Only a Speaker’s conference can restore standards in public life

The Houses of Parliament constitute a royal palace. It is falling down. Since October 2012, Parliament has been debating plans for its extensive restoration. Much work needs to be done to return the edifice to its former glory. Something similar has happened to our constitutional ethical architecture. It has wonderful grandeur in design, but is no longer fit for purpose.

Standards in public life have declined over recent years. So has public confidence and trust in the political system. Once lost, trust is difficult to regain. It is an understatement to say, as the Committee on Standards in Public Life does, that: “The existing standards framework is not functioning as well as it should.” The ethical timbers have rotted, and we need something to replace the old wood. A change in culture is necessary but what of the bodies that should monitor ethical standards, the ethical fifth estate?

The landscape of standards regulation today is complex and confusing to most in the Westminster village, let alone those outside it. The patchwork of codes and regulators, many of them derived from the Nolan Report on Standards in Public Life in the 1990s, reflects the historical development of ethics regulation in the UK, where a scandal may prompt institutional innovation in one particular area while others are reformed only incrementally over decades. The “system” is a hodgepodge. There are too many checks and not enough balances in it.

Various authorities and committees designed to regulate public life in the years after the Nolan inquiry are now toothless. Some are apparently by design, others by neglect.

To resolve the current confusion, Labour’s big idea is a single ethics commission to regulate standards throughout government. Standards bodies are not an alternative to elected democracy but a single organisation could more easily go head-to-head with government if it needed to than a whole series of separate weaker regulators.

But there are difficulties with such an “all-in” model, both around accountability and how it would fit into our parliamentary system. Crucially it would have the disadvantage of a single point of vulnerability, so if it failed or became corrupted the whole system would collapse.

A better approach might involve an overarching ethics commission (a modified form of the Committee on Standards in Public Life) that would not mean the abolition of existing bodies. This commission could, in the case of each particular scandal, determine which body should be the lead investigator or whether it should lead the investigation. Too often multiple bodies investigate the same thing.

Specialist panels would retain their respective jurisdictions but there would be a common pool of investigators, and the commission would have the power to access any evidence it needed. Clear sanctions would be available for breaches of the various codes.

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments should be abolished in its present form and streamlined. The “advisory” part should be jettisoned to emphasise that it is a body with proper legal powers of enforcement – able to impose fines and pursue injunctions. The replacement statutory organisation should have proper investigative powers and a protected budget.

The new “COBA” would be able to obtain all relevant documents from ministers and civil servants and all of their subsequent employing companies or organisations after leaving office. This would crucially reveal the former politician’s role with their new employer.

The rules enforced by the Commissioner for Public Appointments are generally decent, but the scope of them leaves a penumbra of uncertainty, and the sanctions are very weak. The yawning gap at present concerns the absence from scrutiny of non-executive directors of government departments and the figures known as tsars.

A Public Appointments Commission should supervise all public appointments and provide independent interview panels and propose a single candidate for each role.

Ministers should only be involved in public appointments at the beginning and end of the process, not throughout as they are now, and if they reject the outcome they should explain why to the relevant select committee.

The new body would be given more legal powers, the rules administered should be statutory and it must be able to order independent investigations into public appointments, with the same powers to access documents as a court.

The appointment of the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Interests should be approved by Parliament. It should function on a statutory basis like the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, with independent power to investigate. The independent adviser should only be dismissed if a select committee agrees, as with the head of the Office of Budgetary Responsibility.

The prime minister should not be so central to the standards landscape. They are now both initiator and judge, largely as a result of somewhat vague constitutional conventions. The PM must have the final say over who becomes a minister and (in general) who is dismissed from that role. But there should be a high hurdle, enshrined in law, to surmount if they countermand a judgment of the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Interests. The PM should give a detailed and public written determination justifying their action to a parliamentary committee.

Enforcement of the ministerial code should be strengthened. Ministers should swear an oath to abide by it. It should have the same legal basis as its companion codes for civil servants and special advisers.

Thirty years after the Nolan Committee reported, the UK needs a new review of standards in the form of a Speaker’s conference or independent commission. The review should consider how best to embed integrity and consider both tighter regulation and cultural change. And a new ethics regime will require a more legalistic approach than at present.

We need altogether a more sober culture where standards are burnished, there is more leadership by example and fewer apparent prizes, promotions and honours for finding loopholes and breaking or twisting the rules. Ultimately, this means a climate where what you can get away with is no longer the predominant “ideology”. We need new ethical timbers to stop the rot and the downward spiral.

John Bowers KC is the principal of Brasenose College, Oxford and the author of ‘Downward Spiral’, (Manchester University Press)