The Senedd’s Standards Committee thinks further action is needed to tackle deliberate lying by politicians. As they said in a recent report, ‘What politicians say, how they say it and the impact it has matters’. The Committee says that the deliberate "spreading of misinformation by candidates and elected officials is a serious issue which has the potential to further erode trust in politics".
It recommends that practical steps are taken by 2026, to introduce further measures to prevent deliberate lying by both Senedd Members and by candidates in Senedd elections.
The Committee’s recommendations and the Welsh Government’s response to them will be discussed in the Senedd on 2 April 2025. Ahead of the debate, this article sets out the key proposals from the report and wider context in which this conversation is taking place.
What steps should be taken?
The Committee recommends that different measures should be put in place for Senedd Members and for candidates.
Senedd Members
The Senedd’s Code of Conduct, sets out the rules on Members behaviour It already says that ‘Members must act truthfully’, the Senedd is the only legislature in the UK with a truthfulness rule in its code . Despite this, the Committee says that this rule should be strengthened further to explicitly prohibit Members from making deliberately misleading statements.
A majority of the Committee says complaints should be investigated through the Senedd’s standards process. Under this system, complaints are investigated by the Senedd’s Standards Commissioner. Any breaches found by the Commissioner are referred to the Senedd’s Standards Committee which decides if a sanction should be applied and what that sanction should be. The Senedd as a whole then votes on any proposals for sanctions made by the Committee.
Under the changes proposed by the Committee, the Standards Commissioner would investigate and decide if a Senedd Member has deliberately lied. If found guilty, Members could be issued with a ‘correction notice’ requiring them to correct the record in a ‘place with equal prominence’ to where the deliberately false statement was made. For example, on the same social media account as where they made an initial statement. Members who fail to comply with an order would be considered in breach of the rules and subject to a sanction.
The Committee has already recommended that a new system to ‘remove and replace’ Senedd Members found guilty of serious breaches of the Code of Conduct for Members should be introduced by 2026. The Welsh Government accepted this recommendation and says it will introduce ‘recall’ legislation before the next Senedd election.
This means that in future, Members who make deliberately deceptive statements could be replaced if found guilty of a serious breach and voters decided to remove them.
Recognising the importance of people having trust in the system that investigates breaches by Members, the Committee recommends a number of measures to strengthen the independence and transparency of the current standards process.
For example, it says the law should be changed to allow for independent external lay members to join the Senedd’s Standards Committee and that any breaches of the rules by Senedd Members should be published on Senedd Members’ webpages.
The Welsh Government says it will use the proposed recall law to make the legal changes needed to introduce some of the Committee’s recommendations on independence and transparency.
Candidates
Rules are put in place for each Senedd election that set out the law on how the election should be run and how candidates should operate and behave. These rules are known as the ‘Conduct Order’.
Candidates are already banned from making false statements about another candidate’s personal character during an election. Any candidates accused of making a false statement can be investigated by the police and if found guilty by an electoral court, disqualified.
A majority of the Committee has said that for Senedd elections, this existing criminal offence should be broadened to make it an offence for a candidate to make deliberately deceptive statements about any issue with the intent to change the outcome of a Senedd election. It says that this change should be in place from 2026 onwards.
The Welsh Government says officials will develop proposals for a new electoral offence on deception but that further consultation is needed. It says it’s not feasible, therefore, to include such an offence in the Conduct Order for the 2026 Senedd election.
Alternative views
One Committee Member, Peredur Owen Gruffydd MS, agreed with the need to strengthen the existing rules on deliberate deception and the Senedd’s Standards process but believes a single administrative system for Members and candidates should be introduced rather then separate sanction processes.
Observer Members were also invited to take part in the Committee’s work. Adam Price MS, Jane Dodds MS and Lee Waters MS, as observer members, support the introduction of a new criminal offence on deliberate deception for Members and candidates, investigated by the police and prosecuted by the criminal courts. They are supportive of the Committee’s recommendations to improve the existing Standards system but don’t think these reforms alone will be sufficient.
James Evans MS, the fourth observer, believes an improved standards system and the introduction of a ‘remove and replace’ system for serious breaches of the Code of Conduct such as breach of the rules of truthfulness will provide a sufficiently ‘robust framework’ for addressing any deliberate deception by Senedd Members.
A ‘revolutionary’ step?
Transparency campaigners, Transparency International UK and Unlock Democracy have welcomed the Committee’s recommendations. Transparency International UK called them ‘measured and pragmatic’.
Compassion in Politics who advocated for a new criminal offence for Senedd Members and candidates are disappointed that this was not recommended for Senedd Members but nonetheless says that the proposal to amend the Conduct Order for candidates is ‘potentially revolutionary’.
In its report, the Committee says that balancing the need to take further measures to stop deliberate deception with the needs to protect people’s freedom of speech, the right to free and fair elections and the principle that parliaments should be free from outside regulation is ‘complex’. In the time it had and on the basis of the risks identified in the evidence it received, it did not feel that it could recommend a new criminal offence but it said 2026 should not be the end of the story:
We believe that, if the Welsh Government is serious about embedding a culture of honesty in the Welsh democratic system which goes beyond the 2026 election, it is an issue that deserves further detailed examination by an expert panel…
Next steps
In July 2024, the Welsh Government committed to bring forward legislation before 2026 for the disqualification of Members and candidates found guilty of deliberate deception through an independent judicial process. This commitment was re-affirmed by the Deputy First Minister to the Standard’s Committee in December 2024.
The Welsh Government has not yet set out how it intends to reconcile this previous political commitment with its more recently held view, that it’s not feasible to introduce a new offence by 2026.
Senedd Members will get the chance to debate this response and their views of it on 2 April.
You can watch the debate on Senedd.tv
Article by Nia Moss, Senedd Research, Welsh Parliament
