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Notes for Remarks on Maintaining Standards in Public Life in Great Britain

Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Tuesday 20 March 2001

Introduction

I am very grateful to the Higher School of Economics in Moscow for giving me the opportunity to talk to you today.

I have to begin with an explanation. I was appointed only three weeks ago to be Chairman of the Committee of Standards in Public Life. So I speak to you today in a voice of some humility.

I have not come here today to preach sermons or to read you lessons.

You take your own political decisions, you make your own future.

But it is sometimes valuable to share experiences and it is in that spirit that I come to talk to you today – to describe how a long established democracy is working to preserve, and indeed increase standards in our public life.

Some characteristics of liberal democracies

Let me begin with two observations which are of broad application and which apply to all democracies.

My first observation, and here I betray my origin as a Finance Ministry official, is that there is a connection between clean and ethical government, and a successful economy. Openness, honesty and transparency in government help economic growth.

My second observation is that, people living in democracies deserve good government. By good government, I include clean and ethical government. Unless government is clean and ethical, democracy will be weakened, and in the last resort it could be brought into jeopardy.

It is a matter for each national state to decide the arrangements – or what is sometimes called the ‘ethical infrastructure’ – to bring about this clean and ethical government. I will shortly describe some of the features of the ethical infrastructure in Britain. It reflects British political culture and traditions. It is different from the ethical infrastructure in North America, France, Germany and other Western European Countries. Each country has its own culture specific arrangements and it is unlikely that they can be translated wholesale from one country to another. But the desired outcomes, the ultimate objectives of the ethical infrastructure are, I believe, the same in all liberal democracies. And more of this later.

I have several times used the phrases ‘eternal government’ and ‘ethical infrastructure’. So you might well ask, ‘Whose ethics?’

In my personal view, the answer is a clear one. The ethical standards of public institutions should reflect the ethics which the generality of individual citizens expect public institutions to follow. The ethical standards are not generated from within the public institution. They come from the citizens. I do not think it difficult to discover what are the ethical standards expected by the citizen.

Let me make a wider point before I come to the specifics of the operation of my Committee.

All Governments, both democratic and non-democratic, rely on institutions to govern. But if liberal democracies are to function effectively, they must possess, in one form or another, the following three institutions

The Committee on Standards in Public Life and ethical accountability

Today, in my remarks I want to focus on these last two words – ‘ethically accountable’ or to express it, according to my Committee’s terms of reference, ‘... ensur[ing] the highest standards of propriety in public life’.

That is at the heart of the work of the Committee that I chair.

In short, we help to establish the principles, the operational framework and the methods for ensuring high standards of conduct of all holders of public office.

Our work is based on a few simple precepts:

The historical background to the Committee

A little bit of history explains the origin of the Committee.

At the beginning of the Nineteen Nineties there was a mood in Britain of considerable disquiet developed about the behaviour of politicians and public servants.

It was alleged that:

The words ‘sleaze’ and ‘cronyism’ rose up the political vocabulary.

Such criticisms of personal behaviour were not directed at the most senior Ministers. But inevitably they began to taint the Government as a whole.

So the Prime Minister of the day reacted to this sense of unease by setting up the Committee on Standards in Public Life under its first Chairman, Lord Nolan.

It is interesting to speculate why this sense of unease had arisen. Had standards of conduct in public life fallen significantly or had the public’s expectations of the behaviour of public officials increased?

To put it in terms of the schoolroom, had the marks of the political class fallen? Or had the mark needed to pass the public examination risen?

Certainly there was evidence that standards of conduct in public life had fallen. An academic witness at the Committee’s first enquiry said in 1995

‘Whenever surveys have asked people to compare various occupations for honesty or trustworthiness or a moral example, Members of Parliament have been at or near the bottom of the league, competing with estate agents and journalists to avoid the wooden spoon’.

A former Prime Minister told the Committee:

‘I think we have slipped into an easing of these sorts of arrangements rather than taken a deliberate decision about it, and our own standards, I think, have fallen into disuse in some ways.’

The lapses referred to by the Committee’s witness were, by British standards, serious and reprehensible. But you may think that they are of less significance than lapses that were taking place in some other OECD states.

That is no excuse for what was happening in Britain. But what I can say is that the corrective action taken in my country ranks in its vigour and thoroughness as second to none. That is said without complacency and in full knowledge that the campaign to ensure high standards of propriety in public life is never over.

There was another factor at work that may help explain the slippage in standards.

During the nineteen nineties government developed closer relationships with business. Formerly state owned industries were now private sector companies and regulated by organs of government. Government was increasingly using the private sector to deliver public services, ranging from the renovation and management of government buildings to running prisons.

There can be advantages in these closer relationships. But one consequence was the growth of lobbying. One veteran journalist told the Committee in 1995:

‘Over the past four or five years there has been a massively increased influx of commercial lobbyist activity in the House of Commons and I think Members are far more vulnerable now than they have been ever before to outside and commercial pressures’.

In short, we found that closer relationships between Parliament and business required safeguards.

There was also some evidence too that the public’s expectation of good conduct by public officials had increased.

It is difficult to be certain why. It probably was a consequence of long run forces in our democracy. A people less deferential, sceptical of hierarchy and less submissive to authority. A distrust of the big battalions and wish for a more transparent and open society. All totally admirable features of modern day liberal democratic life. But features that lead to a demand for higher standards of conduct by public officials.

The Seven Principles of Public Life

So there was a rise in public expectations about standards as well as incidents indicating a lowering of standards.

How then did the Committee go about its task of restoring public confidence in public office holders and public institutions?

The foundation of all the Committee’s work was laid in its first report when it promulgated its Seven Principles of Public Life.

They are:

You should have a copy of the text of the Seven Principles. So I will not go through them in detail.

These Principles were drawn up in 1994 without, so far as I know, guidance from elsewhere. But some recent work by the OECD shows a broad coincidence between my Committee’s recommendations and the standards of ethics used in other OECD countries.

I believe that these Seven Principles of Public Life are applicable in all liberal democracies.

In Britain the Committee expects those Principles to be followed by every public office-holder – from the Prime Minister to a local school governor or member of a hospital board.

The Committee’s methodology is to examine systematically whether practices in our public institutions conform to these Principles.

In effect, we use the Principles as a template of ethical standards and apply it to each public institution. We then make practical recommendations on how the institution concerned should adapt its practices so as to meet the high standards that the British public demands.

In its six years, the Committee has carried out this exercise on most areas of public life:

In applying the Seven Principles to public institutions, the Committee does not adopt ‘a one size fits all approach’. We adapt our recommendations to the current circumstances of each institution studied.

But we expect each institution to build ethical standards into its corporate culture. Everyone from board member or elected representative to junior employee must know the standards of conduct expected, and those that will not be tolerated. The rules must be clear, and there must be means for their enforcement.

The Committee expects its recommendations to be implemented with what we call ‘proportionality’. By proportionality, I mean not fussily, but only introducing rules to the extent necessary to achieve the desired objective – in short, using common sense.

Giving effect to the Seven Principles of Public Life

Let me now be a little more specific about the tools that the Committee expects public institutions to use to give effect to the Seven Principles. There are three:

By a Code of Conduct we mean a high-level statement of values and expected behaviours. It does not have to be long. The Civil Service Code is 13 paragraphs long. The House of Commons Code of Conduct is a similar length. As a result of our work, the Seven Principles are usually included in public bodies’ Codes of conduct.

By ‘independent scrutiny’ we mean the introduction into any ethical system of an external scrutineer, to guarantee impartiality and objectivity. For example, the Committee recommended the introduction of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards into the self-regulatory system of the House of Commons. The Committee itself acts as an independent scrutineer of the public ethical system.

By guidance and training, we mean promoting and reinforcing ethical standards in every public body by written guidance and induction or training processes. For example, the Civil Service Code is given to every civil servant and reinforced through a training process right at the beginning of the civil servants career.

The Committee expects that every institution from Parliament to the smallest municipality has these three tools at its disposal.

The powers of the Committee on Standards in Public Life

Let me now turn to the question of what powers the Committee has to enforce its recommendations.

The answer is quite simple. We have no powers. Our recommendations are no more than that – recommendations to the Prime Minister.

In practice, each institution that is the subject of the Committee’s recommendations decides its own response. Sometimes, it is a matter for the Prime Minister and the Government, for example in the case of recommendations that concern Ministers and civil servants. Sometimes for the House of Commons or the House of Lords, and sometimes for other institutions.

Even though the Committee has no powers, it is clear that the Committee’s recommendations carry considerable authority and the evidence for that is the number that have been accepted.

But I have to add that in some cases the recommendations are not accepted. [For example

An example of how the Committee fits the ethical framework to a public institution

It may help you understand better how the Committee operates if I give you a short case study of how the Committee approaches its work in relation to the House of Commons.

In 1995 when the Committee examined the practices of the House of Commons, the Committee felt that the most obvious gap was the element of independent scrutiny. It was important to find a mechanism that would reassure the public that Members of Parliament were not judge and jury in their own cause. The Committee’s answer was to recommend the creation of the post of Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

The Parliamentary Commissioner is an Officer of the House of Commons. But she is recognised as independent. She provides guidance and advice to MPs on how to comply with the regulatory process. If a complaint is made against an MP’s conduct, she investigates it and gives her findings to a Committee of MPs, the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges. They examine the MP concerned and make the final recommendation to the full House of Commons, including the punishment, if any, to be taken against the MP.

This elegant solution introduces an element of independent scrutiny while maintaining the overall framework of self-regulation, and it was adopted by the House of Commons in 1995. At the same time, it followed another of our recommendations, which was to have a Code of Conduct, explicitly based on the Seven Principles, and a more detailed Register of Interests.

This example illustrates three elements of the Committee’s approach. It demonstrates

The Committee’s reviewing function

My Committee reviewed the operation of these arrangements in 1999 after a particularly serious allegation of misconduct by an MP tested the system to its limits and many observers felt that further improvements were required.

As a result of this review, the Committee recommended that a tribunal including a professional judge should be set up for particularly serious cases of misconduct. The House of Commons has yet to accept that recommendation mainly because, I believe, it fears a lessening of its privilege of self-regulation. But I doubt whether the last word has been said in this debate.

Some guarantees that standards in public life are maintained

Let me draw my remarks to a close with a final comment about the ultimate guarantees in modern British democracy that standards in public life are maintained. These guarantees are three:

First, a vibrant, free and courageous press. One of our senior editors once remarked to the Committee:

‘we [and he meant the press] are an imperfect lot in a very imperfect world... [but the press has] .. the duty to monitor the workings of government and the workings of the legislature on behalf of the people... that is what we are there for.’

Of course, the press can get it wrong, they can be unfair and irresponsible. But a free press is one of the guarantees of proper standards in public life.

The second guarantee is the crusading Member of Parliament. Such members can be thorns in the flesh of the government of the day. They are sometimes called ‘the awkward squad’. But it is that Member of Parliament who through sheer persistence brings to public attention a case of lax standards and insists that something is done about it.

The third guarantor of proper public standards is the British people themselves. One of our leading newspapers said last week in an editorial

‘The country expects its government to be whiter than white.’

Many leader commentators ascribe the scale of the last Government’s defeat at the 1997 General Election to a perception of a fall in standards in public life.

Concluding remarks

I have shared these thoughts with you in the hope that you may find our experience interesting. Every liberal democracy faces challenges – to ensure that our institutions are kept up to date, efficient and relevant, and responsive to the wishes of its people. I know that I speak for my Committee when I say that we will do what we can to meet that challenge and to ‘ensure the highest standards of propriety in public life’ in Britain.

Thank you.