March this year, with common standards and organisational supplementation; and Ireland has an ethics commission with complaints investigation functions. These systems differ constitutionally and in scope. The relevant questions are: how common and specialist standards fit together, how guidance and training work, who examines serious complaints where an authority is implicated, and what happens after employment ends. Australian public service guidance, for example, makes it clear that employment sanctions cannot be imposed on a former employee. Consultation should test both the strengths and limitations of such approaches before any model is adopted.

Then, there is the question of economy. A common ethical foundation, drafted once, could reduce duplication in drafting, legal review, publication, training and revision. Amendment 51 concerns consultation and parliamentary process; Amendment 61 seeks consistency between the national core and other guidance, and they complement Amendment 35.

I ask the Government to accept the three principles I have outlined to the Committee: a common ethical foundation capable of revision under parliamentary control; consultation on proportionate and independently administered civil consequences for serious misconduct, including after departure from public employment; and education and sustained leadership as part of the cultural change. I beg to move.

Amendment 35A (to Amendment 35)

Lord Hendy (Labour)

My Lords, I am very happy to support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and pay my respects to the persuasive exposition of the principles that lie behind it. I have two amendments in this group. The first is intended to give similar protection against dismissal, detriment, bullying or harassment for somebody who makes an allegation of breach of the core code on the basis of reasonable and genuine suspicion, as in my earlier amendment, but this time directed to the national core code that the noble Lord proposes. Likewise, the second amendment states that in that national core code, as before, consultation should be with the recognised trade unions in the public sector, together with taking into account the views of ACAS. I beg to move.

Lord Bichard (Crossbench)

My Lords, I strongly support this group of amendments. As I said at Second Reading, Clause 10 is for me perhaps the most important clause in the Bill because it is about improving the standards of behaviour of every public official and preventing some of the failures we have all talked about so often in the recent past. It is about preventing, not addressing them after the fact. If we are going to achieve that, if we are going to achieve the improved standards of behaviour I think we all want, we need to craft legislation that makes a real difference on the ground in every public service organisation and that is familiar to every public servant. What we do not need is a perfect statement of good intent that has no practical impact because as I keep saying, and as the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said earlier today, all the recent failures have occurred in spite of the existence of the Civil Service Code, the Ministerial Code, the Nolan principles, the Business Appointment Rules—I could go on and on. These statements of good intent have too often been ignored, and we do not need more.

My fear is that, as drafted, Clause 10 will not bring about real improvements on the ground. Indeed, as drafted, I think it is likely to make matters worse. I know from my conversations with the Minister that that is absolutely not his intention; nor do I think it is the Government’s intention.

In its current form, the Bill could lead to a vast number of different codes. Notwithstanding the advice from the mysteriously named “appropriate national authority”, the public will find that confusing, difficult to understand and difficult to access. Accountability will suffer. Staff moving from one public sector organisation to another will have to come to terms with slightly different interpretations of ethical behaviour. It just cannot work.

I know that codes and words alone can never be guaranteed to change behaviour without very strong and determined leadership, but to stand a chance of making a difference and having a positive impact, they have to be clear, succinct, simple, memorable, accessible and realistic. For me, that means that we need one core code which applies to every public service organisation and every public official. We need a code which makes it clear that the welfare of the citizen is the first priority, ahead of senior managers, Ministers or the reputation of the department. We need a code with teeth, which cannot easily be circumvented by resignation or retirement. We all know this happens too often at the moment.

Amendments 35 and 51 may need further development, but taken together with the other amendments they would, if agreed, provide us with a powerful new weapon to help rebuild the trust between the state and the citizen that has been so grievously damaged. I hope the Minister will commit to consulting and discussing further before Report on an amendment which does just that.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Crossbench)

My Lords, I wish to make some observations on the amendment. In doing so, I declare an interest, in that I am a distinguished fellow of the think tank Policy Exchange, which published a report on this Bill called Legislating for Candour? only last week.

My main remarks have to do with subsection (9) of the new text for Clause 10 proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool. In my understanding, it is intended to cover circumstances where the holder of a public office ceases to hold it, ceases to be employed by the public sector, or resigns, is relieved or is dismissed—in other words, is no longer effectively there to be accountable for their actions. I share the outrage that the public feel when people who are so clearly implicated in wrongdoing resign, generally on full pay, or move on or out, at the first whiff of having to account for their actions, and there is very little that can be done. I completely appreciate that; however, I wonder whether, in proposing this long and comprehensive new text to replace subsections (3) to (14), the proposers might have thought to do this in a different way. For example, instead of defining comprehensively in subsections (9) and (10) all the circumstances where an officeholder may no longer be in post, certain actions of the officeholder, rather than the circumstances, could be the subject of scrutiny, enforcement and sanctions. I say this because I have some experience of arm’s-length bodies and other regulators, notably as a former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. My personal experience is also informed by some work I did at the Bank of England, where for nine years I was a member of the enforcement decision-making committee. I will come to that when I move another amendment.

The point I want to share with the Committee is that, when you are a public official and you take actions in good faith, you take them on the basis of advice you have received individually, or indeed collectively, in discussions with other employees of that organisation, other board members and so on, perhaps even including external legal advice. Once you depart that organisation, all your records, electronic or otherwise, do not belong to you; they belong to the public body you served. You have a requirement to hand in all your records, documents, discussions, informal advice, formal advice. I recall that, at one point at EHRC, that requirement also included Post-it notes. The challenge became identifying which Post-it note that had come unstuck from a document belonged to which page of which document. It can be quite a tortuous process. The arguments that informed your decision, which may have been made several years prior, are not yours to re-examine in trying to work out why you took the actions you took. You do not have an audit trail as an individual; all you have is memory and, hopefully, other witnesses who might have been in the room at the time and whom you have good relations with and can still contact in the hope that they will come to your rescue. The obligations arising from your earlier responsibility apply to you subsequently, according to this amendment, but you may have very little in terms of a defence.

I appreciate that the signatories to the amendment agree that a consultation would be carried out on any regulations the Government drew up, but I prefer the Government’s own drafting of this Bill, which is fairly muscular in describing the code and seems to have been well thought through. I am not entirely convinced by the amendment.

A final question I have for the Government relates to the overarching obligation arising from the core code in Clause 10(3). This question has arisen throughout my reading of the Bill. We know that the former Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, directed the Cabinet Secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo, to conduct an overarching review of the Civil Service’s Code of Conduct. We know that the review is ongoing; I think she expects to report next year. One of the principal things the review will do is to look at several of the areas of the Bill relating to the duty of candour, specifically the seven Nolan principles. The Civil Service Code as it stands—and it is likely, if anything, to be strengthened—covers honesty, accountability and integrity. In one of our earlier debates today, on the destruction of public records, I was tempted to ask about integrity, but I did not wish to detain the Committee unnecessarily. I was tempted to point out that civil servants already have an obligation not to destroy but to hold all records; that comes under the duty of integrity clearly set out in the Civil Service Code.

My question for the Minister is: what will happen to that review and its relationship with this core code, and how will the two interact, or will the core code take precedence over the Civil Service Code? I say that advisedly because currently—and I disagree with the practice—not only does the Civil Service Code hold and apply to all civil servants but it allows different government departments to layer on and add their own separate codes, depending on their functions. We are potentially going to have a three-tier adherence to codes on the part of civil servants. One will be the departmental code, the second the overarching Civil Service Code and the third the codes envisaged in the Bill. I wonder whether the Government have reviewed how those three different aspects of ethical standards will apply to the 6 million or so civil servants, plus all non-departmental public bodies and arm’s-length bodies.

Baroness Hamwee (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, before I turn to my Amendment 36, in response to the noble Baroness’s points about officials who have retired, resigned and so on, I may be wrong about this but I seem to remember that the IOPC tackled that issue. There was a lot of concern about police officers who had retired or, more often, resigned, and that was tackled, to great general relief. I would have thought, surely, that a person caught up by this would have access to documents and so on. However, that is not central to my argument.

My Amendment 36 is not a hostile amendment to that of the noble Lord, Lord Alton; in fact, I consulted him before tabling it because we were both concerned that the IPA’s particular experience should be made available where it can be useful—in this case, to the Secretary of State—that the IPA should be consulted and that the IPA’s advice should have regard paid to it and contribute to the code of conduct. More generally, we are both concerned about writing the IPA into the Bill.

Lord Murray of Blidworth (Conservative)

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 35, 51 and 61 in this group. I do not propose to add greatly to what the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Bichard, have said about these amendments. In my view, the incorporation of a single code would result in a considerable saving of time and money.

My question to the Minister is: please could the department evaluate the difference in public spending and official time in having separate codes of conduct for all these public bodies, as opposed to one core code, as advocated for in the excellent amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Alton? I hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, says about the impact of subsections (9) and (10). For my part, as a signatory to these amendments, I am certainly prepared to look at that question. I entirely understand the gravamen of the problem that she identifies, but I do not think it undermines the central thrust that a core code is a good idea.

Lord Evans of Weardale (Crossbench)

My Lords, I would like to make an observation with regard to Amendment 35. I speak informed by my time previously as chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, now the Ethics and Integrity Commission.

I strongly support the suggestion in the Bill that there should be a requirement on departments to have an ethical code of this sort. It was quite astonishing to me, in talking to some departments, to find that there was very little by way of ethical guidance available to their staff, which seemed to me a significant gap. Indeed, one or two conversations with senior Permanent Secretaries who said they did not believe there were any ethical issues in their departments rather reinforced my view that we needed to make people concentrate their minds.

Nevertheless, I have some reservations about the suggestion that there should be a single code. I can see the attractions of it, but there is a difference. We have a core of common values and principles in the Nolan principles. That is relevant across all departments and agencies, and it is important that there should be that commonality, but the way that that actually plays out with regard to particular departments will vary a great deal. What is ethical behaviour within an intelligence service might be very different from the way in which ethical behaviour plays out for a health professional or indeed for a regulator, and it would be quite difficult to draft a single code that illuminated those issues for staff in such different roles without having different codes. That does not mean that they should take a different approach to the principles, which are common, but it is about applying those in a way that helps people do their jobs on a daily basis.

It is not just about accountability. There are lots of other ethical issues that Governments and public service are faced with. There is quite a strong argument for requiring departments to draw up their own codes, thinking about their own business and how the principles apply to them.

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, we on these Benches have been clear that we greatly welcome the Bill, but we wish to strengthen it. We believe that Amendment 35 and the introduction of a common code would add strength to the Bill and reinforce its effect.

In view of the disgraceful cover-ups relating to so many of the tragedies discussed in relation to the Bill, from Hillsborough onwards—Horizon, infected blood, Grenfell, Windrush and a shaming number of others—it is unsurprising that the public rationale and justification for the Bill have been founded in later cover-ups of past tragedies, which have been aimed at diverting blame for what happened away from those wholly or partly responsible. The Bill with these aims is laudable, but it could and should do so much more. Its importance lies not only in investigating and inquiring into the reasons why tragedy has happened; equally important is the ambition that the Bill should set enforceable standards for the conduct of officials in an effort to ensure that such tragedies are prevented before they ever happen, and that those standards should be enforced by reference to the criminal law. In this, I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and others on this issue.

The ambition is there in the Bill. It is in the Long Title, which imposes

“a duty on public authorities and public officials to act with candour, transparency and frankness … to require public authorities to promote and take steps to maintain ethical conduct within all parts of the authority”.

There is no limit in the Long Title confining the duty to inquiries and investigations. While Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Bill deals with inquiries and investigations, the chapter that we are now considering—Chapter 2 of Part 2, and Clause 10 in particular—deals more generally with standards of ethical conduct, and it is far too weak in its enforcement.

Clause 2, which the principal amendments in this group seek to amend, provides principally that a public authority must promote and take steps to maintain high standards of ethical conduct at all times by people who work in the authority. It then sets out what is essentially a restatement of the Nolan principles, which were set out in 1995. We on these Benches believe that this part of the Bill as drafted lacks the teeth needed to enforce standards across public life so as to avoid likely tragedies before they occur.

We want the Bill to seize the opportunity to raise standards across public life in real terms. The Bill has often been described as requiring a change of culture, but for that it needs teeth to bite at all times. By our amendments we seek to make Chapter 2 of Part 2 as strong and important as Chapter 1 on inquiries and investigation. The Nolan principles are laudable and right but they have been around since 1995, and in principle long before then, yet these tragedies have happened. The principles need serious underpinning.

On the code, we support Amendment 35, which would provide, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, explained, for a single national core code. That code would be—as it has to be—underpinned by regulations. It would establish not only the principles and the standards, but the practical application of those standards and procedures for their implementation and enforcement. The core code would not preclude specific bodies from promulgating and enforcing particular codes to supplement the core code where those are appropriate. There may well be good reason for such additional supplemental provisions, usually applicable to particular types of authority or areas of operation, but they should always be consistent with the core code.

Amendment 61 would make it clear that guidance specific to particular authorities must be consistent with the core code of conduct, and that no public authority may substitute its own code for the core code. But our starting point for this group is that we should avoid multiple different codes—one adopted by each different public authority—and aim to achieve a single set of standards in much more detail than the Nolan principles, applicable to the whole of public life and all officials. We see the prime advantages of this arrangement as being far more likely with a core code than with multiple divergent codes to command universal understanding of the standards expected of public officials.

A core code would lead to far more consistency. It would avoid conflicts between the codes of different bodies. What is okay for Hampshire should not differ from what is okay for North Yorkshire. A single core code would be likely to lead to a code of higher quality than multiple and divergent codes, if only because the concentrated expertise devoted to its compilation would lead to a better and more studied core code and more focused individual supplementary codes where necessary. A single code, moreover, would lead to a build-up of a single, comprehensible and authoritative body of case law, and experience of what works and how standards should properly be applied. Multiple codes, which might conflict, might risk the growth of satellite litigation where codes differ.

A single code would save resources—the noble Lord, Lord Murray, made that point—with one body established for drafting and updating it as the need arises. For every public body to have working parties to set up their own divergent codes and later to update them, no doubt at different times, would be a recipe for divergence and chaos. It would undermine public respect for the whole project and would be grossly wasteful of resources.

Amendment 51, to which I have added my name, would require a consultation and report on the code within a short timetable. The timetable has to be tight for a reason. These standards need to be in place quickly. We need to avoid further failures in our public life that damage so many lives and that demean the reputation of the United Kingdom for competent, fair and honest administration. We must recover that reputation, and this Bill could be a way to do so with a core code.

I add nothing to what my noble friend Lady Hamwee said on Amendment 36 about the need for involvement of the independent public adviser, which is plainly sensible and right.

This is an important group in making this significant Bill work in practice. I fear, along with others, that without a common core code—one that is clear, widely publicised, understood and applicable across the country, backed up by enforcement provisions and provisions of the criminal law—we will betray the hopes and the justified demands of past victims. Without it, we will risk selling out on the opportunity for this Bill to make actual adherence to high ethical standards a real achievement rather than an unrealised pipe dream.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (Crossbench)

Putting what the noble Lord says together with what we just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, about the different nature of different public bodies, does he think, or do other Front-Bench spokesmen think, that there might be room for a middle way here: not one core code, but perhaps a core code for regulators, one for government departments and one for intelligence agencies? Would that not meet the noble Lord’s concerns, while still streamlining the process, as the noble Lord and the Conservative Front Bench wish?

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)

That is a very interesting and careful point, and I would expect nothing less from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, said, and I appreciate the position from which he was coming. But, frankly, his analysis depended on relying on principles that have been in place for a very long time. He said on a number of occasions that the standards that applied had applied for a very long time. My argument, and the argument expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is that, that being the case, all the standards applied across different core codes would have a common theme: a common set of standards that would be at the centre of a core code.

It is of essence of my argument—and, as I listened to it, the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Alton—that there could be supplementary codes dealing with particular types of bodies and regulators. That, I suggest, is the answer.

This may not be a million miles away from what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, suggests. I believe that, between now and Report and with the Government, we ought to be able to come up with a proposal for a core code commanding universal respect. I will give way to the noble Lord.

Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench)

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Before he concludes, I want to reinforce his point that these two things are not completely irreconcilable. My noble friend Lord Bichard and I previously discussed the possibility of codicils being added to a core national code, but agreed that there need to be some essential elements that are common to all. That is the whole point of a common code, which the noble Lord has outlined extremely well.

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)

I am grateful; we certainly agree on that, and I do not think the distances between us are irreconcilable. My central point is that this Bill, after all the failures there have been, requires teeth. It requires enforcement. It is backed up by provisions of the criminal law in relation to Chapter 1 of Part 2, but far less force is given to the prevention of tragedies before they occur. That is my central point.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Conservative)

My Lords, the original amendments in this group, starting with Amendment 35 in the name of noble Lord, Lord Alton, seek to implement a single national code of conduct. There are a number of amendments to that amendment.

I mention first Amendment 36 in the name of noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which seeks to ensure that this code of conduct has regard to the independent public advocate. Of course, we have debated the importance of the independent public advocate in previous groups. Logically prior, however, is Amendment 35A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and his Amendment 51A, which also seek to amend the proposal put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Alton.

In the previous group—these issues are related—we debated an amendment in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie, which sought to ascertain the expected cost of implementation of codes of ethical conduct. The Government’s answer to that group was that we would be told only after Royal Assent. That seems to be the Government inviting us to dine in a restaurant where you are told the price of your meal only after you have ordered it, been served it and eaten it. That may be a point we will come back to on Report.

More generally, one of the difficulties of this Bill is that it does not fully consider the impact on public authorities of creating their own codes of conduct. If creating a single code made that process both simpler and more cost effective, as long as it was an appropriate code of conduct, we would be open to that proposal. I suggest that the Committee needs to hear from the Minister a comparative assessment of the costs and burdens imposed by Clause 10, as drafted, and the same assessment of the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Alton. It seems that the Government might not have undertaken that work; if so, could the Minister either respond in this group, or at least undertake that he will write to the Committee with that detail. It seems to us to be information that we would need. It is very difficult to come to a reasonable judgment on this question without that impact assessment, because ultimately the issue here is comparing one thing with another. That comparative information, therefore, seems to me to be at the heart of this debate.

Amendments 51 and 61, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, expand on the concept of the single code of conduct with a consultation requirement. Another prevents public authorities replacing the national code with their own authority-specific code. Again, these also warrant consideration from the Minister. Perhaps a single code is indeed the solution to the burden that creating authority-specific codes would otherwise create.

That, of course, brings me to the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, towards the end of the debate, before I rose. It was—if I can respectfully paraphrase—that if one size does not fit all, perhaps three sizes might fit all. I would also adopt the response of the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley, that it is an interesting suggestion. I mean “interesting” in the positive sense, not “interesting” in the way that the civil servants used to say to me when I was a Minister, “That is a very interesting suggestion, Minister”, meaning, “We’ll put it in the wastepaper basket and just forget about it”. I genuinely mean that it is a very interesting suggestion and I will certainly think about it further. Again, if the Minister has not had enough notice of that point, perhaps he might include it in any letter to the Committee on the issues raised in this group.

Lord Lemos (Labour)

My Lords, I do not go to restaurants which do not have the prices on the menu.

This has been an important and constructive debate about what we all agree is a very important issue that goes to the heart of what we are trying to achieve here in terms of the culture change that we have talked about throughout these discussions.

I begin with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, which seeks to introduce one national code of conduct and to prevent authorities adopting their own separate codes. Before I comment on that, I would like to thank the noble Lord for his time in meeting with me—we have now had several discussions on this—and for arranging for me to meet the family of Andrew Devine to discuss the Bill. I very much appreciated that; it was a very moving occasion.

I thank the noble Lord for those kind remarks about unfailing courtesy. I am not sure that is a description my family and friends would recognise—but different strokes for different folks. I appreciate that the intention of this amendment is to strengthen the provisions in the Bill on ethical codes by trying to prevent public authorities adopting codes which may risk being watered down. I entirely accept that. I can also understand why some campaigners, bereaved families and victims are keen to strengthen these provisions, given the appalling way, as we have all agreed, that they have been treated by the state in the past. Our intention under the Bill is to ensure that codes of ethical conduct are tailored and accessible to the needs of individual sectors. The noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, gave a very elegant and eloquent description of why that might be important.

The Bill covers a broad range of public servants and different working environments where a single code may may be too general. All noble Lords—certainly the noble Lords, Lord Marks and Lord Alton—have accepted that there may be some things which need to be specific, and therefore something too general may not be sufficiently specific to drive meaningful cultural change. The Bill will ensure that every public authority is required to reflect on how to embed a duty of candour within a tailored code of conduct specific to their organisation and sector. The Bill provides clarity on what these codes must contain as a minimum. We will publish statutory guidance after Royal Assent, which will support public authorities to make impactful codes that will drive ethical behaviour throughout the organisation.

The Government are keen for the provisions on codes of ethical conduct to be implemented within an optimal period post Royal Assent. However, I can understand the concerns that have been raised and a need to ensure that we are clear on what is expected and required in each code. Therefore, I am very happy to commit to working with noble Lords in this debate, and other Peers, on how best we can achieve this. And, of course, we will talk about the questions about resources which the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, and others have raised. I cannot promise to write with a detailed assessment, for the reasons that my noble friend gave, but we are obviously mindful of the resources point and we are very happy to debate it.

I now turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord which would require a consultation on a single national code of conduct, sanctions and enforcement arrangements. It is right, when we are designing what is required in a code of ethical conduct, that we consider the views of those who represent public servants, experts, and those with lived experience of grave injustices at the hands of the state. I am not convinced at this stage that a single code of conduct is the most effective way to achieve the cultural change we are seeking, but I am open to considering how best we can engage with relevant stakeholders when considering how we can strengthen the provisions of the Bill on codes of ethical conduct. I hope noble Lords know that I will continue to work closely with noble Lords on this.

In the same vein, turning now to my noble friend Lord Hendy’s amendment, which builds on the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, I hope the noble Lord will forgive me for not going into too much detail, as we discussed this matter earlier. However, I reassure the noble Lord that the Government consider that existing legal protections already provide safeguards for officials who speak up about alleged wrongdoing, as my noble friend Lady Anderson described earlier. The noble Lord, however, raises an important point regarding engaging with trade unions and relevant stakeholders, including ACAS, to ensure that their codes of ethical conduct were appropriately tailored to their organisation. I will reflect on the comments he has made about today and would, of course, be happy to meet with him to discuss this ahead of Report

I now turn to Amendment 36 from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which builds on the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Alton. Throughout the passage of the Bill, the Government have worked closely with members of the public who have been victims of major incidents and grave injustices, and we fully intend to continue this approach. I can assure the noble Baroness that there is ongoing policy work taking place around the role of the Independent Public Advocate. I have been in touch with the noble Baronesses, Lady May and Lady Sanderson, about that work. That is a very live discussion. So, we will certainly take into account the spirit of her suggestion in that conversation. But I have made clear from this Dispatch Box before that we see the role of the Independent Public Advocate in victim support and representation as a critical part of the future arrangements that surround major incidents.

I will deal with the question about retirement. Two or three noble Lords have raised this from different perspectives—not all in agreement. Current and former employees are covered by the code—the Government are quite clear about this—in an inquiry or investigation into an incident or event when someone was in post, even if they have retired since. We are very clear about that. I hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, says, but we are clear, for all the reasons that a number of noble Lords made, that people will still be covered by the duty of candour in those circumstances.

With regard to the code of ethics, obviously it is more difficult to apply something to people for whom it was not in place at the time they were there—but on the wider duty of candour, which is the principal thing, I think that I have made the position clear.

On the Civil Service Code—I responded to the noble Lord, Lord Young, about this—we are very clear that all codes which exist already will have to meet the requirements of the Bill. I would not have the temerity to suggest anything to the Cabinet Secretary, but once the Bill is passed and we know the requirements for the code of ethics and how they will be organised, she will have to ensure that whatever arrangements are in place in the Civil Service meet those requirements.

With these reassurances to continue the conversation—and I look forward to that—I ask noble Lords to withdraw their amendments.

Lord Hendy (Labour)

I thank the speakers in the debate. In the light of what my noble friend the Minister has just said, I certainly wish to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 35A (to Amendment 35) withdrawn.

Amendment 36 (to Amendment 35) not moved.

Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench)

My Lords, I thank everyone who participated in the debate. I thank particularly the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, my noble friend Lord Bichard, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lords, Lord Murray of Blidworth and Lord Marks, for their strong and supportive remarks in the debate—and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, for what he had to say, too.

To go back for a moment to something that my noble friend Lord Bichard said, the state-citizen relationship has been grievously damaged; that is why he argued, as others have done, that we need to rectify that. Although reservations and caveats have been entered by the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Evans of Weardale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, that is the central question: how do we rectify that grievous damage?

In another place, in 1995, Lord Nolan, who has been referred to quite a lot today by noble Lords, reported back to then Prime Minister John Major following the cash for questions scandal. I think of all the things that I was required to do during my time in another place, one of the most dispiriting things of all was to serve on the Committee for Privileges and to take evidence and inquire into cash for questions, due to the fact that a Member of Parliament, entrapped admittedly, was nevertheless willing to take £1,000 to table a parliamentary Question. Then, of course, much more that we heard about followed on from that. It brought Parliament into great disrepute.

Lord Nolan said at the time:

“The general principles of conduct which underpin public life need to be restated”.

He also said:

“These principles apply to all aspects of public life”.

Given that his report at that time meant so much to so many people and provided a framework, it was for its time. We are duty bound in our time to look again at what those principles that unite us might be and why it is essential that there should be a central core. Whether it is for reasons of expenditure, inconsistency, unnecessary duplication or whatever it may be, having a central code of conduct, of ethics, is the right way. It is something that we can add to in specific circumstances, which I think would attend to the point referred to by my noble friend Lord Anderson of Ipswich. There is nothing at all contradictory about those things.

At this stage, I do not want to reiterate or repeat the arguments, because the Minister has been very conciliatory in what he has said. I think he has got the mood of the Committee: we want to continue these discussions, we would want to bring it back on Report, and it might indeed even be one of the few things that might lead us to divide, if we cannot sort this out and get it right. I hope that he will meet those who have spoken in today’s debate and give further consideration to how we might make the Nolan principles of 1995 relevant now, and how this amendment, which has enjoyed support from right across your Lordships’ House, might be put, in some form, into the Bill. But with those words, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 35 withdrawn.

Amendment 37

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I should make it clear that we do not intend by the detailed amendments in this group to undermine our support for the establishment of a core code, for all the reasons that we and others have outlined in the last group. Our amendments in this group are directed to amending the Bill as drafted, but I should stress, as we stressed in the last group, that they are applicable to a single core code, taken together with any supplementary codes adopted by particular public bodies or authorities. However, all are directed to giving the codes teeth requiring compliance and strengthening enforcement.

Amendment 37 would strengthen Clause 10(3)(b), which requires a public authority to take steps to make people who work for the authority

“aware of the code and the consequences for failing to act in accordance with it”.

Amendment 37 substitutes a much stronger position, which requires the authority to

“take all reasonable steps to ensure that those people … are aware of the code and the consequences of failing to act in accordance with it, and … comply with the code fully”.

Amendment 39

“would require a public authority’s code of ethical conduct to specify when a failure to comply with the standards of conduct must be referred for investigation as a potential criminal offence, in addition to setting out disciplinary consequences for breaches”.

That ties in with what I said in the previous group about the importance of linking serious breaches of the code with criminal sanctions.

Amendment 44 would allow a public authority to

“adopt another document as its code of ethical conduct”.

In a sense, that is applicable to the Bill as drafted rather than to when there is a core code, but it would provide, importantly, which would be consistent with a core code, that the document must not be modified

“in a way which reduces the standards of ethical conduct contained in it”.

Amendments 46 and 47 would mandate consistency between codes and demand an explanation of how consistency should be achieved. That would be relevant to consistency between supplementary codes and a core code.

Amendment 55 would require a set of minimum requirements that any code must meet, including arrangements made to ensure compliance, which would have to be specified, and procedures which would have to be followed in the case of non-compliance.

From our point of view, the most important of the amendments in this group is the introduction of a provision for a new criminal offence of a serious breach of a code of ethical conduct. That is designed to supplement the offences of misconduct in public office and misleading the public which are already in the Bill. It is part of the business of giving teeth to the imposition of ethical standards, which we regard as so necessary. The codes are here to be obeyed.

The problem with the Nolan standards and with provision for ethical standards in authorities in the past is that there has been no criminal sanction and only moderate and ill-matched sanction by disciplinary proceedings—ill-matched in the sense that different public authorities have been free to use different sanctions. We regard it as very important that, ultimately, there should be recourse to the criminal law, where failure is knowing or reckless and where that failure is serious.

The amendment defines “serious”. It has to be a failure which

“causes, or creates a significant risk of, serious harm to another person … involves dishonesty, corruption or abuse of public office”,

which involves a “serious breach” of the Nolan principles, or which

“seriously undermines … confidence in the public authority or the proper exercise of its functions”.

That would be punishable on summary conviction by 12 months’ imprisonment or a fine or both, and on indictment by two years’ imprisonment or a fine or both. It is a central feature of our suite of amendments and gives meaning to the imposition of compulsory standards.

We would not expect a vast number of prosecutions, but if we are serious about wanting a change of culture, we have to move from extolling standards to enforcing those standards. If serious breaches of the code lead to criminal proceedings, that best serves the aims of showing the public that we are serious about enforcing standards, for reasons of deterrence, to ensure that officials know that there will be serious consequences if they are guilty of a serious breach of the code, and a punishment which is a part of the process of penalties in the criminal courts.

We believe that serious cases of failure to comply with the code must be prosecuted. That is at the heart of our approach to accountability. It is backed up by a duty on public authorities to take all reasonable steps to prevent, detect and respond to possible offences, and by regulations governing the enforcement of the provisions of a code. Again, we say that it should be a common core code, supplemented by others. Criminal sanctions would apply whether or not disciplinary proceedings were brought. The minimum standards would have to reflect the Nolan principles. Under Amendment 58, there would be a periodic review of codes by the Ethics and Integrity Commission.

Together, this suite of amendments, we say, would make the enforcement of ethical standards a reality. We are very concerned that the Bill, as drafted, without those backstop provisions, would not do that. I beg to move.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Crossbench)

My Lords, this is probably an appropriate time for me to speak to my Amendment 63A, given that the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, has set out the Lib Dem amendment. In doing so, I am required by the Companion to declare my interest every time I intervene, so I declare my interest as a distinguished fellow of the think tank Policy Exchange. I am informed in the remarks I make by its recent report on the Bill, which is called Legislating for Candour?

My amendment would seek to deal with the effect of obligations imposed by or under Chapter 2. We know that Clause 10 will impose a new general duty on public bodies to promote and take steps to maintain high standards of ethical conduct at all times by people who work for the authority. Clause 10 also imposes a more specific duty to create and publish a new code of ethical conduct for people who work for the public authority. We have been discussing that for the last hour—so far, so good. This amendment aims to address or ameliorate the risk that these duties will expose public bodies to judicial review proceedings, which is likely to prove costly and undermine their ability to discharge their primary functions.

It is not clear whether the Government appreciate the risk that Clause 10 without amendment may give rise to new grounds on which to challenge public action in the courts, enabling the frustration of attempts to address serious policy problems, which is what we are trying to do here, and adding to the cost of doing government business. I say that advisedly at this stage because we know that the ability to crowdfund often vexatious attempts at judicial review is increasing by the day and that they are adding enormously to the cost of doing government business.

Outside the context of the Bill, the Government seem concerned about these risks. On 7 September this year, the Chancellor, the Attorney-General and the First Secretary of State sent a joint letter to Ministers about the simplification and agency of government. In the letter, the Government accept that

“in some instances it has become clear that the system of judicial review is out of balance”

and a disproportionate burden on effective government. The letter announces three changes and frames them in this way:

“We therefore wanted to set out three areas where this Government will act with greater alacrity—on consultations, on legal considerations, and on judicial review—as initial steps in what will be a wider programme of work to pare back counterproductive administrative burdens”.

This is a commendable ambition; I certainly share it. It may be in some tension with the Bill in general, which certainly imposes significant new administrative burdens, as set out in the report from Policy Exchange that I highlighted. That paper notes that, as things stand:

“Every public body in the country, from a government department to a parish council or a further education college, acquires a new set of uncertain legal obligations layered on top of the existing”—

and already extensive and onerous—

“grounds for review”.

In relation to Clause 10 in particular, the Government should make it clear whether they intend the duties in this clause to ground new applications for judicial review of the action of public bodies; that is, new grounds on which a court might block them. If this is the Government’s intention, it seems very hard to justify. Why would one want to empower the courts to police the ethical conduct of public bodies, a task for which they are ill suited? It is true and important that courts protect natural justice, but enforcing a duty to act ethically or policing compliance with a broadly worded code of ethical conduct is much more general; it is an ill-defined task which we should not invite the courts to carry out.

If the Government do not intend Clause 10 to widen the grounds of judicial review, the Bill needs amending. Whenever a public body publishes a code, there may be a risk that third parties will challenge the public body’s actions in court by reference to the code. There are numerous examples of that that I can send to the Minister. The risk is much greater when the code has a statutory footing, especially when, as with Clause 10, the code is intended to be a means to fulfil the more general duty of ensuring that those who work for the public authority act lawfully.

The Bill as it stands practically invites the courts to interpret for themselves the codes that public bodies publish, which may result in public bodies being held to have acted unlawfully for having misunderstood their own codes. Relatedly, the courts are likely to treat the requirements in a published code as relevant to the exercise of public power, which means that public bodies may be held to have acted unlawfully because they fail to consider—or even adequately to consider—some provision in those codes. Even if many or most of the challenges on these grounds fail, they will be costly to defend and slow down and distort policy-making and action. It may take several years of costly litigation before we get clarity on how the courts will handle this clause and establish case law. Further legalising the process and governing in this way is not wise.

This amendment aims to address these risks by providing that the duties in Clause 10—including the requirements of any code published by a public body because of the clause—are not to be considered in court. The point is not that public bodies should be free to ignore these duties, but that Parliament would make clear that the creation of these duties would not expand the scope of judicial review. The amendment provides that compliance with the duties in question may be considered by any relevant inquiry or investigation, which of itself is a powerful form of accountability, or it may be considered by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, who is an officer of Parliament. In addition, it would always be possible for parliamentarians to hold public bodies to account by reference to ethical conduct, including by reference to any code of conduct that they have published.

The amendment is loosely based on Section 4 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2010, which makes provision for political rather than legal accountability. That Act placed the Treasury under a statutory duty to bring public finances back into order on a fixed timetable. It had to ensure that public sector net borrowing as a share of GDP fell in several financial years in a row. The enforcement was left entirely to Parliament. The Treasury had to report on its progress alongside each Budget and pre-Budget report. Once the deadline had passed, it had to say whether the target was met and, if not, to explain why. Section 4 required those reports to be laid before Parliament and declared them to be the only means of holding the Treasury to account for those duties. It then provided that a missed target, passed or anticipated, would not affect the lawfulness of anything done or left undone by anyone, so no court could quash a decision, grant a declaration or compel compliance. The sanction for failure was having to come to the House and answer for it.

Here, too, there is a good case for enforcing judicial duties by political and not legal means. The courts guard their jurisdiction jealously, but it would be a mistake to view this amendment as an exceptional limit on their powers. Parliament must decide whether and on what terms to enact Clause 10. It is for Parliament to decide whether the new duties in question are to be enforceable in court and whether this is sensible in view of the nature of the subject matter and the likely effects of making them justiciable.

This amendment is a means whereby Parliament could make it clear that, in enacting Clause 10, it is not intending to create a new, open-ended ground for judicial review proceedings. The duties in Clause 10 would remain duties, but their enforcement would not be left for the courts to police at great cost and much risk of unwanted side-effects, which will take years to be unveiled.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (Crossbench)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, but I am afraid that not even her advocacy could persuade me that a failure by a public official or public authority to have regard to the requirements of a code or of guidance should be left entirely out of account by any court which might be called on to decide whether that conduct was improper, irrational, negligent or unlawful. Others, I am sure, will make the point more eloquently than I, but I wanted to record that before speaking, perhaps more prosaically, to my probing Amendments 60 and 62, which I have tabled with the support of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, and the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Evans of Weardale, who was—as mentioned earlier—chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life until 2023.

The CSPL was replaced after the election by the Ethics and Integrity Commission, whose purpose, as billed in the Labour manifesto, is

“to ensure probity in government”.

The EIC’s terms of reference, published in October 2025, make specific reference to this Bill. They state under the heading “Responsibilities” that the EIC will:

“Advise public authorities on the development of clear codes of conduct with effective oversight arrangements, in line with the planned forthcoming obligations of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill”.

Yet the Bill makes no reference to the EIC. It is given no formal role in the formulation of the codes—or code, as it may be—of ethical conduct under Clause 10, even as a consultee. The guidance issued under Clause 11 is to be issued by the central and devolved Governments, again without any involvement from the EIC.

The Minister told us at Second Reading—I am grateful to him for engaging on this—that the EIC would

“research and develop guidance … that will be published on its website

However, given its intended status as the centre of excellence on public codes of ethical conduct, at least for England, I am mystified as to why the Bill does not give the EIC a leading role in formulating at least the statutory guidance provided for in Clause 11. That is the defect that Amendment 60 is intended to probe and, should it go further, to correct.

Amendment 62 raises a broader point. In its 2021 report, Upholding Standards in Public Life, the CSPL, under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, recommended placing a number of constitutional watchdogs on a statutory footing to give them at least the protections of Parliament. Bodies such as the independent Commissioner for Public Appointments, the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards and the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments have important constitutional functions, hard won over successive Administrations, in proofing our system against abuse of power, favouritism and corruption. Yet it would be the easiest thing in the world for a future Government impatient of such liberal notions to sweep them all away in a first-day bonfire of the quangos without the need even to justify their decision to Parliament. Until such time as it is placed on a statutory footing, the same will be true of the EIC. Amendment 62 would place a parliamentary lock on the abolition of the EIC in much the same way that my Private Member’s Bill, the Public Service (Ethics, Integrity and Independence) Bill, introduced last Session, would have done for the other bodies I have mentioned.

The EIC’s implementation plan of October 2025 warns that

“it will take time to develop and implement the EIC’s new responsibilities”

and sets out an 18 to 24-month plan for the transition of the Committee on Standards in Public Life into the Ethics and Integrity Commission, subject to the necessary resources being in place. But there is no obstacle to the EIC being recognised in statute even before that transition is complete. I hope the Minister will agree that such recognition is desirable in principle and I look forward to his comments on how and when we might expect to see it.

Lord Carlile of Berriew (Crossbench)

My Lords, I support the amendments referred to by my noble friend Lord Anderson. But, before I turn to that, my jaw was dropping as I listened to my noble friend Lady Falkner’s attack on judicial review. I say to her with great respect, because she is very eloquent and persuasive, that I am afraid I am not persuaded by her.

We are talking here about what is popularly called the Hillsborough Bill, but we have heard mentioned at every sitting of this Committee and on every part of this Bill a litany of events that have been disasters, despite the ostensible co-operation at all times of the public services. I listened earlier with great care to my noble friend Lord Bichard on these matters. At least some of that litany of horrific events came to light only because of the availability of judicial review and the ability judicially to question administrative action. Sometimes it had to go to the highest court to achieve the prominence which those cases have rightly been given and for the Bill to arrive before this House.

I say to my noble friend that I have read the Policy Exchange report—I read it in detail yesterday afternoon and immediately penned my disagreement to the director of Policy Exchange, who is a Member of your Lordships’ House, because it is just naive in the way in which it approaches the issues we are concerned with. I apologise in saying that to two of my noble friends who have been involved in writing the foreword and an introduction to the Policy Exchange report, but I do not agree with them either. I think they are missing the point about judicial review.

I turn now to what I intended to say.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Crossbench)

My Lords—

Lord Carlile of Berriew (Crossbench)

I will not give way to the noble Baroness. She should not have spoken before the rest of us in this debate, and I will not give away to her, I am afraid. I have said what I wanted to say and I do not want to prolong the debate on the issue.

In Clauses 10 and 11, which are probably in the wrong order, we have the mother and the children. The mother is the guidance, which is set out in Clause 11, and the children are the codes, which are described in Clause 10.

The amendments which have been mentioned, described and spoken to by my noble friend Lord Anderson are not about diminishing ministerial accountability—far from it; they are about ensuring that the guidance which governs the codes leading to the understood standards in public life is independent, respected and trusted. Those who hold power should, in my view, never be seen as having exclusive control over the ethical framework by which they are judged. Amendments 60 and 62 would ensure that there is no such power. They would ensure that ethical guidance should be issued by an independent body, not, for example, by Ministers—whether national Ministers or devolved Ministers—whose conduct may itself fall within the scope of the legislation.

Public confidence in standards in public life is enhanced by a clear separation between those who exercise power and those who oversee ethical conduct. These amendments would reinforce the principle that integrity and ethics should not be subject to political influence or the priorities of the Government of the day. The amendments would allow for UK-wide consistency in standards, while preserving the autonomy of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so far as it goes under our devolution settlement. Guidance issued by an independent commission is likely to command far greater confidence than guidance issued by Ministers, who, by definition, have party loyalties. It is for those reasons that I support Amendments 60 and 62.

Lord Evans of Weardale (Crossbench)

My Lords, I support Amendments 60 and 62, which have been eloquently explained by the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Carlile.

When I first read the Bill, I was surprised to find that the Ethics and Integrity Commission was not mentioned. It is a piece of machinery that the Government have taken the time and effort to reinforce, since it was the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which I chaired, and it is ideally built to do the sort of work that is in the Bill. It is the right piece of machinery. One of the reasons for that is the fact that it has on it representatives of a variety of different parties, as is evident merely by looking around the Chamber today: the noble Baronesses, Lady Finn and Lady Beckett, and the Minister who has just arrived were all members of the committee. The committee has extraordinarily good representation from the political world, as well as independent members. Using it for this particular role would definitely be the right way to go.

As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, pointed out, the current arrangements are inconsistent. The CSPL did not recommend that it itself should be put on to a statutory basis out of modesty, but we recommended that regulatory bodies that have an ethical dimension need to stand with appropriate independence and with the confidence that they are not easily abolished by the Government of the day. The amendment would provide for that. From that point of view, I commend it to the Committee.

Lord Wills (Labour)

My Lords, this might be an appropriate time to turn to my Amendments 45 and 48. Amendment 45 addresses some of the issues that we have already heard extensively discussed in your Lordships’ House. I hope it might be helpful to the Government in negotiating important but challenging issues. It recognises that there may be differences between and within organisations as to the content of their ethical codes of conduct and that this could, among other things, result in ambiguities, which could lead to misunderstandings, and that in turn could lead to serious consequences for individuals. The amendment would allow the Secretary of State to engage with public authorities to assess where such ambiguities might need to be removed and what might be needed to unify them all and, where appropriate, to create a statutory binding list of obligations. It is a simple measure that would empower the Secretary of State in due course to take further action to deliver as effectively as possible the objectives of this landmark Bill.

Amendment 48 would remove the ability of a public authority to exclude from its published code disclosures that are contrary to the public interest. Too often, we have seen how the definition of public interest adopted by a public authority is at odds with the definition adopted by a majority of the public. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister, if he was so minded, could give me some examples of how the public interest could justify exclusions from a code of ethical conduct. I hope he will agree with me that it is in the public interest to know what standard the public can expect of the public bodies they may interact with and what standards those bound by the duty are expected to meet. What possibly could need to be upheld? I add that, in the light of all their bitter experience, the Hillsborough families are in favour of the amendment.

Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Conservative)

My Lords, Amendment 37, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, seeks to make the compliance of the codes of ethics stricter, but, I suggest, perhaps a little too strict. Amendment 39 seeks to require the codes to set out the disciplinary measures that would be taken. This may be difficult in sectors that already have detailed and complex conduct and disciplinary regimes, such as the police. The interplay between what is set out in Amendment 39 and those existing regimes is not immediately clear.

Amendments 44, 46, 47 and 58 refer to and require a consistency of the codes, which is obviously sensible, but further discussion is necessary to determine what it is intended to be consistent with. As it stands, there does not seem to be a baseline expectation as to which codes can be consistent. As I read them, the Government would need to accept these amendments alongside Amendments 55 and 57.

Amendment 56 seeks to create a criminal offence for breaches of codes of conduct. There is a real concern that if the codes of conduct are going to lead to criminal offences for breach then the drafting of the codes would become even more burdensome than they would be at the moment, because they would have to be used in court and be sufficiently clear that people appreciate precisely what it is they need to do, as breach would be a criminal offence. This is a point I think we will come back to in some future groups, either later this evening or on another occasion.

There is a further problem with this amendment’s proposal that breach could be a criminal offence because, as matters stand, and subject to our earlier debate on a single code, under Clause 10 different public authorities will draft their own codes of ethical conduct for themselves. That could result in the very odd—one might say perverse—outcome that an employee of one authority finds themselves in breach and hauled before the criminal courts, while an employee of another authority does not face sanction for the very same action because there is a subtle difference between those authorities in the drafting of the code of conduct. To take the example used by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, in an earlier group, that would be a manifestation of the Hampshire and North Yorkshire problem. It speaks to the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for a single code, which I know the Minister spoke to earlier and said he would consider carefully before Report.

Amendment 59 draws on a similar point to that of my previous amendment in group 3: namely, that guidance is essential throughout the implementation phase of the Bill.

I turn to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wills. Amendment 45 seeks to allow the Secretary of State to make further provision about the expected standards of ethical conduct and a public authority’s code of ethical conduct, which, with the negative procedure, could lead to insufficient scrutiny. Amendment 48 seeks to remove the public authority’s right to exclude from its published code information that would be contrary to the public interest. I can see potential examples of authorities where the exceptions permitted in paragraph (c) might protect real interests. I look forward to what the Minister says on that point.

Amendments 60 and 62, from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, seek to place a larger emphasis on the Ethics and Integrity Commission, including by placing some of its duties on a statutory footing. There is a cost aspect to this that concerns me. I also wonder whether we should always legislate for what we fear a future Government might do.

Amendment 63A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, seeks to require breaches of codes of ethics to be considered only in inquiries or investigations, rather than in legal proceedings. As I understand the purpose of the amendment, it is to confirm that such breaches are not themselves justiciable, including, as I understood the noble Baroness’s speech, in any judicial review proceedings. I certainly sympathise with the intention behind the amendment, although perhaps the real culprit is the creation of all these codes of conduct in the first place. I assure the Committee that, where codes go, the lawyers will certainly follow.

On that point, which might command general support, I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

Lord Lemos (Labour)

My Lords, it is hard to disagree with that. As mentioned in the discussion on the previous group—to some extent, that group and this group hang together—the Bill is drafted to ensure that public authorities are required to make and publish codes of ethical conduct tailored to their organisation and sector. As we have discussed many times, ensuring that these codes of ethical conduct are sufficiently detailed to drive culture change within public authorities is an important part of delivering the spirit and intention of the Bill.

I turn first to my noble friend Lord Wills’s Amendments 45 and 48. I appreciate my noble friend is keen to ensure that the Government will be able to make future changes to ensure that the Bill remains a vehicle for meaningful and sustainable culture change across the public sector and public authorities. We are actively considering options for post-legislative scrutiny—we will come back to this, I am sure—to monitor the success of the Bill in driving culture change across public authorities. I want to make it clear that that is one of the objectives we have for the Bill. I will therefore set out proposals in due course, and I am happy to discuss them with my noble friend and others before Report.

On Amendment 48, my noble friend will understand that there may be circumstances where information is sensitive and publication may have detrimental effects for the organisation, individually or more generally. Our current approach allows organisations to develop more detailed codes of ethical conduct containing sensitive information for employees while omitting such material from versions of the code published publicly. However, I understand my noble friend’s concerns about transparency. I am very happy to explore transparency between now and Report, so that we can ensure that the expectations are clear and everyone, including the people who work for public authorities, knows where they stand.

I turn to the package of amendments—it is right to see them as a package—from the noble Lord, Lord Marks. These seek to strengthen the provisions of codes of ethical conduct in Chapter 2 and, to use the phrase he used several times, give them more teeth. I am grateful for the time the noble Lord has already spent with me, including during recess, to discuss the intentions behind these amendments in more detail. I will reflect carefully on the points that have been made. I will discuss them further with officials to consider whether there is merit in exploring any of these issues ahead of Report, and I will certainly discuss them with the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and others. Our initial assessment is that we agree there needs to be consistency across the codes, and we are open to strengthening the provisions in the Bill. I assure the noble Lord and your Lordships’ Committee that the Government will issue statutory guidance to public authorities concerning codes of conduct.

The intention behind Clause 10(6) is that modifications can be made to existing codes to bring them up to the standards required in the Bill. Evidently, modifications cannot be made such that they do not comply with the requirements of the Bill. Further, the Bill already requires authorities to take steps to make employees aware of the code and the consequences of non-compliance as part of their duty to promote and maintain high standards of ethical conduct at all times. The Bill already creates a number of new offences, alongside existing criminal offences, which may apply to public officials. Codes of ethics will cover a wide range of conduct, not all of which is appropriately dealt with, in the Government’s view, through the criminal law—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, also made. Our initial assessment is that a general offence of breaching a code of ethics would not be clear, proportionate or necessary. Public officials are subject to a number of laws within the Bill, and we would need to consider the practical implementations of attempting to list all these in codes. However, this debate has been extremely helpful in testing the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, raised about the strength and the teeth of the Bill, and I look forward to continuing those conversations before we get to the next stage.

The noble Lords, Lord Anderson of Ipswich and Lord Marks, both tabled amendments relating to the codes of ethical conduct and the role of the Ethics and Integrity Commission. The EIC, which was established by the former Prime Minister as a centre of excellence on codes of conduct, has already been commissioned—the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, specifically asked about this—to develop best practice guidance for public authorities on how codes of ethical conduct can be used to drive cultural change, so it already has some standing on this. Its call for evidence to inform this work closed in September, so we see it as involved in all this.

Lord Anderson of Ipswich (Crossbench)

Can the Minister clarify whether that guidance relates to the content of the codes or simply to the way that they can be used?

Lord Lemos (Labour)

That is something we will need to cover in guidance. I anticipate—I will correct this if I am wrong, but I do not think that I am—that the EIC will want to comment on the contents, which I think is what the noble Lord was driving at.

Public authorities rightly expect the Government to provide them with clear guidance about what is necessary for compliance with the Bill, and we will do that. We are therefore preparing statutory guidance that will be available when this clause is commenced. Our expectation is that public authorities will draw on both sets of guidance when developing their codes, ensuring that they not only comply with the requirements of the legislation but are informed by evidence-based best practice.

The Government do not consider it necessary to place the functions of the EIC on a statutory footing. As it is an advisory body whose role is to provide independent advice to the Government, the current arrangements are entirely appropriate. The EIC is an independent body and it is not necessary to prescribe its role in legislation. Moreover, given its independent status, it would be inappropriate to place it under a statutory duty to assess whether codes of practice published by public authorities comply with the terms of the Bill. The EIC’s remit extends well beyond the matters addressed in this legislation. Its wider purpose is to promote the highest standards in public life. Conferring what, in effect, would be a regulatory function upon it would, in the Government’s view, risk undermining that broader role.

On Amendment 63A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, we agree that the Bill should not create a specific offence if there is a breach of the code of ethical conduct. However, it is clearly right that authorities that do not comply with their duty to adopt a code of ethical conduct be appropriately held to account. The noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Carlile, set out much more eloquently than I can exactly why that needs to be the case. For breaches of standards by officials, the public can use the authority’s complaints process. The most serious wrongdoing could also constitute a criminal offence under the “misleading the public” offence or “seriously improper acts” offence. Therefore, the Bill, alongside existing laws and processes, adequately provides appropriate avenues to scrutinise compliance with Chapter 2.

I hope that this provides some clarity to noble Lords and that I have made clear the issues which I am happy to discuss further. I therefore respectfully ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I am very grateful that the Minister is happy to continue discussions on strengthening the Bill. I should have said when I introduced my amendment that I was very grateful for the engagement we had for some time before Second Reading on these amendments and strengthening Chapter 2 of the Bill.

While we persist in believing that the chapter needs considerable strengthening to avoid future tragedies, I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that, particularly in relation to criminal sanctions, there is an issue which would make the Hampshire-North Yorkshire inconsistency much more serious. That is a very strong argument for having a core code. However, in view of the indication the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, has given that he will consider that issue further and that we will have further discussions, it is plainly sensible that they should await the outcome of those discussions. I will therefore be seeking to withdraw my amendment.

However, on the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, to the effect that non-compliance with the code should not really be justiciable in any way, I am entirely with the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Anderson. I am bound to say that judicial review has, for the whole of my career at the Bar, been one of the outstanding contributions—

Baroness Falkner of Margravine (Crossbench)

If the noble Lord had taken my intervention, I would have asked this then. Is not misconduct in public office already an offence?

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (Liberal Democrat)

I am not sure that that has much to do with what we are considering. Justiciability is of the essence in giving strength to this Bill. To abandon it means that we might go back to platitudes that have no real effect upon public behaviour or public perception of government and official behaviour. That was my point in taking issue with the arguments of the noble Baroness. That said, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 37 withdrawn.

Amendments 37A to 49 not moved.

Clause 10 agreed.

Amendments 50 to 58 not moved.

Clause 11: Guidance

Amendments 59 to 61 not moved.

Clause 11 agreed.

Amendments 62 to 63A not moved.

Schedule 2: Meaning of “public authority” and “public official” etc

Amendments 64 to 69A not moved.

Schedule 2 agreed.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.37 pm.