Restoring Trust in the House of Lords
Recent events in the House of Lords have raised serious questions about standards of conduct within the second chamber, including questions around allowances, peers' external interests and enforcement of sanctions for misconduct. The Hansard Society co-hosted a seminar, with the Lord Speaker, in May 2009 drawing together a group of peers, academics, journalists, and people with a background in complex ethical and regulatory matters, to explore these issues.
This new briefing paper, produced by the Parliament and Government programme, draws on some of the views discussed at the seminar, supplemented by our own research. It examines these issues and sets out a range of measures for reinstating public trust in the House of Lords. Key recommendations include:
- Empowering the office of the Lord Speaker to be able to better represent and act on behalf of the House and take forward a mandate for reform.
- Significant revision of the Code of Conduct, including setting out a clear ethos and mission for the House of Lords and extending the Code to cover the use of allowances and expenses.
- Consideration of the introduction of a hybrid payments system for allowances and expenses to better reflect the degree of each peer's involvement in the work of the House.
- Establishing a hierarchy of possible sanctions that may be applied for breaches of a new Code of Conduct up to and including permanent expulsion from the House.
- Establishing a system of external independent regulation for the management of the Lords allowances and expenses system and enforcement of the Code of Conduct.
The briefing paper can be downloaded here.