Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-279)
RT HON
LORD THOMSON
OF MONIFIETH,
RT HON
BARONESS DEAN
OF THORNTON-LE-FYLDE
AND MRS
GAY CATTO
26 FEBRUARY 2004
Q260 Chairman: So you do not put in hand
your own inquiry, you just ask government departments.
Mrs Catto: I ask government departments,
yes. We know quite a lot about the person because we have a fairly
full citation and at the senior level these do tend to be people
pretty much in the public eye. The department are likely to know,
and, indeed, the assessment committees are likely to know if there
are any question marks hanging over them.
Q261 Chairman: There are occasions when
there are question marks, are there?
Mrs Catto: Very occasionally.
Q262 Chairman: Then what do you do?
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: In
that case we then report this to the Prime Minister as a comment
on the recommendations. It happens in practice with the new system
very rarely. It happened, of course, maybe a little less rarely
under the old system, where there were a number of very high level,
high profile cases in the case of nominations to the House of
Lords, but that is outside our domain altogether now.
Q263 Chairman: On these very rare occasions
when something looks a bit wrong, you tell the Prime Minister.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: Yes.
Q264 Chairman: That you do not like the
look of this.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: Yes.
Q265 Chairman: Then what happens?
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: In
practice, since the new system has operated, in any case where
anything has been discovered that required comment it has not
required any further action. The nomination has been withdrawn
if necessary. There has never been a case where we have had any
advice that we have given in that way disputed by the Prime Minister.
As I say there have been only five cases and in all of them they
were perfectly straightforward. There was nothing uncovered that
required any kind of recommendation from us. This is one reason
for our slight degree of impatience about the way the new pattern
is working. We are conscious that in that area we are really doing
a job to reassure public perceptions rather than a job that relates
to the realities of matters of real public concern.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
It changed substantially as regards the workload of the committee
from when it was the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, and
now all the peerages going to the House of Lords Appointments
Commission for scrutiny has certainly reduced considerably the
work that our band of three carries out. We have the reports in
the various interdepartmental committees that come forward, and
where we have points that we wish to raise then we do raise them.
Sometimes that means we get more information back, and at the
end of the day, of course, we have to then hand it back to the
Prime Minister who makes the decision—because it is not
our decision as to whether someone does get that honour or not.
Q266 Chairman: Listening to what Lord
Thomson has said, it sounds as though there had not been a case
where your view had not prevailed.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
Not that I am aware of, no.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: I have
been associated with the committee for a number of years but I
have been chairman now for a few years and during my period of
chairmanship there has not been such a case.
Q267 Chairman: One final question before
I ask colleagues to come in. Your benchmark is taking a donation
of £5,000, but of course political services can be much wider
than that, can they not? It is a rather crude thing simply taking
a donation. Someone can be helpful to a party in all kinds of
ways in their professional life, someone working in the media,
someone doing all kinds of things. Is there not a need to go rather
broader to see whether people are rewarding their political friends
or not?
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: Chairman,
you raise an interesting question really. Some of us would argue—and
I would certainly argue having spent my working life in politics—that
political service to a political party of your choice quite independent
of any financial donation you make is a worthy form of political
service and is generally on the public record, so I do not think
that of itself raises issues. Are you thinking of individuals
giving services in kind?
Q268 Chairman: It strikes me that the
area of donation, although a very contentious area, is not at
all the only area where people can provide political services,
and if people have the ability to be awarded with honours then
I would have thought vigilance on a wider front was required.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: Yes.
Q269 Chairman: You seem to be apprised
of that.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
I guess you are thinking about things, possibly—I do not
know—like the provision of an office. It could be a transport,
it could be a plane. I think an individual giving time of themselves
is to be welcomed and encouraged for people to get involved in
the political system, but our remit is to look at political donations
and it is not surprising that you are raising the question you
do because once you set your mind running at what is support for
a political party of any kind it can run down all kinds of channels.
But our remit is to look at political donations.
Q270 Chairman: Again, Lord Thomson makes
it clear that you have no hesitation at all in thinking of political
service as being a perfectly proper reward in its own right. You
would not want to subsume it under a more general category.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: I express
really a wholly personal point of view, but I regard political
service as an honourable form of voluntary public service. If
I may speak very frankly, I thought the Labour Party in my time
made a great mistake in declining to offer honours to its working
agents, for example, who are a devoted band of people who get
precious little in the way of financial reward for their services.
Chairman: Thank you for that. I will
ask colleagues to come in.
Q271 Mr Prentice: I know this is not
your baby, in a way, now, because it has transferred to the House
of Lords Appointments Commission, but, again following up this
point, there was the ennoblement of the last general secretary
of the Labour Party, David Treesman, but his predecessor, Margaret
McDonagh was not ennobled. Do you think there is a case for some
body, House of Lords Appointments Commission, just looking at
the proprieties of this? Or is it just better to say, "We
don't want to go there"?
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: Now
I can only express a personal view about it. My view is I would
agree with you that that kind of nomination requires to be examined
in the general public interest—and is presumably examined,
I assume, or the Appointments Commission has a right to look at
that. At the end of the day I think any government and any prime
minister, must, given our present political system, have the right
to be able to send to the House of Lords as a working peer, and
very often as a working minister, in effect, people of his own
choice. I think equally making that appointment is a public act
and should have reasonable scrutiny.
Q272 Mr Prentice: Should there be a distinction
between working peers and others? When we had Lord Stevenson in
front of us a year or so ago he said to me, "It's a non trivial
distinction between a working peer and a non-working peer."
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: I do
not agree with that myself.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
No, I do not. I am a member of the Appointments Commission but
I do not actually agree with that either. On your earlier point
which you asked Mr Thomson, Mr Prentice, I find automaticity something
that is not naturally attractive to me. If the argument you are
putting forward is: if one gets it the others should and if they
do not is this improper, I do not think that carries a lot of
weight. I think they all should be scrutinised and that is the
remit. That is rightly so. But I think the political judgement
for each of the political parties is down to them as to who they
want as working peers whilst the current system is in being.
Q273 Mr Hopkins: If I may take a rather
more radical tack, the Chairman has talked about favours in return
for peerages, for example. Worth more than £5,000, surely,
would be the support of a newspaper. A proprietor and an editor
of a newspaper supporting a political party at election time would
be worth much more than £5,000. That is an example of the
sort of favour that could be done for a political party, is it
not?
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
Having spent a lot of my life in the newspaper industry, that
conjures up for me all kinds of worries. Let's take the 1997 election.
I think The Financial Times for the first time in its history
came out and said elect a Labour government—which was a
shock, I think, to everyone. I would not suggest they were seeking
any kind of political favour and I would not suggest that was
any kind of support in that sense. It is the way of life for newspapers
to take a view, just as the The Sun is vehemently opposed
to the euro and was vehemently opposed to a Labour government
for many years. I would need convincing that that actually is
a political favour. In any case, how would you reward it? Traditionally,
in years gone by—thank goodness not today—editors
of certain papers were almost guaranteed a peerage. That does
not happen today in the way it did.
Q274 Mr Hopkins: I am not saying it has
happened, but it could happen and it would be worth rather more
than £5,000 to a political party. That is the only point
I was making. And there are other areas where one could reward
people.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
Yes.
Q275 Mr Hopkins: That brings me on to
my main point—and I have raised this before with the Committee:
Could we not just separate the award of honours of every kind
from the political process? So that prime ministers and governments
had no say whatsoever and we had an independent panel of worthy
people giving honours and awards because they are good people;
a sort of committee of platonic guardians who are completely independent-minded
people and nothing to do with politics.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: You
tempt me, I am afraid. I do not myself have a great belief in
this ideal world of some group of independent platonic guardians
who themselves have a higher degree of virtue in terms of the
responsibilities that lie in distributing honours or appointments.
I think the profession of politics has suffered—and maybe
it is at fault in many ways—in the reputation it has these
days in terms of public esteem. Equally, I think, the general
body of British public civil servants, of whom I have had much
experience and now particular experience in the honours field,
their behaviour in terms of the present machinery of honours is
absolutely meticulous and is certainly as good, and better I would
think, than a group of the great and good, having had to be selected
by the government authority of the day in taking on that job.
I think there is advantage myself in having a central point in
the system—and we might come on to that—that is quite
widely composed both of civil servants and of independent citizens
of distinction—but I do not carry my thoughts to the belief
that you want that because you cannot trust your politicians and
civil servants any longer. I profoundly dissent from that view.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
I would endorse that entirely. I rather suspect such a committee,
given a life of three or four years, would be up before a committee
like this being scrutinised as to why they are not as independent
as they were intended to be.
Q276 Mr Hopkins: I only threw that in
as an example of the way we might, if we wanted an honours system
at all, do it—as one alternative. The point was to separate
the award of honours entirely from politics and take it away particularly
from the Prime Minister.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
It is at the moment. It comes through the various departments.
Q277 Mr Hopkins: There has been some
discussion at previous meetings of the committee that all prime
ministers have considerable influence, especially adding and subtracting
names at the last minute.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
Yes.
Q278 Mr Hopkins: Making peers in the
House of Lords. That is very significant. One does not want to
say too much in public about particular examples but it is a convenient
way of moving somebody from one place to another, to give them
a peerage, perhaps, if they are very difficult in one area. If,
shall we say, a prime minister had a very awkward Foreign Secretary—and
we have a wonderful Foreign Secretary, so I am not talking about
the present incumbent—and really wanted to shift him or
her out of the way politely, he might offer them a peerage and
say, "Well, you can go out to grass in the Lords, have a
wonderful time. That is the reward for relinquishing your post
and yet without any loss of face." That is just an example.
But my real concern is that it is part of this great network,
the spider's web of patronage, exercised largely through Downing
Street and which increases the already high degree of centralisation
of power in our political system which is, I think, increasingly
coming under scrutiny and something that some of us worry about
a lot.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde:
I personally do not see it like that at all. I do not see it as
having a wonderful time in the Lords either. You want to be there
some times! I think there is an argument to have some kind of
centralisation; otherwise you are going to get disparities about
treatment in the sense of who comes forward—and the political
peerages are separate now anyway. I think most people can see
that and they are scrutinised by the Appointments Commission.
Q279 Mr Hopkins: In Sweden, I understand,
they have abolished their honours list entirely. They have got
rid of honours and it has not caused the skies to fall in. I am
a great admirer of things Scandinavian, if I may say. What impact
would that have on British life, political life, the British Constitution?
Would it not be an improvement?
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: Personally,
I do not think so. I do think that the honours system requires
regular review and, therefore, I very much welcome the fact that
your Committee is conducting such a review at the moment, because
I think you need to make sure that it is meeting the changing
needs of society and the nation and there are a number of ways
in which I think things could be improved. But, by and large,
there is something to be said for society and the nation finding
a machinery for recognising people of worth in terms of their
service to the community. It will always be an imperfect system
but I think most countries have it and I personally would think
it a pity if we were to take the radical situation of simply having
no honours system at all. Having said that, I do think there is
a good deal of room for the kind of examination we are conducting.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
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