Welcome to this session of the Public Administration and International Affairs Committee. Our witness this morning is Lord Pickles, a former Member of this House, a current Member of the House of Lords and the immediate past chair of ACoBA. Eric, it is lovely to see you and thank you for finding the time to be with us today. Let me kick off the questions—looking slightly to the here and near future—with regards to the Government’s recruitment campaign to identify your successor. We understand that another recruitment round for a permanent chair has yet to be launched. Do you have concerns about that, both in terms of the status and standing of ACoBA, and public confidence in the process?

I have had no informal discussions nor have I been involved in any way with the selection of my successor, and I actually think it would have been quite improper for me to do so. We are quite fiercely independent of the Government, and that should be the case. I have been involved in recruitment a lot in government, and things occasionally go wrong, so this may be the last charitable thing I say, but let us give them the benefit of the doubt.

Should there be any concerns that there appears to be a lack of urgency, given the public’s legitimate desire to see high levels of transparency and accountability?

My temporary successor is a very distinguished woman with lots of experience in the public sector, and I am quite confident that she will be able to see the job through. One of the things that shows she is very serious is that she has made it absolutely clear she has no desire to apply for the permanent post. It is a non-renewable five-year appointment, which is a very good thing, and I am quite sure that if things have gone awry they will very quickly be back on post. I am confident that there is sufficient momentum within ACoBA to be able to continue the very high standard at which it has managed to perform over the last few years.

Let us move on to a summary and overview of your time as Chair: I will hazard a guess that you have probably chaired it at a time when there has been the highest number of former Ministers, given the rapidity of governmental changes that we have seen in recent times. How has that operated while you have been chair? And a rather blunt question, I suppose: would you describe your tenure as a success? Were there things that you wanted to achieve that you achieved, or things that you hoped to achieve that proved undeliverable?

My number one priority was to change the rules, and I have singularly failed with that, though I did manage to push the envelope as far as I could in terms of reforms. In terms of the number of Ministers, it was an all-time record. There 370, and slightly north of that figure since July, which is bigger than at any time in the past 50 years; so there was an enormous amount of churn. There was also quite a high amount of churn among senior officials. Permanent Secretaries are no longer very permanent: they have a five-year contract and very few of them do 10 years. If you will forgive me an aside, it is to the detriment of the service of the various Departments that we do not have a permanent civil service. But what I have seen, even in the five-year period, is an increase in the number of people going into the civil service and the Ministry to do consultancies. Everybody concentrates on the ex-Ministers because they have heard of them, but it is really important to understand that the real action is taking place among civil servants. A degree of entitlement has developed that is deeply worrying, both at ACoBA level and below, with a kind of cohort effect taking place where the existing cohort looks after the exiting cohort on the assumption that the new cohort will look after them. This is not meant as a joke at all, it is deadly serious: everybody believes in the seven principles of public life until they apply to them. If you look at the number of problems that we have had over the past five years, they can be neatly summed up in the phrase, “The rules aren’t for me because I am completely impeccable”.

Just on Nolan, there is a timelessness to the thematic assertions, if you will. Should it be refreshed and revitalised? We refer to it now almost like the Ten Commandments, and people usually get stuck at No. 3.

That is a very good observation. People occasionally come along and say, “We need another principle.” I actually think it has stood the question of time, but so far as the seven principles are concerned the runt of the litter—the one that everyone ignores, but the one that actually should be the most important one—is leadership. Those who are engaged in public life should set an example in terms of moving towards propriety. In recent years I have been threatened with judicial review, with various lawyers and the like, and if you are looking for a loophole—

Threatened by aggrieved people if you have said, “No” to their appointment?

Yes, absolutely; I do not think you would get a lawyer if I had said yes. If you are looking for a loophole, looking to take in lawyers, or trying to do a digital review, you have entirely missed the point of the Government business rules. While the Government business rules are dead in the water, next to useless, utterly pointless and in need of reform, they place a high degree of importance on the individual integrity of the applicant, be they a Minister or a senior civil servant.

Good morning, Lord Pickles. Two former Ministers have raised concerns about how long it has taken to get the advisory Committee to give clearance, and that sometimes results in financial hardship for them. Do you accept that criticism?

Yes, of course. Do not get me wrong, I have worked very closely with the Cabinet Office; they are lovely people who have always been very helpful, but they did rather drop the ball with regard to the appointment of officials to do with ACoBA. It was pretty obvious it was coming because of headcounts and because I have only been able to agree numbers year by year. It took a long time to recruit—some up to six months—and then there is a long induction period. We would have wanted the people we have in place now to have been in place in July to be able to deal with that, so we were low numbers. I have to say my lowest point as ACoBA chair was when we had one and a half officials to help us; we now have around nine, and even that is difficult with the numbers we have. But there are a number of other factors. The first one is that people are probably sometimes a bit lackadaisical in telling us the truth and giving us full information; that is probably how I should express it. The big delay comes from getting information out of Government Departments. If you are a Minister liked by your staff, then on some systems you will get a quick response, by and large. But if you are a difficult Minister you rely on ACoBA to keep pressing to get the information out. If you want to take on a job unrelated to your ministerial role there is no problem; it is only really when there is a link up with what you do. If you are wanting to take on a non-paying job, or a job in academia, television or newspapers there is no problem. In fact, 30% of our activity is a complete and utter waste of public money because we have to go through the same process for people who are taking a job for nothing or going back to academia and the like, and we would be better spending that time looking at the more complicated cases.

Does the process need to be tweaked to allow those easier cases you deal with to be fast-tracked, or not dealt with by your former Committee?

I introduced a traffic light system to speed this process through, and they will not take very much time, by and large. But one of the reasons why the business rules should be changed is to just remove this flotsam and jetsam out of the system altogether and go to an exemption regime; move it much more on a risk base, so you really home in on the exact risk and can be much more transparent with the public.

You referenced earlier a spike in the caseload after the election last year, was it 370?

It is north of 370. Normally we would expect somewhere in the high 200s, maybe 300 in a year.

How much was it last year, in that immediate period after the election?

It was 370-plus.

Looking at how you might adjust the system, of that 370, what proportion needed a deep dive because of the potential conflict and how many do you think should have been waved through?

There is an addition to that, which I should be clear about. We really earn our salaries by persuading people from doing very silly things and to withdraw their application because there is no possibility of it getting through; in many cases it is deeply improper. That is around 16% to 18% on top of that 370.

Just to be clear, so the applicant would have an early conversation with you, and if you had alarm bells ringing you would say, “Don’t even apply for this”, so they do not even go into the system?

That is absolutely right. By and large the officials deal with that because we encourage people to just give us as much information as they can, and we will advise them. But in the case of some colleagues, generally speaking it is ex-colleagues—this will surprise people: they can be slightly obdurate—I am wheeled in to talk to them about how it would look and how difficult it would be.

Is that because they do not understand the rules, or they are just chancing their arm?

The answer to both questions is yes, and I would add a third one which is, “I’m a person of such enormous probity that these rules do not apply to me; you must understand I have important jobs to do.”

In the manner of St Augustine?

Yes.

Has the extra caseload that was generated by the general election now been cleared, or are there still former Ministers whose applications are being considered?

There are new applications coming in, and interestingly during this period we have seen a number of multiple applications, which is quite unusual: people taking a scatter-gun approach in terms of things that they are looking to do. My maths might not be that good, but of that 370, we could have probably just put through north of 110 on the nod if the rules had been changed. As I emphasise, they are the Government’s rules, not ours, and we would like the Government to change them, which I do not think it would take very much to do. There have been a number of reports and recommendations, not least of which was from your fine organisation, to recommend that they do this.

That is quite a good segue into my next question: are you aware of former Ministers who have accepted jobs and just decided to ignore your advisory Committee, and do you think you have sufficient sanctions to address that?

People who are in breach never represent much more than 5%; most years it is about 3%. Most of the breaches are by the befuddled and the confused: people not getting things in on time, not realising, not making an application in a timely manner—all that kind of thing. Those who actively defy are very rare indeed. We had one incident of a former spad who just simply refused to answer our questions. He then made a number of other applications and we refused to deal with them until he answered our questions. As far as the Ministers are concerned, they do not want to receive a difficult letter from the Committee. That they will get national publicity does not matter that much but it is what happens in their local press that is absolutely crippling for them, so by and large people do conform. You asked me about sanctions. They are important because it lacks credibility from the public if they know that if somebody breaks the rules, nothing happens. You can recommend, and indeed we have recommended, that that person should not be eligible for any future public appointments. We also liaise with the Honours Committee on gongs, and with the appointments to the House of Lords. We have been looking for a long time to have a ministerial deed in which the redundancy—the three months’ pay—will be at risk. I have always been of the view that you do not want to set up a graded system. Nothing less than an egregious breach should trigger that because most of the breaches that we have to deal with are just simply administrative errors.

Just before I bring in Lauren; Lord Pickles, you mentioned that if you went into academia there would be no problem. What happens if you are offered a chair sponsored by a large corporate, and part of the job is going to be convening seminars and symposiums and those sorts of things, where they might be inviting officials, Ministers, spokesmen, and so on? They are not directly connected to the chair sponsor, but there is an indirect opportunity to bridge some gaps in communication. How would that sit if it is academia—is it a de facto green light, notwithstanding your traffic light system?

If you are going into academia to lecture, we have no concerns whatsoever. If you are involved in the running of the university or college, then we do. If it involves meeting potential sponsors or Government about government contracts, we are concerned. I can think of four cases straight out of my head under those circumstances. In three of them we advised against doing it, certainly for the two-year period, and in one it was possible to do it with lots of conditions. But that is why we would like to remove the 30% that does not cause a problem so we can really home in, because we will do our best to ensure that people have the opportunity of taking up an interesting appointment. Our concern is always the Government’s interest—are they getting this job because of contacts they made as a Minister? Will it appear in the eyes of the public and competitors that this firm is getting an unfair advantage? We do not look at the amount of money they get or the amount of time they are giving: that is for others to determine.

Where you impose conditions, how are those conditions monitored to ensure that they are being adhered to for the time period?

In the old world, when typewriters were king, there was not very much monitoring. But now, it is not really possible to cough in these jobs without somebody noticing, and we get lots of regular suggestions that people are breaching the rules, which we will follow up. But of course, in the patchwork of the whole scheme of things there are also a number of other kinds of watchdogs and regulators that might pick it up. If they are a member of Parliament, the Commons Commissioner, the House of Lords Commissioner or the Registrar of Lobbyists could pick it up; all of which we meet with regularly to discuss where there are overhangs. I will just make this point: a lot of people were using ACoBA as an excuse to say to their constituents, “Well, this has been approved by ACoBA.” We do not approve of anything, we just give advice. One thing that we do is to make sure the words, “We are not endorsing what you are doing, it is for individual applicants to justify” appear in every letter.

I am just going back to John’s questions around workload. Back in 2020 when you had your pre-appointment hearing, you discussed the various success metrics by which you would judge your term. You had a number of those, but one was about the system becoming more self-regulatory in that people would not be applying for permissions for jobs that they really should not even be considering. Reflecting on your term, how do you feel that process has gone? Do you think that you have achieved that?

Yes, in so far as those 16% that we talked about accepted the advice, by and large, and did not make an application; people understood the process. No doubt ahead of you is a glittering political career but it will end, it always does. During that ending process people are not necessarily at their most rounded in terms of their thoughts. The advantage of what we do is we allow people to really suggest something that under normal circumstances they probably would not, and talk it through with them. So, generally speaking, both in terms of telling people that really they should not make an application and putting down various conditions, there is a high degree of acceptance. The traffic light system, which looks more and more at risk, and refines it more and more at risk, has been extraordinarily helpful.

Do you think the self-regulatory system has worked for civil servants, and do you have any comment on how effective the Cabinet Office has been in making sure there is a broad understanding about the system in Whitehall?

It varies, and we only deal with the top civil servants. Below us—if that is the right word—it is the responsibility of the board of the different Government Departments or Ministries. In truth, that is the area that I was most concerned about when I went in, and I thought the last Government were extraordinarily lucky not to have a scandal operating. The churn in the civil service is approximately 40,000 a year. Last year it was 40,000, and it can drop to the high 30,000s, but it is of that magnitude. Clearly you do not want a quasi-ACoBA kind of system to go through those 40,000. It would be impossible. But it would not be unreasonable to look at those people who had responsibility for procurement, contracts and for the awarding of contracts. If you designated those posts and put them through an ACoBA similar process, I doubt that you would be dealing with numbers so terribly different to the ones that we are, so you would be talking about hundreds rather than thousands of people who would go through that scrutiny a year. It is a worry because if I was a rapacious company, it is the people actually physically doing the job that I would be interested in—in social media, electricity supply, the water industry and the like—and not necessarily the Minister or the top civil servants.

A final question from me, Chair. Just thinking back to the Greensill scandal, for instance, obviously some of the criticism levelled at David Cameron was after the two-year period. Do you think the two-year period is appropriate, or should it be reviewed?

The two-year period works extraordinarily well. There is nothing more ex than an ex-minister, or an ex-civil servant, and after two years it goes. The thing that maybe the Committee may care to think about is, does that apply to the great offices of state—the Prime Minister, Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary—whose influence tends to go for a longer period?

Might you add defence to that, as well?

You could, but the great offices of state are an obvious category. We may want to talk about defence, but there is a very obvious relationship between the Ministry and its suppliers. It has a very well-organised process of looking at individual civil servants below ACoBA level, probably the best one of all the Departments. But the relationship is one that does merit a closer look, particularly when we are moving into a period where the share of our national income is going to be spent much more on defence.

There is a process problem, but if I can just say this: the problem that we have is an ethos problem. Because it is easier, civil servants and politicians often both fall into the trap of thinking that it is the structure, so if you create another structure you will make a difference. Do not lose the bit below ACoBA; if there was one thing that I would really like you to pursue it is that because it will blow and, given the confidence that the public have in politicians and the system, it might well be fatal. So I would ask you to do that. But forgive me, could you repeat your substitute question?

It is so variable in terms of how it is addressed. I have told this before to your predecessor Committee, so forgive me if I repeat myself. It was really brought home to me fairly early on, when a Minister of State sought advice about joining a consultancy company that her former private secretary had set up. We thought, “This is interesting,” and we talked to the Department to see what conditions were laid down on the private secretary, as an ex-civil servant. The answer was that there were none, they had just nodded it through. This is a thing that worries me enormously: where are inspectors are going, where are people who are concerned with the make-up of our web and of contracts in energy going, and what restrictions have been placed upon them?

No, and that is a big problem. We can track it from ACoBA level; we have a very good idea of what is happening there. And the advantage of ACoBA is it is completely transparent. Below ACoBA level it is not transparent, nor is there an active register.

We get a lot of questions about ethics; we made the offer to the Government that our members and officials were prepared to go in to Departments to audit them, in the sense of looking at what they were doing and setting up a system where they understood the metrics of decision making. The offer was rebuffed on all occasions. I offered it to different Ministers and they said they would do it themselves. I have to tell you, in the five years they have not done it. In my view it is a dereliction that they have not. I do not know whether it is time—I suspect it is—or it could be a fear of what they will find.

Do you mean in terms of an exit strategy?

They have, and there have been some very good examples; Treasury is excellent on this. The revolving door is a good idea. The nature of the civil service is you want people to go out, get some experience and come back, or it might be you are looking for a particular set of skills. What you need to do from day one is to work out an exit strategy because the people who encourage you to come in, both the officials and probably the Ministers, are long gone when the time comes for you to go. So it is better to have something worked out. We had a case in the Treasury of someone that was going to move to a commercial bank. In effect what they did was to take her out of the really market-sensitive stuff and had her doing other things in the bank. In that way we were able to impose a much shorter period before she could take up the job. That should be encouraged; if we do not do something like that then the Government would have to look at gardening leave, and that would be extraordinarily expensive. But if we are to encourage people to come in we need to have a mechanism whereby they understand what will happen as they leave, and they need to understand that they will be subject to restrictions for a period.

Ministers think they are going to go on for ever. What has been a bit of a shock over the past few years is the number of Ministers who want to continue to do work in the areas they had administerial responsibility for, which has been quite an unusual feature. I do not mean people with prior experience going back to an existing job—that is a given, and while we will place some restrictions, we understand that. I do not want to name Departments because people might think I am naming individuals and I am not. But if you have a particular responsibility and then you suddenly are on the board of companies in your sector, I do not think it looks good. Remember, our job is not just actual it is perception, and it is important for it to be very clear.

There are two things that you need to do. First, the contract of employment of civil servants clearly needs to be changed. I actually think the changes that we have been suggesting put civil servants into a much safer environment and should be encouraged. But you could do it for new entrants straight away. So far as the Ministers are concerned, it requires an undertaking, a deed or some kind of covenant for them to say that the redundancy, for want of a better description, is at risk if they do not adhere to the advice that ACoBA offers. I suspect that you will probably be looking at breaches more than anything and, as I said, an egregious breach: a proper two fingers to the Government.

Just before I bring in Mr Quigley; taking up your point about those who are below the trigger finger, if you will, for ACoBA to get involved, you mentioned perception. Do you think this is in any way shaped and dictated by the public perception that all politicians are sinners and all civil servants are saints, and therefore a disproportionate amount of transparency should be on one, rather than an equal amount of transparency should be on both?

No, there should be an equal amount of transparency on both. Newspapers and the public are obsessed with politicians, mainly because their readers have heard of them. Most of their readers have not heard of the senior civil servants who, in many cases, are more powerful and influential in public life than the Ministers are. So equal scrutiny for those concerned with the public sector, and there are a certain number of lobbying groups of reporters from national newspapers that take a particular interest in this. So it is really important that people are treated equally. If the Government, say, were to decide to move Ministers one way and civil servants the other, that would be a mistake because you need to be consistent in the conditions, ethos and judgment right across the sector. There is no real difference between top civil servants and Ministers in terms of power and influence.

Can I just ask you as well about your old Department, your old ministerial responsibility and, at a much lower scale, mine? If you look at the landscape of local government—combined authorities, mayoralties and the like—they are becoming very large, powerful organisations across the land. What, if any, thought should be given to senior officers, mayors and senior politicians in the local government sphere who decide to go into often very lucrative consultancy work? It is different if it was the deputy head of housing in a borough council in 1974—not much power—but if you are in charge of spatial development strategy for Greater Manchester, Lincolnshire, Essex or wherever it may happen to be, that is quite a powerful gig.

It is, and there is quite a lot of local government experience around the table. By and large, in terms of ethics, propriety and anti-corruption, local government is better than this building is. There are things that Members of Parliament, and particularly Members of the House of Lords, can do that would not be permissible in local government. Forgive me, it is a while since I have looked at the exit strategy and of course, as you rightly point out, mayors and Chief Executives are a big deal in terms of where they go. But quite often they go back into the public service in some way or another. That would not be a concern for AcoBA; I do not think we want to regulate one kind of sector of the public service against another. I would not be comfortable giving a definitive answer to that, but the bigger and more important people become rather than a committee system, then you make a very interesting point which I will confess I had not really thought about until 30 seconds ago.

Right, we may return to that. Mr Quigley.

In the election manifesto the Government committed to review and update post-Government employment rules. Your description of the rules as feeble is on record, and you have touched on this already, so what do you think any updated version of the rules needs to cover?

It needs to cover a number of things. First, you need to decide what is and what is not important. Secondly, you need to really test what the Government’s appetite for risk is. Thirdly, there need to be consequences for breaching the rules. There are probably other things, but if you managed to put those three into some kind of order, then I would be very confident in terms of how you wanted to move forward. The big mistake is do not be seduced by structure, and I say this out of affection to all politicians. I do not think it matters one way or the other whether you place it on a statutory scheme or not. The important thing is to get the ethos right, and everything falls very naturally from that. The Government have some very difficult decisions to make. Initially it was, without being flippant, “One ring to rule them all”: to have one big massive thing, and I have my doubts about that. You might be able to put together a confederation: there is a patchwork of regulators, overseers, advisers and the like, but they are all focused in on a specific clientele and a specific load of issues, and there is quite a lot of expertise built up there. So if you could put something together that retained that degree of flexibility, then that would be okay. If you put ACoBA on to a statutory basis, that would be okay. But my frustration with the last Government—there is just a beginning of frustration with this one—is that you would not require legislation for a lot of the things that I am talking about: you could do it overnight. My worry is with this continuous delay that the problems are not getting any better, and in many ways they are getting worse. My concern is a big blow up, a big scandal, and that is how we move things along. We briefly touched on Greensill, which is the ultimate rocket booster to try to do something different because people were panicked; the very heart of Government was panicked by all this. It is better to do it in a reasoned way that people understand than to try to put something out so that they have something for the 6 o’clock news.

In your role now, away from it, what keeps you awake at night? What do you think has been missed, or what do you worry about?

The funny thing is, ever since I have given this up I have slept like a baby. I think it was Jack Straw who said about the Home Office that what you needed to do was to find out who was going to get you sacked. What is likely to blow? Something at ACoBA level is not really that likely because you are dealing with people who do not want the publicity, to be ticked off or to receive these ambiguous letters. The scandal is below that and it is just a matter of time. My worry for the new Government was that it would blow and it would not be their fault. But now the clock is ticking and pretty soon, if something did blow it would be their fault just for the sheer fact that they have been there nearly a year.

What is your wider worry, if any? You sort of suggested earlier that public faith and confidence in Westminster, Whitehall—the establishment, in old parlance—is slewed against them. And when something blows, to use your word, it compounds that. As practitioners, should we be worried that we will get to a tipping point whereby the restoration of faith and confidence is a pipe dream?

The short answer is yes, it does worry me. If there was enormous confidence in the political system and the political parties represented in Westminster, it could withstand any kind of scandal. But the problem is that there has been scandal on top of scandal on top of scandal. I do not think politics in this place has really recovered from the MP scandal, which completely undermined Members of Parliament. With the various chops and changes you see that take place in Government—I am not going to be political—but with the various U-turns and the like, nothing looks very stable anymore. My concern was that somehow we would add to this, and that is why I was so keen to ensure, by a combination of time restrictions and conditions, that the body politic not only looks respectable, but is respectable.

Good morning. You have touched on this in your answers to other people, but the Government are continuing the policy of recruiting from the private sector into the civil service, and you said that a revolving door is potentially a good thing. Have you seen any evidence that the business rules that we have at the moment are putting people off from coming in from the private sector?

Yes, and this has come out of seminars and things that you do, and that is why there needs to be a degree of certainty. An exit strategy for someone who is not going to be a career civil servant is something that is going to be of enormous importance because, as I alluded to earlier, people are often pulled in—almost head-hunted—to come to the civil service to do something specifically, and the world is offered to them. It is explained how they are going to change everything and how they will be looked after. Then the point comes when they are going to leave and all those people have gone, so it needs to be written down. I did have it put to me, and I do not think I am speaking out of turn—I will not say who it was—that if we did all these restrictions, and if there was a financial penalty, it might put people off being Ministers. My experience is that by and large politicians would like to be Ministers and would do just about anything to be a Minister. But I recognise that if you are in a high-powered job, coming in and then finding that you would have difficulty getting back to a high-powered job might be concerning. That is why it is important there is a degree of certainty when people are applying for a job: that they know what it is going to be like when they leave. That will make quite a bit of difference, and it is good for Government because otherwise you have to look towards gardening leave, and that would be prohibitively expensive for them.

If you are giving them a degree of certainty at the beginning, and I can see that clarity would help, it might mean some people say, “No”, but at least those that say, “Yes” would know what they were doing. How would you see that working with a very short-term thing? Someone who is just coming in because they have some specific experience that we would like to have for six months or so to do something; how would you then deal with that? They are going to be really wary of coming in.

I may be wrong but I cannot think of many people who would come in for six months and join the civil service; I can see that you might take them on as consultants, and the like. So we are really talking about people who are in for two or three years on this, and on something like that it would help enormously. In terms of consultancies, in most Departments there is a kind of protocol and they decide what they will and will not see; that works extraordinarily well. In terms of the contract that I was mentioning, there would come a point when you were cut away from market-sensitive issues. You could still do various things for the Department, but you could not be engaging in that kind of activity. That helps because you want people to come in and out: it is a good thing. The idea that somebody leaves university or school, goes into the civil service and 30 odd years later they retire has not existed for a long time.

If there was pressure to tighten up the rules further, do you think that would be an obstacle to people coming in from the private sector?

At the moment it is not a question of the rules need tightening: the rules are useless. The rules were put together when good chaps would deal with these things on a good chap’s basis, and I doubt whether those good chaps existed when the rules were put together. The rules have existed for 50 years or so. The internet has come, Blackberries have come and gone—the world has changed. Actually it is wrong to say we are trying to tighten up the rules: we are trying to make the rules relevant for modern society, modern employment practice and a modern world. It would take nothing and it would be so easy to do. I have repeatedly said to Governments that if they gave me the okay, I could get it up and running within six weeks. Then they could decide what they wanted to do about structure and things would have been a little safer, but the system likes a system.

Moving on to honours and life peerages, you said that you liaised with the relevant committees on that. What sort of feel do you have for how much influence that liaison has on their decisions?

I will take a Chinese view on this: it is too soon to say. If I looked at the entrails of a chicken I would be able to give you a more informed view as I just do not know. Sometimes it seems to work, sometimes it does not.

Did you have any feel for the pattern where it does not work? What it might be that is holding greater sway?

How people get an honour is a mystery to me; I just do not know how it is done. Obviously the preaches of ACoBA rules were not very much of a high point to the person that appointed them to the Lords, gave them a knighthood or whatever. But by and large, it is like most things: if there was a financial penalty it would be better. I have said to the Government that I would be prepared to pay the first fine, because it just will not happen. The fact of it being there would strengthen the system and mean that people would fill in the forms and not come to us with this rather gormless, “Oh, I didn’t know, am I supposed to?” The majority of the breaches are people—both officials and Members of Parliament—who forgot to do something: did not fill it in properly or did not realise it applied. The fact they were running the Government up to a few weeks before makes me deeply worried.

Do you have any thoughts on how we could make sure people know they should be applying, and that the forms are such that they make sure they put everything on there that they should?

If it was on their mind that there would be a financial penalty, and indeed it would be a breach of contract for civil servants, their minds would be much more focused in realising that there were consequences for getting it wrong. But we have done all kinds of things. We have ensured that Ministers, on resignation or sacking, receive a letter from me and from my successor, just pointing out the rules and explaining how to get in contact with us. But then you get people who say, “Well, I didn’t get the letter.” Actually, the letter is a plus, something extra, it is something just reminding you. You are bound by the business rules from the moment you took the job, and it was your responsibility to understand those rules. But bear in mind that the overwhelming majority of people who apply go through the system and obey the rules. But it is the minority, the exceptions who do not, who are the ones that get all the headlines.

You seemed to be suggesting earlier that the financial penalty should be quite high and for civil servants it should impact their redundancy.

The point I am making about redundancy is really that when you cease to be a Minister you get paid three months’ salary, and that is what you should look at. The reason why I am saying that is that people were looking at pensions and all kinds of things. I do not think it is necessary to do any of that, nor is it necessary to have a sliding scale. It has to be for the most egregious, outrageous and blatant breaches that you should enforce that, and it should be done with great care.

Lord Pickles, can I probe you on the pensions point? Dependent upon when people joined whatever pensions scheme, these can be very lucrative pots. For example, if somebody has wilfully and blatantly ignored the advice and cracked on and lined their pockets through new employment, which the Committee has advised them not to take up, why should they continue to enjoy, whether as a former Member of Parliament or a former civil servant, the full whack of the pension?

Because it would be a nightmare to do it.

But there are lots of things that are nightmarish.

I know, but it really would come under the category of “Minister, this is not a wise thing to do.” It would involve an enormous legal challenge; it would be very difficult to do. It would create all kinds of unfairness, and frankly why go there for a problem that does not exist in any great numbers? It is possible to take someone’s pension away but generally speaking it would not be a failure to apply ACoBA; it would be a criminal offence. As Clint Eastwood said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Even the most egregious breach you can think of will not come close to being a criminal offence. If it was a criminal offence, you would not be looking to ACoBA to enforce it; you would be looking to the police.

Yes, but just to push the point, the Nolan founding principles do not lead to a criminal prosecution type of thing; they are principles of expectation. Bringing the wider public service into disrepute by some arrogant dismissal of advice, whether you are a civil servant who has been told no but you crack on, or a former politician and the advice has been no but you crack on, hits the headlines and brings the public sector and public service into disrepute. The taxpayer surely then can ask the question, “Okay, they may have forfeited two months of redundancy pay, but that is a drop in the ocean with regard to what their earning potential is now. Why should they continue to enjoy at full all the benefits of the public sector pensions having brought the sector, which they have served for a period of time, into disrepute?” We take it away from ambulance drivers, policemen and firefighters. If they have been found guilty in a criminal court, there is the opportunity for pension forfeiture. I appreciate we are not talking about criminal things here, but speaking to your point, it is that principle of your concerns with regard to the status and standing of the public sector in the public’s mind.

The substantial point is that those are criminal offences, and as somebody who took a pension away from an official who was engaged in serious criminal activities, it was not a very easy thing to do. The Nolan Principles do not create criminal offences. It is about how we behave. It is to try to get us to behave with the propriety of Stanley Baldwin for example—people of high standing. That is what we are expecting: a kind of rounded service.

You have named my political hero, so your share price has gone up. I am a huge fan of Stanley Baldwin. John, do you want to come in?

I want to go back to one of Charlotte’s points. I think you responded that the rules needed to be modernised in some way or updated and refreshed. Are there any other comparisons? Are there any other democracies or countries where you have looked at the system and thought that would work quite well here, or that is something we should aspire to?

There is a working system in New Zealand, and Canada is pretty good, but to tell you the truth I have not really made a big study of it because it was so obvious what we needed to do. It was not particularly revolutionary; it was just to make the rules reflect modern life, particularly modern business life. That is all we are really trying to do. I understand the nature of Government; there are all kinds of problems going on, particularly in the Cabinet Office. It is sort of crisis to crisis to crisis, no matter who is in, and this is dull, grunt work. The time comes when you’re Pavlov, you disappear in The Times obituary. The obituary is not going to say, “You reformed the business rules.” It is just not going to happen. So there are a lot of people who will benefit from this, but it is not the stuff of revolution.

Thank you. Mr Baker, are you the stuff of revolution?

Not immediately, Chair, but thank you. Good morning, Lord Pickles. You have made this a very entertaining and interesting session, so thank you for that. I think I heard you say earlier in response to Mr Quigley that you were not persuaded that ACoBA needs to be put on a statutory footing—

No, I do not mind. Sorry, I did not mean to interrupt. The really important thing is not to be seduced by structure. Get the ethos right and then put in the structure. I am completely agnostic about whether to have it be statutory or not. The thing that worries me about statutory is that it takes such a long time to get in, so we should do it now.

In response to the last Committee’s report, you wrote to the Deputy Prime Minister after his response. He obviously had not supported putting ACoBA on a statutory footing and said that to be taken seriously, a non-statutory scheme needs a meaningful sanctions regime, including a financial penalty. We do not have that. In fact, there are a number of other recommendations we have made, but we have not made much progress. Does that not strengthen the argument that we should actually be thinking about it going on statutory footing now?

I honestly do not mind. If the Government want to put it on a statutory footing, I would not object. I would not in any way demur. What I am saying to the Government and to this Committee is that if they think changing the structure will change anything, it will not; we need to change the rules and the rules need to be on a proper ethos basis, a proper understanding and a risk-based assessment.

But if you changed the rules and put it on a statutory footing, I presume that would be a very robust approach. Would that help assuage some concerns expressed by Paul Flynn and Kelvin Hopkins in previous Parliaments, who railed against the whole situation and saw it as a kind of gravy train? Would that not help in terms of increasing public confidence in the ethics of this place and the moral standing?

I am a Yorkshireman, okay? We have this great expression in the West Riding which is ‘appen. So, ‘appen it would.

‘Appen it would. Excellent response.

To follow on from that, Lord Pickles, to what extent do you think good monitoring and regulation of standards can prevent the decline or perhaps even improve trust in Government and the wider political system in the UK?

The advice we give is part of that process of boosting public confidence. You may have come to your own judgment, but I think the last five years have made a difference. We have moved towards a more risk-based assessment. Our letters are now understandable. Prior to that, if you had really broken the rules, you would have had difficulty understanding that was the case. We have brought an agreement on ambiguity in that process. For most people we are dealing with, that in itself is a way of strengthening the system. ACoBA was born out of a crisis in the 1970s. It has got its influence as it has moved along from crisis to crisis. What we should do is try to break that vicious circle and put something on that is fit for the first quarter, maybe even the first half of the 21st century. That is really all I am saying we should do. I do not mind how we do it. I do not mind whether the background is statutory or non-statutory. You need to understand my railing against waiting for a statute is because there is so much that can be done now, but it would not stop a statutory system; it would not get in the way of a statutory system. Do it now. Make a difference now. Set the general feel now.

You have answered some of my next question in a way, but I think it is important that we ask it. ACoBA is one of a patchwork of standards of watchdogs with widely varying powers and legal status. How effective do you think this patchwork is? Does it need standardising? From your perspective, setting aside what the Government have already committed to do, how should the current system be reformed?

In years gone by when I was a Minister appearing before a Committee like this, at this point I would have looked down at the paper and said something like, “Well, improvements can be made,” and yes, improvements can be made. The thing is that whether you look at the Commissioner in the Commons or the Lords, or the registrar of interests, you will definitely find that in a Venn diagram there are lots of things in which we interrelate, but our core function and experience is distinct, and you cannot expect a generic system to be able to pick up all those things. It does not mean to say that you could not, in a kind of confederation, work it together. One thing that happens is we meet very regularly with people who run these organisations, and we iron out differences. For example, a couple of years back, there was a slight difference between ourselves and the registrar of lobbying, and we changed so that we aligned with them exactly. We talk about problems with standards in public life. So it would be possible provided you ensure that you keep the real focus. You talked about powers. We have no powers. We just have influence; we offer advice. It is the rather classic, “Yes, Minister, do you want power or do you want influence?” We have influence, which is not a bad thing to have. I do not feel like we are fighting a big battle. What we are seeking to do is to get people of reasonable goodwill to do the right thing. People would not believe it, but by and large the system works quite well. People generally do the right thing. People are genuinely worried about the perception. The ones that go adrift are the ones that are a bit confused. I am not going to name him, but I can only think of one politician over the last 20 years who had the brass neck not to care one way or the other about anything, but the system was not devised for him. I suppose we all have a view of who that person might be, but this was not designed for him.

I am not sure the odds would be terribly good on trying to guess who it might be, but we shall see.

You alluded earlier to the Government’s commitment to establish an ethics and integrity commission and maybe that you are not entirely convinced by that approach. I wonder if you could expand on that, and particularly where you see ACoBA sitting within the framework that the new Government are pursuing.

My concern is not one of principle but of practicalities and having to wait. This Government are now approaching their first anniversary and probably have another two parliamentary sessions in which they will not be wholly concerned about the general election, but after that, they will start putting things in to attract the electorate. My worry is that if we wait for a statutory system, it is not a particularly exciting thing to do. I do not see the man on the Clapham omnibus saying, “Thank God they are putting together this ethics commission” when the Bill passes. It will take a very long time, and if I am being really blunt, once they put something like that on the Floor of the House, it is very amendable and everyone with every hobby horse will just jump on it, and that is just a gentle preamble to when it hits the House of Lords. This will be like jam, bread and afternoon tea for the House of Lords. They will love this. Remember, there is no guillotine in the House of Lords. They can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, and they will do so on this. My concern is that if I was a party manager and a Minister for the Cabinet Office came up and said, “I have this Bill, let us put it in for the next term,” I would look at my legislative programme and think, “Oh my goodness me, this has the potential of wrecking everything and being a log jam in our system.” So that is what I am concerned about; I have no objection whatsoever to putting it on a statutory basis. I am just worried that the practicality as the Machiavellian nature of this building will conspire to ensure that it does not happen.

Thank you, that is helpful. Government are about priorities and about getting the desired outcomes. Would it be safe to say then that in your view, rather than establishing the commission, the Government should be focused on getting those outcomes, some of which you have discussed today, by other avenues, i.e. not primary legislation?

Do it first and you might find legislation easier to get through. But my experience of this place is that the Government are not about priorities but about what the Whips and the Leaders of the various Houses want, and how to get things through.

Such cynicism here, Eric.

I am deeply ashamed of what I have just said. Strike it from the record.

Oh, it is carved into Hansard, I am afraid. I have a couple of final questions. Feel free to chip in, colleagues, if you wish. Forgive my ignorance on this, but in recent years there has been a growth in the sort of baubles handed out by Prime Ministers: trade envoys, an anti-corruption tsar, a pro-competition tsar and so on. They are not Ministers but are often roles and jobs that are what one makes of them. They can go in and talk to officials, see ambassadors and so on. How are they policed?

They are not.

Should they be?

I have just stepped down after 10 years as UK Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues, for which I received the princely price of nothing. Somebody rang me up to ask if I would recommend the job. I reminded them it was actually quite an expensive job to do because you have to finance it from your own pocket. I am not sure; I certainly think we should have a clearer distinction on spads because some spads come to us and some spads do not. My view by and large is that spads are probably more powerful than parliamentary secretaries in terms of a Department.

Some spads are more important and more powerful than the Cabinet Secretary or Secretaries of State.

Absolutely. They are probably more important than the Secretary of State in many places. So we need to do that. I need a lot of persuading because by and large most of what those envoys do is in the public domain, and that is why I really do not care about someone doing a column for a newspaper or appearing on various TV things, because it is all in the open. The thing that I and my Committee is concerned about is the quiet words that are spoken, which is why, as you put this together, you have to be really firm on the publication of ministerial meetings. It used to be once a quarter and they say we will have to produce it once a month now, although I have not seen any real evidence of that. Sunlight is the best policy. A lot of the stuff that I have done in the five years is to increase the transparency massively. You actually see absolutely everything we produce. There are no private conversations. Everything goes out; transparency helps. Most of the stuff that the trade envoys do is open. They are not likely to do little deals behind their backs. They are not going to be negotiating trade policy because it is so complex and technical. So, in this brief discussion, you have persuaded me no.

Let us say that you are appointed to be a trade envoy to a country with an emerging energy market. You do it very well; it is an area of interest; you are engaged and meet all the top people in that country, talk to officials here, form bridgeheads and relationships, speak at a conference or two, and so on. All your travel is paid for by the sponsoring Department. Then you finish that envoy role and a British company says, “We are frightfully interested in what you were doing over there and we could sell to this company because we have the better kit or technology which will really allow them to exploit, but we have no idea of how to get into this market and who to meet. Could you help? We would love to put you on the books to help.”

What would you be offering from the Government?

Phone numbers, opportunities to meet, informal conversations, contacts and knowledge. If you are a muscular and proactive trade envoy, for example, you will have as much engagement with your interlocutor as a junior Minister will have or possibly more.

How much engagement would you have with the mind of government? How much would you know about the behind-closed-door stuff?

Quite a lot because I think people have briefings from senior civil servants within the Department before they go away to make sure they do not put a foot wrong or say something wrong. It just strikes me as a slightly grey area. I am making no insinuation whatsoever about anybody who is, or has been, a trade envoy, but it just seems a lacuna.

My view is that it is not necessary, but my view of no is slightly undermined. I am slightly less certain than I was two minutes ago.

Oh. The advocacy of the Chair!

Could I add to that? Rather than define this by role, why is there no risk assessment at the point people leave those roles that asks the questions about whether they have been in receipt of information that is sensitive? Surely that is a more sensible way. I understand that Whips are Ministers but they could be included in this.

Whips are included in this.

Arguably, and with no disrespect to our Whips, but some are probably not in receipt of information that is particularly sensitive when your Committee is looking at them.

Whips are Ministers and they are in the system, but by and large, I agree with the sentiment that it should be risk-based, It should be entirely risk-based. It depends on what the Government’s appetite for risk is. At the moment, they have a completely belt-and-braces system where everybody is checked over. If you want to become chairman of your chrysanthemum association, you do not get a penny for it: no expenses, nothing. We have to take you through that same process as someone who is going to be director of Deloitte. The system is ridiculous. We are wasting money and time. It means we cannot spend time doing the things that are important. It is a bit like eating an elephant; it is a bite at a time. The first bite is getting those business rules changed and then you can do anything you want. You can bring in anybody you want. You could even do the envoy should you decide to do. So you can make a case, but without getting that right, it is disbursement; it is just doing things for the sake of doing things.

Final question: Knowing what you know now, would you do the job again?

Absolutely. I pay enormous tribute to the staff that I had. They were lovely. It was a lot cheaper to take them out for Christmas when there was just one and a half of them, but it got more expensive towards the end. They are just such a wonderful, dedicated bunch, and the Committee has been great. We have expertise from consultancy to international ethics and the like. They meet twice a week virtually, and it is really hard graft for not a lot of money. You work harder doing this than you do if you are on the board of a Department. It has been just great working with them. Life is frustrating; in politics, you can achieve something, but mostly you do not. It has been enormously good and I think I have made a difference albeit in a limited sense in the fact that nobody has noticed except for you good folks.

On behalf of the Committee, Lord Pickles, thank you for your attendance today. Thank you for taking our questions. I would like to put on record our thanks to you for the work you have done in that important role.

Thank you.

We wish you luck with the next chapter, which will obviously be as a motivational speaker for aspirant MPs: you do not achieve very much and it is all very frustrating. It is a short talk, but we look forward to it.

One thing I should have really said to you is that when you look for a chairman, you have to make sure that that person’s political career is over, because it would almost certainly be so once you have done the job. Thank you.

Thank you very much indeed.