Parliamentary Standards Authority and the Prime Minister’s Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests. One (the Standards Board, latterly Standards for England) has gone through a full cycle of creation, reform and abolition. One pre-existing body, the Audit Commission, is in the process of abolition. There has been a marked increase in openness and transparency as a result of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the use made of the Act by the media and others, and various other changes. Some of these changes, such as the publication of information about political donations, were made at the instigation of this committee. Public sector organisations are now required to be both reactively open (responding to requests for information held) and proactively transparent (producing publication schemes detailing the information which they publish). Over the same period, information recording, supply and storage have been revolutionised by the development of the internet and other technologies – which promise benefits for public life as well as hazards. S t a n d a r d s ma t t e r Active governance One of our key conclusions is that rather than introducing new principles, more codes or additional regulators, the current requirement is instead to ensure that ethical standards are actively addressed at an organisational level across the public sector, and indeed more widely. In addition to the requirements set out in the previous paragraph, two other elements are needed. • Embedding of ethical principles in the policies, practices and culture of each organisation, reinforced by peer pressure. High standards cultures constantly convey the message that behaving ethically is essential and failing to live up to principles is unacceptable. Banking is not the only sector with examples of organisations with superficially commendable codes of conduct, which bear little relation to the behaviour actually encouraged and rewarded by organisational culture. Codes need to be supported by appropriate induction and training, reflected in appraisal, and reinforced by rewards and sanctions. A striking finding from our focus groups is the Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14 47 The committee’s Third Report in 1997 addressed ethical standards in local government. The report called for a restructuring of the framework of standards in local government with the aim of achieving clarity about standards of conduct while devolving greater responsibility to local government for devising and regulating those standards. The Local Government Act 2000 went well beyond what had been proposed. It created a statutory code of conduct for local authority members, independently chaired statutory standards committees for each principal local authority, an independent regulator of local authority standards (the Standards Board for England) and a separate independent body (the Adjudication Panel for England) to which the most serious cases could be referred. These arrangements did much to improve the conduct of elected members. A number of adjustments were made in 2007 following recommendations from the committee in the light of criticism of the system as bureaucratic and bogged down with trivial complaints. The Standards Board (which became Standards for England) was made more strategic. Local standards committees and monitoring officers were given responsibility for filtering complaints. The Localism Act 2011 abolished Standards for England, removed the ability of local authorities to suspend members as a sanction for poor behaviour and disbanded local standards committees. It introduced a new offence of failing to declare or register a pecuniary interest. Following amendments to the original Bill during its passage through parliament it also required local authorities to develop their own code of conduct based on the seven principles of public life and to appoint an Independent Person to be consulted during the investigation of any complaint. The new, slimmed down arrangements have yet to prove themselves sufficient for their purpose. We have considerable doubt that they will succeed in doing so and intend to monitor the situation closely. The arrangements place a particular onus on the Local Government Association to provide leadership for the sector and to ensure that they work in practice. But amid these positive developments, it is disturbing that questions continue to be raised about the integrity of a number of our key institutions. The controversy that followed revelations about MPs’ expenses in 2009 still casts a long shadow over parliament. In the last six years there have also been issues relating to the expenses of members of the House of Lords, political donations for political access, inappropriate behaviour by local councillors, electoral fraud, concerns over lobbying, the ‘revolving door’ between the civil service and private sector, and the apparent failure of procedures for escalating concerns in a number of public bodies. In the last few months of 2012 alone, issues were raised about unethical (or in some cases possibly criminal) behaviour on the part of the police; the historical behaviour of the armed forces, police and security service in Northern Ireland; and high profile problems in hospitals and care homes, the BBC, national journalism and banks. Local government standards8
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