Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-426)
PROFESSOR JUSTIN
FISHER, DR
MICHAEL PINTO-DUSCHINSKY
AND DR
MEG RUSSELL
25 OCTOBER 2007
Q420 Chairman: Let us not explore
at great length the difference between a correlation—
Professor Fisher: I am sorry,
Chairman, but these terms are important.
Chairman: It is an important point for
the record, I just do not want to explore it further.
Q421 Jenny Willott: Can I ask my
final question, which you have picked up in your response to a
previous question? Is there a need to look at the law or is it
actually the regulation and the framework within which political
parties are operating? Tweaking, for example, the House of Lords
Appointments Commission, and so on, is that enough, if there are
problems here, to deal with the problems without needing to look
at legislation?
Professor Fisher: In respect of
party funding or in respect—
Q422 Jenny Willott: In respect of
the issues connected with cash for peerages; so the issues around
patronage.
Professor Fisher: I do not think
you can ever fully legislate for the fact that some individuals
at some point in time may make contributions in the hope that
there may be some pay-off.
Q423 Jenny Willott: That is not ever
going to be illegal, is it?
Professor Fisher: You can never
do that. As to the mechanics of making appointments to the Lords,
I would defer to Dr Russell on this. However, I do think it is
a mistake to imagine that you can legislate on everything. Meg
makes a very important point that you cannot legislate on a nod
and a wink, unless you have a CCTV camera in the room; it is simply
absurd to do so. I am not familiar with all the details of the
1925 Act but it does seem reasonable to me that, given that there
was a 16-month investigation and some considerable resource thrown
at it, the utility of the Act was tested and it may be that the
Act is in full working order and that, actually, the wrong-doing
simply did not take place. Again, I go back to the point: the
fact that there was not a prosecution does not mean to say that
the law is wrong.
Q424 Chairman: Could I just ask one
thing, as we end? When we were talking to Assistant Commissioner
Yates on Tuesday and asking him, as it were, what he had learnt
about the system or what improvements he could think of, I think
I am right in saying that the only thing he really talked about
was transparency in relation to the list of names that are put
forward for peerages. Clearly, he had been trawling through all
the draft lists before they had become the final lists and it
was, obviously, a great sort of black hole which he had trouble
navigating. I had trouble understanding quite how you could have
transparency inside that system because, as other people have
said, one of the problems arose because of the lack of secrecy
around the names that went to the House of Lords Appointments
Commission this time. No one is really proposing that all this
should be a public process, even, presumably, if we have a system
of nomination from the parties, with the House of Lords Appointments
Commission deciding who the people should be. Presumably, these
will not be published lists of nominees because, otherwise, you
will have the consequence that we have talked about, which is
people will suffer reputational damage if they are not selected,
and so on. Surely, transparency, in this sense, is not quite the
answer.
Dr Russell: To a great extent
I agree with your point, but on the point about people suffering
damage, I think the damage would be far less if, for example,
a party was to have 10 new peerages and to provide a list of 30
names, because there would be no suggestion that 20 of those people
were corrupt; it would be simply that they were not the best people
for the job. Employers select from shortlists all the time; there
is no discredit to the people who do not get the job, they just
want the best candidate.
Q425 Chairman: So you think it would
be possible and desirable for the list of nominees to be published?
Dr Russell: I am not sure about
that, actually. There are limits to how far transparency is necessary,
and these things involve a bit of political judgment, do they
not, as well? If you take, perhaps, the comparison of appointments
to Select Committees, where there has been a lot of debate about
whether that should be made more transparent and whether it could
be more democratic, some of the things that have been suggested
are that people should have to formally apply and it might be
possible to see who applied, and then to see who got on in the
end. However, in the decision as to exactly which people are chosen—a
whole range of factors are taken into account; a lot of the same
factors that the House of Lords Appointments Commission will take
into account, not just party balance but balance of interest,
expertise, length of service, age, gender, part of the country,
etc. It is not a slur on anybody who does not get on, it is just
you have to come up with a group of people which is broadly balanced
and useful.
Dr Pinto-Duschinsky: May I make
one comment about long lists? I have looked into this matter with
relationship to nominations of members of the European Court of
Human Rights, and each country, for example, Lichtenstein, can
propose one justice, we can propose one justice as well, and so
can Monaco and so can Armenia. They go to make up the court. What
happens in certain countries is that they will put forward three
nominees and one has been the minister of justice, and the second
has been detective sergeant Smithsky, and the third has been the
same; it is quite obvious that the long list has just been made
up of people whom they hope will be included and others who have
very little chance of being included.
Chairman: Shrewd point.
Kelvin Hopkins: Just on the point about
Select Committees, I am glad they have raised it because I was
seriously concerned about this and it was our former friend, Robin
Cook, who changed the system so that, in our party at least, now
there is a greater chance of people who, perhaps, might have differing
views from the leadership getting on to Select Committees. I want
to broaden the whole debate about the patronage because it goes
way beyond the House of Lords; at every level in politics, in
recent years, patronage has ruled and it is all about political
power being secured at the centre. That is what is wrong. I do
not know if you would agree that we ought to look at ways of building
more checks and balances into our political system and making
it more plural again.
Chairman: With respect, Kelvin, that
takes us off into other territory, so can we leave that as an
interesting observation?
Kelvin Hopkins: It was more a rhetorical
question.
Q426 Mr Prentice: May I ask one final
question? We have got the Cabinet Secretary, Gus O'Donnell, coming
in front of us in a couple of weeks' time. When I asked Mr Yates
about co-operation with the Cabinet Office, and so on, he said
he had received the fullest co-operation but he had met the Cabinet
Secretary only once. There were subsequently suggestions that
there had been conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, emails
being deleted, and so on and so forth. Do you think there are
any changes at the centre that could have been made to tighten
up the system so that 10 Downing Street could not run on a kind
of parallel with the rest of the civil service—the role
of special advisers?
Professor Fisher: I do not think
I can comment on that.
Chairman: We will save the question for
the Cabinet Secretary when he comes. Thank you so much, all of
you, for that. If you think we have not asked you things that
you would like to tell us, by all means drop us a further note.
Anything you think, as we say, would be helpful in our inquiries
we would like to know about. I think we have had some extremely
valuable evidence from you today. I was slightly dejected when
you gave us your initial list, Dr Pinto-Duschinsky, and then you
said, at the end, your fourth point was "but alternative
systems are worse", which did not fill us with great constructive
zeal. However, we will do our best, knowing that, to make some
modest improvements. Thank you very much indeed for your help.
|
