Criminalisation isn't the way to tackle honesty in politics says Welsh Standards Committee

Research carried out by Full Fact shows 54% of the public tend to ignore what parties and politicians will say because they don’t know if they can trust them. The Standards Committee of the Welsh Senedd has been tasked with finding a solution to this problem by investigating ways to build trust in politics and mitigate deception.

The Committee has now published their report which warns against the idea of making lying in politics a criminal offence. Following months of evidence sessions, of which Full Fact participated, the committee has produced a series of recommendations to strengthen the standards mechanisms in the Senedd, a move away from the original suggestion of involving the criminal justice system. 

Criminalisation is not the answer

We have long warned against the idea of criminal sanctions for deliberate deception for elected officials, calling it a ‘disproportionate’ action. Proving deliberate deception must strike a delicate balance between correcting bad information and protecting free speech and opinion, and we were staunch in our view that the original proposal did not carefully strike this balance. 

Our recommendations

Our core recommendation to the committee was that the political system in Wales needed to be adapted in order to robustly hold politicians to account for the truth and accuracy of their statements. This included:

• Strengthening the powers for the Commissioner for Standards.
• Introducing lay members to the Standards Committee, this would open up the standards process and prevent politicians ‘marking their own homework’
• Promoting a greater emphasis on corrections that motivates politicians to admit when they’ve got something wrong, and compel one another to correct the record if the evidence contradicts what’s been said.

The report makes a strong case for how the current system can be reformed, taking on a number of Full Fact’s proposals and making a case to the government that in order to tackle deception in politics more needs to be done to encourage elected officials to correct the record when they get something wrong. 

Next steps

The report will now be presented to the Welsh government who will have the opportunity to respond and decide which recommendations to adopt. Full Fact will continue campaigning across the different parliamentary systems to promote high standards in public life. 

But the question remains, will these changes do enough to restore trust in politics? We certainly think it’s a major step forward, but this change must start with politicians taking responsibility for their words and their actions if they want to see real change. 

Welsh Senedd Standards Committee Report