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The conduct of Lord Ahmed Contents

The conduct of Lord Ahmed

Report from the Conduct Committee

Introduction

1.The Conduct Committee has considered a report by the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards (“the Commissioner”) on a complaint from a member of the public about the conduct of Lord Ahmed.1 The procedure in cases such as this is set out in the Guide to the Code of Conduct.2 Under this procedure, the Commissioner investigates allegations against members. If she finds that a member has breached the Code of Conduct, she recommends an appropriate sanction for the Conduct Committee to consider. The member may appeal to the Committee against the Commissioner’s findings and/or sanction.

2.The Committee has considered Lord Ahmed’s appeal against the Commissioner’s findings and recommended sanction.3 As part of his appeal Lord Ahmed introduced new evidence which the Committee remitted to the Commissioner for further investigation, and the Commissioner’s report on the new evidence4 was also considered alongside further appeal documentation from Lord Ahmed.5 Throughout the appeal process Lord Ahmed’s submissions were shared with the complainant and her responses were considered.6

3.This report includes allegations of sexual misconduct and of racism which some readers may find upsetting or offensive.

The complaint

4.The complaint was complex and is set out in detail in the Commissioner’s report. In summary, Tahira Zaman is a member of the public who was put in contact with Lord Ahmed to help her make a complaint to the Metropolitan Police about a faith healer whom she believed had exploited innocent men and women financially and sexually. Her complaint against Lord Ahmed was that when she asked him for help he initially made unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature with her and later held out the promise of using his influence to help her, when in fact his aim was to have sex with her.

5.The Code of Conduct only applies to behaviour in the course of a member’s parliamentary duties and activities. The allegation was that the behaviour complained about was related to parliamentary duties and activities because Ms Zaman approached Lord Ahmed in his capacity as a member of the House, and that Lord Ahmed responded in that capacity, as evidenced by the fact that the letter he wrote to the police on her behalf was on House of Lords’ headed paper. The Commissioner notes at paragraph 10 of her report that, when she first received this complaint in 2018, she rejected it because at that point the Code contained a narrower scope of “parliamentary duties”. We agree with the Commissioner that the introduction in 2019 of the wider scope of “parliamentary duties and activities” brought this case within the scope of the Code.

The Commissioner’s investigation and findings

6.The Commissioner’s investigation took place under the terms of the 8th edition of the Code of Conduct and Guide to the Code. This edition incorporated provisions relating to bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct. However, these new provisions applied only to behaviour that occurred after 21 June 2017, which is halfway through the events in this case.7 Under this and previous editions of the Code of Conduct members were required to “act always on their personal honour”. The Commissioner has investigated the complaint on the basis that sexual misconduct and abuse of power are not consistent with personal honour, an approach endorsed by our predecessor Committee for Privileges and Conduct.

7.The Commissioner’s investigation is set out in detail in her report. The executive summary of her report set out those allegations which she concluded, on the balance of probabilities, were true, and those allegations which she considered were not proven.

8.On the basis of these findings the Commissioner concluded as follows.8

9.The Commissioner made two other findings:

Lord Ahmed’s appeal

10.The grounds for appeal are limited by the Guide to the following:

11.Lord Ahmed appealed on all four of these grounds. Although he did not deny that a sexual relationship had taken place, he did deny other aspects of Ms Zaman’s account and he did deny that he was in breach of the Code of Conduct.

12.The Committee’s first task was to assess the new evidence which he submitted. Lord Ahmed asserted that the new evidence cast serious doubt on the credibility of the complainant, to the extent that it should cause the Commissioner to rethink her conclusions.9

13.We concluded that the new evidence was of sufficient potential significance to warrant being investigated. We therefore remitted the matter to the Commissioner “to reconsider any aspects of her findings and recommendations in the light of her investigation and evaluation of the fresh evidence and for her to make thereafter a new or revised report as she may think fit”. Our consideration of the other points raised on the appeal was paused while the Commissioner undertook her supplementary investigation.

14.The Commissioner accordingly investigated the new evidence, and made a supplementary report on it to us. She concluded that the new material did not provide any basis for amending any of the conclusions or findings set out in her first report, nor for altering her recommended sanction.10

15.Lord Ahmed subsequently sent to the Committee further submissions in relation to the Commissioner’s supplementary report which we treated as additional points to be considered at appeal.11

The Committee’s deliberations

16.The Committee was mindful of the clear statement in the Guide to the Code that it is not our role to reopen the Commissioner’s investigation. The grounds for appeal are limited to those set out in paragraph 10 above.

Appeal against the findings

The emergence of significant new evidence

17.We first considered the Commissioner’s report on the new evidence and Lord Ahmed’s observations on that report. The Commissioner’s conclusion on the new evidence was:

“The accounts provided… could not be corroborated by any independent evidence. In contrast, the evidence of other witnesses supported Ms Zaman’s challenge to their accounts. Because of this lack of independent corroborative evidence, inconsistencies in their evidence and the unlikely nature of aspects of their accounts, I do not consider that the new material provides any basis for amending any of the conclusions or findings set out in my earlier report, nor for altering my recommended sanction.”12

18.Lord Ahmed’s response to this report contained a number of complaints about the way in which the supplementary investigation was conducted. We therefore considered whether there were serious points of process that undermined the Commissioner’s findings in her supplementary report.

19.The Committee considered Lord Ahmed’s criticisms that the Commissioner should have pursued other lines of inquiry and that she was biased in her selection and treatment of witnesses in her supplementary investigation. On the issue of witness selection, two examples cited in Lord Ahmed’s appeal were that the Commissioner should have sought more information from the police about why they did not pursue the complainant’s allegation of rape, and that the Commissioner should have sought information behind the judicial review which upheld the police decision. We see no inconsistency whatever between the Commissioner’s findings and the decision of the police not to pursue the allegation of rape. The allegation the Commissioner was investigating, a breach of personal honour as a member of this House, is of a wholly different character, and outwith the remit of the police and the standard of proof for its determination is the balance of probabilities taking account of the nature and seriousness of the charge, and not the criminal standard. On the issue of treatment of witnesses, we noted that the Commissioner addressed the allegation that she had treated witnesses differently in paragraph 107 of her supplementary report. Having considered each of these appeal points we did not find any of them to be of a nature which could throw doubt on the Commissioner’s clear conclusions.

20.One of Lord Ahmed’s key allegations was that the Commissioner was “affected and infected by racist views” in her approach to the second investigation. This allegation was based on a question which the Commissioner put in an interview where she said she had been told, and did not know “whether this is true or not”, that in traditional Muslim societies men are inclined to stick together when allegations are made about their behaviour towards women, and asked the witness whether it was true. Lord Ahmed states in his appeal that “the mere fact of her asking it is abhorrent in that it gives purchase and succour to racism through stereotyping and exposes the Commissioner’s thought processes”. Lord Ahmed also alleged that the Commissioner had used racial and religious profiling by seeking the assistance of an imam who was not from the same community within Islam as him.

21.We considered these two accusations very carefully. In relation to the interview question about Muslim men, the Committee noted that the Commissioner was referring to comments made by Ms Zaman and another witness during their interviews. She was testing their evidence with other witnesses. There is nothing in the Commissioner’s actual reasoning in her report to lead us to think that, in drawing her conclusion that the witness was lying about the new evidence, the Commissioner relied on racial stereotypes.

22.As to the imam, the Commissioner’s supplementary report, paragraph 168, explains that it was Lord Ahmed who suggested that she speak to an imam on the question of whether it was customary in Pakistani culture for people to attend the funerals of family members of people they know where there was not a personal relationship, but as a mark of respect. We also note that despite the religious and cultural differences between the imam and Lord Ahmed, the Commissioner did not draw any adverse opinions or findings about Lord Ahmed from the imam’s evidence. On the contrary, she noted that the imam “whilst noting that Islam encompassed a range of customs and practices, broadly confirmed Lord Ahmed’s characterisations of cultural norms”. We therefore do not uphold these points in Lord Ahmed’s appeal.

23.In summary we do not believe that the Commissioner was affected or infected by racist views and reject that aspect of Lord Ahmed’s appeal.

24.Viewing Lord Ahmed’s challenge to the rejection by the supplementary report of the new evidence more broadly, we see no possible basis on which to disagree with the Commissioner’s overall evaluation. The new evidence depended upon, or was sought to be supported by, the occurrence of what she found, for very solid reasons, to be a series of unlikely events. For example:

(a)the suggested voluntary admissions by Ms Zaman in April 2018 when speaking by telephone to [D], to the effect that she was setting out to lie about and destroy the reputation of Lord Ahmed at a time when she was seeking national publicity in The Sunday Times and elsewhere for her case that he had misused her; [D] was a journalist whom she had never met, and with whom she had been put in touch by [W], a journalist contemplating an article about Ms Zaman’s complaints who had sought [D]’s assistance; [D] said that he in turn had contacted [L], another journalist, and they both said that [L] had suggested that [D] establish friendly relations with Ms Zaman and verify the truth before publication of any article supporting her;

(b)the failure by [D] or [L] to tell [W], Lord Ahmed or anyone, at any relevant time before April 2020, about Ms Zaman’s suggested admissions; in particular, the failure to do this in April 2018 and before or after the Newsnight broadcast about Ms Zaman’s complaint in February 2019—about which the Commissioner found that [D] knew in advance, Lord Ahmed being the only likely source of such knowledge;

(c)the coincidence that Ms Zaman’s suggested voluntary admissions came to light, and were then immediately brought to Lord Ahmed’s attention by [D], in April 2020 when Lord Ahmed chose to seek a character reference from [D], with whom he asserted that he was not on close personal relations; in this connection the Commissioner also had solid ground for her contrary conclusion that Lord Ahmed’s and [D]’s relationship was not the neutral, professional contact which they deliberately misrepresented it to us and the Commissioner to be; this included the Commissioner’s finding that [D] had visited Ms Zaman’s father at Lord Ahmed’s instigation in early February 2019, before the Newsnight broadcast about Ms Zaman’s complaints, to encourage Mr Zaman to persuade Ms Zaman to withdraw from the broadcast;

(d)the extraordinary coincidence that [D] should in August 2020 ask his secretary to read aloud the transcript of his interview with the Commissioner, leading the secretary then to recall her hitherto unmentioned presence with [D] in a car during, and the overhearing by her of, the conversation in April 2018 in which it is said that Ms Zaman made the voluntary admissions.

25.Viewing the matter as a whole, the Committee sees no basis for any challenge to, and has no reservations whatever about the correctness of, the Commissioner’s wholesale rejection of the new evidence.

26.In his observations on the supplementary report, Lord Ahmed also sought to introduce further new evidence in the form of a short statement by a third party which he did not raise in his original appeal or in his interview with the Commissioner in relation to her report on the evidence, but submitted late in that investigation. The Committee considered that this statement bore no relationship to the two new statements introduced at appeal, could have been submitted at that point, and in any event shed no useful light on Lord Ahmed’s conduct towards Ms Zaman.

27.The Committee accordingly dismissed Lord Ahmed’s submissions on the supplementary report and upheld the Commissioner’s finding that the new material did not provide any basis for amending the conclusions or findings set out in her earlier report.

28.The Committee then returned to considering the main report of the Commissioner and the appeal against the findings in that report.

Points of process

29.In considering points of process, the key question for the Committee was whether there were any procedural irregularities of sufficient seriousness as to make the investigation unjust and call into question the findings.

30.Lord Ahmed raised a number of points of process in his appeal. We considered each of them in turn but concluded that none of them constituted or evidenced points which could undermine the Commissioner’s findings.

“Plainly wrong”

31.We also considered Lord Ahmed’s argument that the Commissioner’s findings were flawed and not based on evidence, i.e. were “plainly wrong”. The standard of proof set out in the Code is the balance of probabilities, so for each allegation the Commissioner had to decide whether it was more likely than not to be true.

32.In considering whether the Commissioner was “plainly wrong” in her key findings, the Committee was mindful that this is a high bar. In the ordinary judicial system, an appellate court will give considerable weight to the findings of the first instance judge (the parallel here being the Commissioner) who has the advantage of seeing all the parties, witnesses and evidence. Only on the rarest occasions, when convinced that the first instance decision was plainly wrong, will an appeal body be justified in overturning the first instance decision on an issue of fact. That could occur, if it could be said, in particular, that the first instance decision was one which the judge could not reasonably have reached or if it had been made with no basis in evidence. An appellate body is not there to say whether it thinks it would have reached the same conclusion.

33.The Committee did in this case have reservations about one area of fact found by the Commissioner. That concerns whether Lord Ahmed knew or realised before late July 2017 that Ms Zaman was willing to be identified to, and meet, the police and misled the police when he told them in April 2017 that she wished to remain anonymous and therefore would not meet with them. Ms Zaman set out her complaint to Lord Ahmed in a statement “To whom it may concern” in which she said that she did not want to give her name as I wish to remain anonymous” and sent it him on 22 February 2017 with an email questioning whether to mention [J] in the statement because, if she did, it might affect her anonymity. But in the course of his evidence, the Commissioner records, Lord Ahmed went further and insisted that Ms Zaman had specifically told him on or before 2 March 2017 that she did not want her identity to be known to the police at all (irrespective of any assurances the police might give about protecting it from others). We do not question the Commissioner’s finding that “Lord Ahmed was deliberately untruthful” to the Commissioner in his accounts of a specific explanation of this nature being given him by Ms Zaman at this time and/or, as he at times stated, after she saw the police letter of 3 May 2017; and that his probable motive in that respect was in order to create “clear blue water between the conclusion of his activities as a parliamentarian and the start of his sexual relationship with Ms Zaman”.13

34.However, the opposite, namely that there was at that time a discussion in which Ms Zaman positively told Lord Ahmed that she was willing to have her identity disclosed to the police, despite her communicated wish for anonymity, does not follow; and would on the face of it be inconsistent with the letter dated 2 March 2017 which Lord Ahmed wrote based on what Ms Zaman said in her email of 22 February and draft statement. Ms Zaman also saw the letter, in which she was carefully referred to as an informant who wished to remain anonymous, and she made no objection to it. The Commissioner did not find that Ms Zaman ever explicitly said to Lord Ahmed before July 2017 that she was willing for her identity to be disclosed to, and to meet, the police.

35.Nonetheless, we found nothing in Lord Ahmed’s appeal to persuade us that there was anything plainly wrong about the Commissioner’s overall finding, that Lord Ahmed breached the Code of Conduct by failing to act on his personal honour:

(a)in sexually assaulting Ms Zaman on 2 March 2017 after they had dinner to discuss the complaint she wished to make to the police; and then

(b)in exploiting her emotionally and sexually by lying about his intentions to help her between August and November 2017.

As to the second of these, the Commissioner found that Lord Ahmed knew that he was dealing with a vulnerable person, who was undergoing treatment for anxiety and depression and who had already made clear that she did not want a sexual relationship. He nonetheless misleadingly induced her to visit him at his house under the pretext of offering to assist her as a member of the House of Lords in relation to the matters she had wanted to be raised with the police, when his true motivation was to induce her into a sexual relationship which on this occasion he succeeded in bringing about, lasting over the next three months.

Conclusion

36.The Conduct Committee accordingly dismisses the appeal of Lord Ahmed against the Commissioner’s findings that he breached the Code of Conduct by failing to act on his personal honour in the course of his parliamentary activities.

Appeal against the recommended sanction

37.We now turn to Lord Ahmed’s appeal against the Commissioner’s recommended sanction of expulsion from the House. This is based on her findings of breach and the aggravating circumstances she identifies including that Lord Ahmed knew that Ms Zaman was vulnerable, that he did not cooperate with the investigation, and that he has shown no remorse. The Commissioner concludes that “His use of his parliamentary status to offer illusory help to a vulnerable Ms Zaman undermines the reputation of the House of Lords as a whole, as it undermines trust in the honesty and trustworthiness of its members.”

38.Lord Ahmed made submissions in mitigation. The majority of these, along with the Commissioner’s consideration of them, can be found at paragraphs 566–594 and in Appendix 11 of the main report.14 But Lord Ahmed also developed some points in his grounds of appeal against the Commissioner’s main report and addressed some points relevant to mitigation in his oral submissions before the Committee. His submissions, taken together, addressed:

(a)his background, activities in life and good character, in support of which various references were also relied on;

(b)the fact that this was the first time he had been found in breach of the Code of Conduct or anything similar;

(c)the devastating impact the report and any subsequent expulsion would have on his personal, matrimonial and public life;

(d)the fact that the Guide to the Code says that “the longer ago the conduct occurred, the more certain the Commissioner should be of the need for such a sanction before recommending it.”; and

(e)the inappropriateness of any severe sanction in the light of the fact that the sexual relationship was consensual and in light of the nature of those breaches which have been found by the Commissioner and which have also been endorsed by the Committee; and in particular the disproportionality of the Commissioner’s recommended sanction of expulsion.

39.On point (a), the Committee accepts that Lord Ahmed has made a long and substantial contribution to public life. On point (b) the Committee also accepts that in some cases commission of a first offence can be a relevant mitigation, particularly in the case of minor breaches, and that the Commissioner’s conclusion at paragraph 575 of the Commissioner’s main report should be qualified accordingly. On point (c), like the Commissioner, the Committee further accepts that the effect of the report and any sanction will be severe on Lord Ahmed’s personal and family as well as his public life. However, as the Commissioner indicated, the imposition of an appropriate sanction must sometimes have such an effect. On point (d), we agree with the Commissioner that this passage in the Guide was focused on the presently irrelevant situation of conduct that occurred before the passage of the 2015 Act which allows the House to expel its members. The behaviour in this case took place well after that Act had been passed. The length of time that has elapsed since an offence was committed may sometimes be relevant, but it is not substantial in this case.

40.The Commissioner’s finding that Lord Ahmed was uncooperative and dishonest and so failed to act on his personal honour in relation to her investigation, in core areas of both the Commissioner’s main and her supplementary investigations on which the Committee has relied in this report, combines with the fact (also noticeable in his appearance before us) that he has continued to deny any wrongdoing and has shown no indication of any regret, remorse or understanding of the inappropriateness of his conduct or its effect on a vulnerable victim. The risk of repetition also cannot be excluded. These facts (about which the Committee has no doubt in the light of all the material and information before it) mean that Lord Ahmed has no claim to the benefit of any mitigation in any of these areas.

41.The aspect which has given the Committee the most cause for thought is the appropriateness of the recommended sanction. In that connection, the Committee also bears in mind that, while it has accepted the Commissioner’s central conclusions relating to the two main aspects involving sexual misconduct in the course of performance of parliamentary activities, as set out in paragraph 35 above, it has expressed its reservations on one subsidiary aspect (see paragraphs 33–34 above). It is on the appropriateness of the sanction for the two findings of breach only that the Committee will therefore focus.

42.Lord Ahmed cited the words of Baroness Hayman on the introduction of the Bill allowing for expulsion, namely that “Expulsion is obviously a hugely weighty and heavy step”. She expressed the hope that the provision for it “would simply lie unused and that there would never be conduct that would provoke the possibility of the House being asked to agree to expel a member”. We accept the guidance in the first sentence and would have hoped that the hope in the second sentence could always be realised.

43.What conduct calls for the most severe sanctions will necessarily depend on the nature, responsibilities and public perception of the relevant profession, employment, calling or role in question. The Committee has considered the role, responsibilities and public perception of membership of the House and the seven principles of public life which underpin the Code. The public rightly expects parliamentarians to be held to a high standard of conduct as well as honesty and, when members fall short egregiously, the trust and confidence in Parliament of the public as well as of those working inside the House, and those having dealings with members of the House, are all undermined.

44.We accept that it is possible to think of even more serious breaches of the Code than the present, and we have considered the full range of sanctions at our disposal including whether a lengthy period of suspension would be an acceptable substitute for or alternative to that which the Commissioner proposed.

45.We have nevertheless come ultimately to the conclusion that it would not be appropriate for this case to lead simply to a period of lengthy suspension followed by re-admission to the role, responsibilities and privileges of membership of the House. The abuse of the privileged position of membership for a member’s own gain or gratification, at the expense of the vulnerable or less privileged, involves a fundamental breach of trust and merits the gravest sanction. Even though it is possible to think of even more serious breaches, the case in all its circumstances which we have set out crosses the threshold calling for immediate and definitive expulsion.

46.The Committee recommends that Lord Ahmed be expelled from the House under Standing Order 12 (Expulsion or suspension of a member).

1 Annex A

2 www.parliament.uk/hl-code

3 Annex B

4 Annex C

5 Annex C, Appendix 2

6 Annex B, Appendix 1 and Annex C, Appendix 3

7 This restriction has now been removed and complaints may be made regardless of when the alleged conduct took place.

8 Annex A,executive summary

9 Annex B, paragraph 105

10 Annex C, paragraphs 265–267

11 Annex C, Appendix 2

12 Annex C, Summary

13 Annex A, paragraph 144

14 Appendix 11 to the Commissioner’s report is not printed here but is available to members of the House on request to the Clerk of the Journals



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