The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
I welcome the chance to intervene briefly in this interesting debate, and I commend the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) for his speech in moving the motion and for his work on the Committee on Standards and Privileges during his time as Chair, including his work in producing the two reports we are considering today. The House will have noted what he said in response to the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker).
I also commend the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon, for his work as commissioner. His term of office concludes at the end of this year, and it is possible that this will be the last debate on the work of his office, in general terms, during it. He has faced a work load that neither he nor anyone else could have foreseen when he was first appointed, he has discharged his responsibilities conscientiously and effectively and been a source of wisdom and good sense for the Committee on Standards and Privileges and its successive Chairs. I say that with added conviction as the Chair at the time of his appointment.
The review of the code that the commissioner has carried out reflects the experience he has gathered during his term. The overwhelming majority of the changes he has proposed represent sensible changes, improving the clarity and structure of the code without affecting its overall scope and meaning. In particular, the changes help to distinguish the aspirational parts of the code from the adjudicable part.
I want briefly to touch on four areas that have attracted particular interest, namely the application of the code to hon. Members’ private lives, the code in relation to constituency responsibilities, personal responsibility for the use of resources, and the principle of equal application to all hon. Members.
On the first matter, the commissioner, the Committee and the House have wrestled, and are wrestling, with the vexed issue of how far the code applies to hon. Members’ private lives, which is the subject of the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne and others. In my submission to the review, which has already been quoted, I said that the distinction between private and public lives was
“important, even if it is not always clear”.
I noted that an extension to private lives might lead to an infringement of human rights, a point also made in the submission by the chair of Standards for England.
I further pointed out that any such extension
“could also be used to justify intrusive and prurient media interest in Members’ private lives, on the basis that if the House chooses to concern itself with Members’ personal lives—however sparingly—then there should be no limits to the media doing likewise”.
Sir Menzies Campbell
As my right hon. Friend will know, the code must be read as a whole. Has he had time to look at paragraph 18, which provides:
“The Commissioner may investigate a specific matter relating to a Member’s adherence to the rules of conduct under the Code”
and the following sentence, which states:
“Members shall cooperate, at all stages, with any such investigation by or under the authority of the House”?
If the investigation is into private life, that necessarily means that if a Member refused to answer a question on his or her private life, he or she could be regarded as breaching that part of the code.
Sir George Young
My right hon. and learned Friend is right. Once an inquiry has been started by the commissioner, Members are obliged to co-operate and if they do not, they will face consequences from the Committee on Standards. That paragraph would then kick in.
The commissioner has concluded that being an hon. Member is a way of life. As he put it, an hon. Member
“is never off duty. Once elected, a serving Member is likely always to be seen as a Member of Parliament, with the duties and obligations that go with that position, wherever they are and whatever they are doing.”
I personally paused at the assertion that I am never off duty, and I think my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne and other colleagues might have had the same reaction. I think that there are times when I am off duty. The commissioner’s conclusion is that an hon. Member’s conduct in both their private and wider public lives is excluded from the provisions of the code
“unless such conduct significantly damages the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole or of its Members generally”.
This is a very high hurdle for investigation, and that approach was endorsed by the Committee on Standards and Privileges.
The amendment, if the subject of a complaint related only to the conduct of a Member in his or her private and personal life, would have the effect of providing that it could not be investigated. I am confident that the Members who have proposed the amendment have no wish to argue that Members should be subject to special treatment that is not available to others. The issue at stake is simply whether there would ever be circumstances in which it would be appropriate for the commissioner to undertake an investigation into a matter that did not intersect at all with an hon. Member’s conduct in his or her public capacity. That is a matter for the House and each hon. Member to consider and it is not an issue on which it is appropriate for the Government to take a collective view, although I am personally sympathetic to the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne.
The House will also want to reflect on the offer made by the Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee to take the House’s concern and address it in the revised guide, which, as I understand it, would leave the code unamended and insert an additional step in the process, in that the Committee would have to agree to the commissioner conducting an inquiry in this particular domain. I am sure that the House will welcome those offers and will want to reflect on them.
Another potential matter of contention is the application of the code to constituency matters. In his memorandum, the commissioner makes it clear that the way an hon. Member handles constituency business should not be adjudicable by the commissioner, and I agree. He suggests that the House would only wish to consider an instance that was
“so serious and blatant as to cause significant damage to the reputation of the House”.
I agree that it is very hard indeed to envisage these criteria being met.
On the third issue, in my submission to the review I supported proposals for redrafting the code in line with recommendations by the Committee on Standards in Public Life
“so that the House has a clear basis to take action against any Member who has abused the IPSA scheme”.
The commissioner proposed to do that by means of a provision that stated that the use of public resources may not confer a political benefit. The Committee on Standards and Privileges has suggested a change, arising from its observation that it is unrealistic to expect that parliamentary activities legitimately funded from the political purse might never confer an indirect political benefit. The new code rightly makes it clear that Members should be clear that the use of public resources must always be in support of their parliamentary duties and should not confer any undue personal or financial benefit on themselves or anyone else or confer undue advantage on a political organisation. I agree that that formulation is in line with the original proposals of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which used the phrase “undue advantage”.
Finally, the commissioner considered and rejected a number of proposals that would involve separate rules for hon. Members who were former Ministers or who were Opposition Front Benchers. He did so on the basis of the principle that
“the Code should apply equally to all Members”.
That is a principle that I wholeheartedly support.
The second motion, as the right hon. Member for Rother Valley said, is more straightforward. It seeks the approval of the twenty-first report from the Committee on Standards and Privileges, which recommends extending the scope of registration to individual staff of all-party groups who hold passes and to transfer the onus of registration from the registered contact of the group to the staff member him or herself. As my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House stated in the debate on all-party groups on 7 February last year, all-party groups can play a valuable role provided they are transparent. That measure seems sensible and does not represent an abdication of responsibility by hon. Members who are officers of all-party groups. Instead, it reflects the proper situation whereby individuals who have the benefits of being a pass holder in this place should personally accept the responsibilities that flow from that.
I look forward to the rest of the debate and to the House coming to a decision on these vexed matters.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Mr Walker, do you intend to press your amendment to a Division?