Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Oh, the hon. Gentleman said “please”! Okay, but I will give way to the Chairman of the Standards Committee.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

The Standards Committee met this morning and has agreed a report on the implications of this Bill for Members of Parliament, and we are making strong recommendations that paragraph 2 of schedule 1 should be removed and that there should be a sub-paragraph in paragraph 6 stating that any payments we get from IPSA cannot be interpreted as money for lobbying. I hope the Leader of the House will take this into account and make sure the requisite amendments are made before the Bill leaves this House at the end of next week.

[Mr Lansley]

My colleagues will, of course, take what the Standards Committee has said very much into account, and I think that illustrates, contrary to what the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, why the Bill has not been badly drafted. This is not the first time this has happened. It happens with every piece of legislation in my experience. Sometimes we have to have belt, braces and a piece of string to make sure everybody is absolutely convinced that we are doing what we intend to do.

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[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Members will know that I chair the Standards Committee, and this morning we agreed a report on this Bill and how it might affect us in our role as Members of Parliament. It was published just half an hour ago at 4.30 pm and I assume it is now in the Vote Office if anyone wants to look at it, but I want to give a brief overview of what we found.

Shortly after the publication of the Bill, Members received an e-mail from the director of Justice in Financial Services, Joe Egerton. He was concerned about the effect the Bill would have on us. I was contacted by several Members from both sides of the House about this matter, and last week I gave evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on its investigation into the matter.

Members will know that there have been concerns about lobbying for many years. As early as 1695 the House resolved that:

“The Offer of any Money, or other Advantage, to any Member of Parliament, for the promoting of any Matter whatsoever, depending, or to be transacted, in Parliament, is a high Crime and Misdemeanour, and tends to the Subversion of the Constitution.”

Successive resolutions have restricted what Members are permitted to do. The current code of conduct states that no Member shall

“act as a paid advocate in any proceeding of the House”.

Indeed, the guide to the rules relating to the conduct of Members makes it clear that the prohibition on advocacy is not limited to proceedings in the House or approaches to Ministers, but extends to approaches to colleagues and to any servants of the Crown. Consultant lobbying as it is normally understood consists of the acceptance of money in direct return for lobbying activity. As the code of conduct is currently written, this would almost certainly be a breach of the advocacy rule.

We also note that the requirements for registration of Members’ financial interests are far more detailed than the Bill’s requirements for entries on the register of consultant lobbyists. Although Members are permitted to have outside interests, a Member who carried out “consultant lobbying” would be breaking the current rules of conduct of the House. While we recognise that that might change, we think it is important that problems do not arise.

As Chair of the Standards Committee, I wrote to the Leader of the House and he responded on 30 August, saying,

“I know that there has been some misunderstanding about whether the normal activities of Members of Parliament would be captured under the definition of consultant lobbying as set out in the Bill. I would therefore like to be quite clear that it is absolutely not the intention of the Bill to do so.”

Although we welcome that assurance, we still have some reservations about the Bill as drafted. People will know the exemptions it contains, one of which is to protect our use of privilege in this place. That is set out in schedule 1(1), which, in effect, protects the provisions intended to assert the continuing force of article 9 of the Bill of Rights. Although some question remains about whether or not that could change in the future, we have no problem with it in the context of this Bill.

The problem lies where schedule 1 deals with Members’ communications on behalf of their constituents, as the provisions are restrictive. We believe that the main mischief in the Bill’s current drafting is in paragraph 2 of schedule 1, which contains the other exception for Members in Parliament. It states:

“A Member of Parliament who makes communications within section 2(3) on behalf of a person or persons resident in his or her constituency does not, by reason of those communications, carry on the business of consultant lobbying.”

The paragraph goes on to state that

“‘resident’ has the meaning which it has for the purposes of section 4 of the Representation of the People Act 1983”.

Simply put, we believe that the Bill, as drafted, would stop us going beyond representing a constituent who has contacted us about a matter; it would severely restrict me, as a Member of Parliament, in communicating with Ministers on public health matters and on many other things. My Committee’s report recommends that we remove paragraph (2) of schedule 1 altogether and that we add a sub-paragraph to paragraph 6, stating that a reference to payment does not include a reference to the salary of a Member of Parliament.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

We are greatly concerned about this particular issue. As the House will know, there are five constituencies in Northern Ireland for which no Member takes his or her seat in this House. People living in those constituencies often want parliamentary representation and so come to other Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies in order to gain it. That matter needs to be given consideration.

[Mr Barron]

I am grateful for that intervention, and I entirely agree; my Committee thinks that we are in a dangerous area in respect of doing our job as Members of Parliament and being a voice for our constituents or a voice for wider issues in society. Simply put, if things were restricted in the way that the Bill now envisages, I would be getting my information from the Executive rather than from organisations that can come here to lobby me as a legislator and give me wider knowledge than perhaps the Executive would, on occasion, want me to have when we are legislating. I believe it is important that we address that.

The registrar of consultant lobbyists is given sweeping powers under this Bill. It is perfectly possible that the courts and the registrar will clarify that the definition does not extend so far, to us, but primary legislation should be unambiguous about such matters—this Bill is exactly the opposite. The letter from the Leader of the House contained an offer in relation to sorting out this problem, and I hope that this will be taken seriously. The Committee would like to see it done while the Bill is being considered by the House of Commons, if we agree, in the next week or so.

Summer Adjournment

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I hope I do not have to take my full eight minutes, but I sat in this House yesterday listening to Prime Minister’s Question Time, and my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) asked the Prime Minister why he had not replied to a letter he had sent to him in February, to which the Prime Minister replied:

“I will look urgently at this case, because I reply to hon. Members’ correspondence right across the House, and I always will.”—[Official Report, 17 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 1090.]

Last month, I brought up at Prime Minister’s Question Time the fact that I had written a letter to the Prime Minister on 8 May this year about public health and Lynton Crosby’s involvement, or non-involvement, in public health matters. I asked several questions, including:

“Have you ever discussed cigarette packaging policy with Lynton Crosby? Have you ever discussed minimum alcohol pricing with Lynton Crosby?”

The last question was:

“Were the Government’s legislative priorities discussed at the meeting which reportedly took place at Chequers on Thursday 21 February, involving you, George Osborne, Ed Llewellyn and Lynton Crosby?”

I have not yet, months later, had a reply from the Prime Minister to that letter.

As I said, I brought the matter up at Prime Minister’s Question Time on 19 June. I told the Prime Minister I had written to him on 8 May and had not yet received a reply, and briefly mentioned that the letter was about Lynton Crosby and alcohol and standard packaging of cigarettes. He did not reply, instead saying:

“I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that Lynton Crosby has never lobbied me on anything.”

If that is the case—if he believes that—why he cannot reply to my letter of 8 May is beyond me. The Prime Minister continued:

“The only opinions that I am interested in are how we destroy the credibility of the Labour party, on which he has considerable expertise, though I have to say that he is not doing as good a job as the Labour party.”—[Official Report, 19 June 2013; Vol. 564, c. 891.]

It is perfectly clear what agenda Mr Crosby is setting. Members may recall that in yesterday’s debate on managing risk in the NHS, I intervened on my right hon. Friend the shadow Health Secretary, saying:

“My right hon. Friend knows well…that in the past two months there has been a marked change in the coalition Government’s approach on the national health service. It started with the absurd argument that the problems in accident and emergency departments were the result of the 2004 GP contract. Is it not more likely that what is happening is that Mr Lynton Crosby is telling Government Members to squeeze the lead that Labour has had over the Conservative party for many decades on the NHS?”—[Official Report, 17 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 1177.]

That is exactly what is happening. I went on to mention that that is not only demoralising NHS staff and frightening NHS patients, but is doing enormous damage to the credibility of politicians up and down the land. I got an e-mail yesterday from a Conservative Member who was tabling an early-day motion. He said he thinks we should get party politics out of the NHS. I agree.

I am concerned about the non-reply to my letter for several reasons. The Prime Minister gave his view on this matter on 23 March 2012 in a No. 10 press release:

“The Prime Minister is leading Government action to tackle binge-drinking culture by supporting proposals a minimum unit price for alcohol.”

It says the Home Secretary is involved in that, and the Prime Minister is quoted as saying:

“So we’re going to attack it from every angle. More powers for pubs to stop serving alcohol to people who are already drunk. More powers for hospitals not just to tackle the drunks turning up in A&E—but also the problem clubs that send them there night after night. And a real effort to get to grips with the root cause of the problem. And that means coming down hard on cheap alcohol.”

We had a statement yesterday from the Home Office, again, which is most likely to view alcohol as a law and order issue. I wish that people would view alcohol as an issue of health and the damage it is doing to the young generation. Thirty years ago, people of my age—men in their 60s—died of alcohol-related diseases. Young men and women in their 20s are dying of cirrhosis of the liver now: not just one or two, but many of them. We must take a hold of this problem and the Prime Minister and the Government are not doing that.

During the alcohol strategy consultation statement yesterday, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) asked a question that relates directly to getting a grip on the price of alcohol. She asked whether the Minister was aware of the evidence from Sheffield, which is where the original review was carried out on alcohol pricing and consumption in areas such as my constituency, which is just outside Sheffield. The review stood the test many years ago and stands the test now, so to hear Ministers say that there is no evidence on alcohol pricing and consumption is complete nonsense. I fear that Lynton Crosby and the people he has worked for in the past have more on that.

The hon. Lady asked:

“Is the Minister aware of the evidence from Sheffield that was published this morning and shows that the impact of having a threshold at duty plus VAT would be a decrease in consumption of one 400th of 1%?”

That is what the Government announced yesterday on health and alcohol, notwithstanding how A and Es up and down the land are swamped with people who have overindulged in alcohol not just on Friday and Saturday nights but midweek, too. Never mind the disease that alcohol creates; it creates chaos on our streets and in the hospitals, too. The hon. Lady went on:

“In other words, it will be meaningless.”—[Official Report, 17 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 1122.]

She is absolutely right.

I said yesterday that at the weekend the Faculty of Public Health withdrew from the Government’s responsibility group on the use of alcohol, as have Alcohol Concern, Cancer Research UK, the UK Health Forum and many other organisations. The Government are backing down and taking notice of industry, and the areas that affect public health are being left. Everybody ought to know that the dangers to public health in this century, as opposed to past centuries, are caused by individual lifestyles. The Government are ducking taking action on individual lifestyles in favour of industry. I thought I ought to put that on the record and I hope that one day I will get a reply to my letter.

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[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to be the last speaker in this debate.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) on taking on the mantle of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) in trying to refer to the most constituents in the shortest time. I echo his concerns about dangerous dogs. We are doing a lot of work on that. Microchipping and other compulsory measures will help. People who have a legitimate right to go into a home, be they a postman, a midwife or a social worker, should not be bitten by a dog, especially a dog that is known to be dangerous. I want to pursue that matter. I have great sympathy for the postman who was bitten in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley, as I do for the thousands who are bitten every year.

I will raise one or two serious matters from my constituency. The first relates to the A35, which runs through my constituency, including through Axminster, and on to the Dorset border. Recently, there have been a couple of fatal accidents on the A35 at the Hunters Lodge junction at Raymond’s Hill. In the first collision, a 60-year-old man from Plymouth died and two other people were injured. The second crash claimed the life of 82-year-old Pamela Manning from Harrow and her two elderly companions in the car were taken to hospital.

I have met the Highways Agency, Axminster town council and Uplyme parish council to discuss how we can improve the Hunters Lodge junction. Something must be done. Although there have been many accidents at the junction, the Highways Agency said at the meeting that there had been no fatalities. Unfortunately, they have now occurred, so it is essential that something is done, and I shall be working with my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin) on this issue.

The A303/A30 was mentioned in the financial statement. It should be dualled all the way from Honiton, right the way through those interesting stones in Wiltshire called Stonehenge, to London, so that we have a second arterial route into the west country, and to Devon and Cornwall in particular. Tourism is one of our great industries. Those who run businesses in the west country find that when the M5 is blocked, the A303/A30 is almost impassable. I look forward to its being dualled.

I would like to talk about health funding for primary care. The current age profile in Honiton and Axminster—to take two towns I represent—is estimated to be reflected nationally by 2035. The population is getting older. The doctors in Axminster say that the number of people calling them for advice has gone up from 6,000 to 18,000 in a year, and there are similar figures for Honiton. Health funding will have to recognise this trend. People breathe in the good clean air in Devon and live for a long time. I am pleased with that, but people will need to be treated more as they get older and that has to be recognised.

As we bask in the sunshine, we must remember that a year ago we were all under water. There were floods in Axminster, Uplyme, Seaton, Cullompton and Tiverton—all over my constituency—and many were caused by the blocking of rivers and tributaries. At the time, the Environment Agency said that it had so much to do just to help people who were already flooded that they could not do a great deal to manage the waterways, by dredging them and clearing blockages. Now is the time to do it: there is never a better time than when it is dry. What we do not want to do is just bask in this great sunshine. I welcome this great sunshine and I am glad that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) congratulated the Government on providing it, even though I know he was only teasing.

[Mr Barron]

The sunshine is the only thing the Government have accepted responsibility for since 2010.

[Neil Parish]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, even if I am not sure that I entirely agree with him. I think will keep it fairly light-hearted at this stage of the proceedings.

We need to remember that flooding took place. We need proper dredging of our rivers. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is keen on it. Now is the time to do it.

I have mentioned Mrs Ethelston’s school in Uplyme previously. We need a new school in the village and we are trying to put together a funding package locally. Government support is needed to make that happen. It is a very successful school with very high grades and it will be a great asset to the whole area, not just Uplyme.

My constituency runs from Exmoor down through the Blackdown hills, so I have a number of farmers in my constituency. They are concerned about yet another reform to the common agricultural policy. It seems that yet more bureaucracy will be heaped on them, rather than less. There is no level playing field: payments between them and those on the continent, or even between them and farmers from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, are all different. If we are to make a single market in food and agricultural products work, we need to pay farmers at a similar level. My argument over the years has been that we should either pay at a similar level or not pay at all, because otherwise we will distort everything.

We have had to negotiate a tough package in Europe. As a Conservative and part of the governing party, I cannot expect to go cap in hand to the Treasury for huge handouts over and above what the CAP provides. Therefore, I would ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to look sympathetically at how we deliver environmental schemes and payments to farmers in a way that maintains the countryside—the beautiful grassland and hills in my constituency, which people come to visit from all over the place, including down from London and even the north of England.

People visit Devon, Cornwall and much of the west country because of their landscapes and the way they are managed. Who manages them? It is very much the farmers who manage them, and if we lose them, we will lose those landscapes. I look forward to a sympathetic reform and to trying to break the bureaucracy of the system. I rather fear that some of what comes from Europe will be somewhat bureaucratic, but let us hope we can make the best of it, because I am a great believer in good, traditional food that is well produced under high welfare standards, which is what our farmers deliver in this country.

Finally, may I wish you a very good recess, Mr Deputy Speaker? I am sure that, like my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley, you will be busy in your constituency, as will I and most Members of this House.

Committee on Standards (Lay Members)

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I am delighted to add my support to the motion and have no hesitation in commending the three names before the House—Sharon Darcy, Peter Jinman and Walter Rader.

The procedure to appoint lay members was modelled on that for the independent external members of the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. As the Procedure Committee recommended, I took part in the appointment process to ensure access to the experience of the Speaker’s Committee, although the final decision was a matter for the House of Commons Commission. We had a strong field and were able to put forward several names for the Commission to choose from, and as Members will see from the Commission’s report, the three candidates bring a range of valuable experience. I am confident in their sound judgment.

I welcome the fact that we are at last appointing lay members. Indeed, the previous Chair of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, now the Government Chief Whip, commended the idea to the Committee on Standards in Public Life. It is one of the manifestations of his incomparable good judgement that his recent return to the Back Benches must have been one of the shortest on record; the Front Bench simply could not do without him. It is a pleasure to implement a recommendation in the House with such a history of Committee support.

I am particularly pleased that we are appointing three lay members. As we all know, parliamentary business can be unpredictable and in the past the Committee on Standards and Privileges has had to meet at short notice. The Committee on Standards will be able to meet only if a lay member is present, and appointing three lay members from the outset will reduce the danger of Committee business being disrupted. I have been a lay member myself. As colleagues will know, it was a role I played on the General Medical Council for several years. It is all too easy for any expert group to look inward and to lose a sense of perspective, which is why many professional disciplinary bodies, not just the GMC, contain lay members.

Even when professional judgements are perfect, there is a case for an independent element to ensure that all angles are considered and, most importantly, to provide as much reassurance as possible that regulation is conducted in the public interest. It will never be possible to convince everyone, but if an independent element in regulation works for doctors and solicitors, it should work for us as well. I hope that the lay members will not operate as outsiders riding shotgun to ensure the Committee behaves. I would like them to be an integral part of the Committee, and every one of those whose name is before the House has had experience of this sort of collective working. With the help of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, the Committee on Standards and Privileges has done its utmost to act rigorously, fairly and impartially. I hope that the participation of lay members will make it easier for the new Committee on Standards to demonstrate that it operates in such a way.

As I have said in previous debates, I regret that the lay members will not have a vote at this stage, although there is at least a mechanism that allows them to place their views formally on the record if they feel it necessary to do so. Although I look forward to legislation allowing lay members voting rights, we must remember that the current Committee on Standards and Privileges does not normally decide matters on division. In my time on the Committee, I can recollect only one vote, but even then the Committee went on to agree a unanimous report. If the new Committee follows that pattern, which I hope it will, any difference between lay members and others will be minimal, if not non-existent. In agreeing the motion, the House will take a step that should improve public perception of our disciplinary processes. I am confident that it will do more than that and will produce a better, fairer system. I am happy to support the motion.

Standards and Privileges

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I will be very brief. The Committee’s report sets out the circumstances of the case clearly. The inquiry related to claims made between 2005 and 2008 under the old expenses system. I cannot be certain that this is the last of the expenses scandal, but I hope that it is.

On a personal note, I have known Denis MacShane since he was first selected to contest a by-election in Rotherham in 1994. I have worked with him as one of the three MPs in the borough since then and know he has always had the interests of his constituents, and the wider Rotherham borough, at heart. The events of the last three years will not totally overshadow my memory of the work that Denis has done in Rotherham.

The Committee, however, was united in its finding that this was the gravest case that has ever come before it. The absolute sums were not the issue; it was the manner in which they were claimed, the flagrant disregard for the rules of the House, and the failure to co-operate with the commissioner’s investigation that most concerned the Committee. We judged that to be a breach of the code of conduct. There may have been suggestions that hon. Members are above the criminal law. That is not true, and that needs to be addressed.

The commissioner’s investigations are into possible breaches of the code of conduct, not criminal matters. The procedures are fair, but the commissioner is not conducting a criminal investigation and neither is the Committee. As we said in the report:

“The decision as to whether conduct is criminal and as to whether proceedings should be brought is one for the police and the CPS.”

In 2008, the Committee, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the police agreed that criminal investigations should take precedence over the House’s disciplinary proceedings. For that reason, we agreed in 2010 that the case should be referred to the police, and the commissioner referred it. After a long investigation, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to proceed. They doubtless considered that decision very carefully. They now have our report and may consider it again. That is their decision, not ours.

If our report contains new material, the police can use it to guide their investigations. Receipts, invoices and claims are not privileged, and do not become so simply because they are reproduced in a parliamentary report. It is true that the correspondence between the commissioner and those he investigates could not be used in court proceedings without impeaching and questioning proceedings in Parliament. It is our view that that would be a breach of article 9 of the Bill of Rights. In reality, however, that correspondence is likely to be inadmissible anyway. There are strict legal safeguards about the gathering and use of evidence in criminal proceedings. The House’s disciplinary procedures are scrupulously fair, but they are disciplinary processes, not criminal investigations. It would be most unwise of the House to speculate on the criminality of an hon. Member’s conduct.

The Committee has given its judgment on breaches of the code, and the House is invited to agree. Whether or not conduct such as that described in our report is criminal, it is clear that we will not tolerate it. I welcome that, and I hope that the House agrees.

Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I also support the motion to appoint Kathryn Hudson as the next Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. As Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee, I was involved in the appointment process both at interview stage and in briefing the Commission. We were extremely fortunate in having two highly able and suitable candidates, of whom Kathryn Hudson was one. I believe her career gives her the investigative skills and, perhaps even more importantly, the sense of perspective required. I am therefore delighted to put my name to the motion approving her appointment.

I also want to pay tribute to the outgoing commissioner, John Lyon. When a similar motion was moved on 15 November 2007, the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) paid tribute to the then outgoing commissioner, Sir Philip Mawer, and it was noted that

“John Lyon will inherit a standards system that is in much finer fettle than that which awaited his predecessor in February 2002.”—[Official Report, 15 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 862.]

As we all know, that improvement was not enough to stop the expenses scandal, which will shape our memories of the previous Parliament. As John Lyon noted in the introduction to his most recent annual report, it has been a “tumultuous five years”.

Over that time, John produced about 60 complaints-related memoranda for the Committee and rectified about 50 cases. The House’s reputation may have taken a battering in the press, but the commissioner’s fairness and integrity meant he never became part of that story.

John also worked hard to improve the system, both in making recommendations for a new code and in smaller changes, such as revising and consolidating information on the procedure for investigations, to make it more useful. His judgment has been very sound. There was some concern that making more information available about complaints under investigation would lead to a media feeding frenzy; in fact, doing that has stopped damaging speculation when people were known to be under investigation.

Investigations into allegations of misconduct are only part of the commissioner’s role. The Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests is part of his office, and the commissioner and the registrar consider matters relating to journalists, Members’ secretaries and research assistants, and all-party groups. They have done a great deal to raise awareness of registration requirements and to keep the way in which the rules work under review.

Over the last five years, the commissioner has had to deal with many investigations, which have been thorough and impartial. While there has been criticism of the Committee and the House for their decisions in some of the cases, I am not aware of any case where the investigation has been plausibly criticised because the commissioner was biased or missed obvious lines of inquiry.

Colleagues have sometimes complained about the length of time particular investigations take, but the commissioner’s willingness to take as long as necessary to investigate a complaint is one of the strengths of the system. Complaints are properly investigated by a truly independent figure, whose conclusions command respect.

Some complaints may well be politically motivated. That is not a reason for dismissing them, however, if they meet the conditions required for investigation. If the commissioner considers there may be grounds for a complaint, it is far better for the Member complained of, and for Parliament as a whole, to have the matter properly investigated than to have to deal with allegations of a whitewash or claims that a complaint was dismissed for political reasons.

The commissioner’s most recent annual report suggests that a corner has been turned. He stated:

“Of the 12 complaints I resolved this year, almost 60% were about conduct in previous Parliaments. All of those concerning conduct in this Parliament related to parliamentary matters such as registration, declaration and the use of stationery, none of which suggested that those Members had exploited the House for any private or personal benefit.

Nevertheless, the reputation of the House remains at risk. Trust once lost will take time and a consistent and continued record of maintaining high standards of conduct before it can be restored. That is true of any national institution. It is particularly true of the House. As the expenses crisis showed, unless apparently minor breaches of the rules of conduct are challenged and remedied, they can all too easily become endemic and inflamed and so seriously damage the reputation of the House”.

When we come here, as elected Members, we want to concentrate on what we were elected to do: serve our constituents and work in the national interest. We do not stand for election so that we can fill in forms about registration or respond to the commissioner’s letters. I acknowledge that all that can appear an irritating distraction from more urgent duties or even a diversion of effort into unnecessary bureaucracy. However, the last Parliament should have taught us that we cannot afford to get this wrong, individually or collectively. The rules in the code of conduct are not arbitrary. We agree them as Members of this House, and we should uphold them and be seen to uphold them. For the system to be effective, we need a strong, fair commissioner, whose own integrity is beyond doubt. We have been fortunate to have that in the previous commissioners, and I look forward to the new commissioner continuing that tradition.

Privilege

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

If the House decides to refer this matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, we will ensure that all our processes are rigorously fair and impartial. It is likely that there will be widespread speculation before we are in a position to say more about the Committee’s plans, but we will not be rushing into making any hasty decisions and will consider our actions carefully, thoughtfully, and with professional advice from the appropriate sources.

At its meeting this morning, the Committee agreed that none of its members would discuss this matter outside the Committee, whether with colleagues or other third parties. I trust that Members and others will respect the Committee’s decision, and will not try to engage Committee members in discussions about this inquiry.

Code of Conduct

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I beg to move motion 5.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this we shall discuss the following: Amendment (a) to motion 5 and motion 6 on all-party groups.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you rightly say, there are two motions on the Order Paper in my name. The first is the more important: it invites the House to approve a revised code of conduct. The House of Commons has long had resolutions covering conduct, but the idea of a code of conduct is relatively recent. It was not until 1995 that the House endorsed the principle of such a code. Since then, the code has been revised, in 2002 and in 2005. This is only the fourth version of the code since the first version was approved in 1996.

In approving the code of conduct today, the House will be setting the framework for the rules that will, I hope, last for the remainder of this Parliament and into the next. It is important to be clear about what the code is for. It is not a rule book that sets out precise instructions about what is and is not permissible in each case. As the commissioner has set out in a memorandum attached to our report, it is a document that establishes

“broad high-level principles in relation to the main areas of a Member’s conduct”

and

“provides a high-level statement of the specific rules to which Members will be held to account”.

All those who responded to the commissioner’s consultation supported this approach. Relying on detailed rules designed to meet every eventuality creates the risk that people will be encouraged to game the system. We have only to look at the creativity of tax avoidance schemes to see that. The code has a broader function: it helps us to ensure that we behave in a way that is consistent with the seven principles of public life—the Nolan principles, which are part of the code and which underpin its provisions. Where appropriate, the code is supplemented by more detailed statements of some of the rules, such as the guide to the rules, and the rules on the use of House facilities, but Members have ultimate responsibility for ensuring that they abide by the principles of the code.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has the task of reviewing the code and making recommendations to the Committee. In 2002, the Committee on Standards in Public Life recommended that this should be done once in each Parliament. Following the expenses scandal, we judged it better to defer a review of the code in the last Parliament, in order to give Members of the new Parliament an opportunity to review it in the light of experience.

The commissioner’s memorandum to the Committee sets out all the changes to the code clearly, and explains the reasoning behind each of them. Our report focuses on all the provisions that we consider most significant. Broadly speaking, the commissioner’s proposals have the effect of making the code clearer and removing some repetitions and infelicities. The most significant proposed change is in paragraph 2 of the code. The current code

“does not seek to regulate what Members do in their purely private and personal lives”,

but it does extend to their wider public lives. Our proposal is that the code will no longer apply to Members’ wider public lives. As the commissioner points out, Members’ behaviour in their wider public life will be policed by other regulatory bodies, and there will be no need for the House to intervene.

There is an important proviso to the exclusion from the code of private and personal lives or wider public life. Those areas should be excluded unless

“such conduct significantly damages the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole or of its Members generally.”

That is not an entirely new provision. Paragraph 15 of the present code stipulates that Members should

“never undertake any action which would bring the House of Commons, or its Members generally, into disrepute.”

Personal life is currently excluded from the code, but a Member’s wider public life is not. The code will extend only to conduct which

“significantly damages the reputation and integrity of the Commons as a whole or of its Members generally”.

That is a very high hurdle indeed.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the amendment, which also stands in my name would prevent the commissioner from becoming involved in issues that were entirely private, while leaving scope for the investigation of breaches in which a personal matter crossed over into a political matter?

[Mr Barron]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. I was about to move on to talk about the amendment, and we can look at that question in a moment.

The amendment is also in the name of the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), and I am sure that he will explain it later in the debate. It raises significant questions. As I understand it, the amendment would mean that matters relating to a Member’s private and personal life which damaged the reputation and integrity of the House or of Members generally would remain within the scope of the code, but that the commissioner would be precluded from investigating complaints about such matters.

That raises a number of difficult questions. How would the boundaries of private and personal lives be defined? Would a matter remain private and personal if, for example, it had led to criminal behaviour or a failure to comply with civil obligations? Does something remain purely private and personal when it has been running all over the press and the internet for six or seven days? What is an investigation? Would the commissioner be precluded from giving a Member the chance to put his or her side of the story in private, rather than before the Committee as a whole? If the commissioner were unable to investigate extreme cases involving a Member’s personal and private life, would the Committee be expected to investigate them? If so, the Member’s safeguards would be reduced, as the Committee would investigate and pronounce sentence. I would feel uncomfortable about that. We are an adjudication Committee; we do not carry out investigations. The amendment seems to suggest that we might do so, however.

I understand colleagues’ fears that complaints could flood in about private lives, and that the commissioner might have to investigate matters that were properly no one’s business but that of the Member concerned. That is not what is intended. The House should have trust in the commissioner, in the Committee and in itself. Serious cases of a fall in standards should be decided on the Floor of the House, and not by the commissioner or by the Committee.

I am confident that the commissioner will not investigate purely private matters. If some future commissioner did so, I am confident that the Committee would take a robust approach, and that any serious sanction recommended by the Committee would come to the House, which would decide whether it was merited. I ask Members to have faith that all those involved, including the House, would use common sense if these measures were ever applied. I, for one, hope that they never will be.

The new provision is intended only for extreme circumstances, described by the commissioner as those in which a Member’s conduct in certain extremely limited circumstances is so serious and so blatant that it causes significant damage to the reputation of the House. In my judgment, it would be even more damaging to the reputation of the House and to the public’s confidence in the code of conduct—which is one of its key purposes—if the House were unable to take action to express its disapproval and uphold its standards in such circumstances.

[Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give an example of something “purely private and personal” that he believes would fall within the scope as he has just defined it?

[Mr Barron]

Yes. Let us say a Member had committed fraud, not against the public purse—

[Mr Brady]

rose—

[Mr Barron]

This is a hypothetical example, but let me carry on with it. Let us say that a Member committed fraud, not against the public purse but against a family member, and it was argued that this was a purely personal matter. Let us say that this Member was sentenced in a criminal court for six months; would that not be a matter for this House?

[Mr Brady]

I am grateful—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brady]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again. He has answered my question in one sense, in that the only example he has adduced is one that is patently not “purely private and personal”, but criminal. By definition, then, it would not fall within the scope of the amendment.

[Mr Barron]

I have to say that I am not too sure about that, as I do not know the intent behind the amendment, which does not make things as clear as the change in the code does. It could be argued on a point of law that the action taken was not a matter for Parliament because it was a personal action. It might be a criminal action—

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Barron]

Wait. Under the circumstances I described, when someone was sentenced to six months in jail, according to the law and according to the current rules of this House, that individual concerned—obviously, I hope this never happens—would remain a Member because we do not have the legal provisions to get rid of him at present. That is something that we need to consider.

[Mr Cash]

We are looking at paragraph 15 of the current code of conduct and paragraph 16 of the amended code of conduct. It is curious that the wording has been changed. Paragraph 15, which is where we are at the moment and seems to me to be sensible, says:

“Members shall at all times conduct themselves in a manner which will tend to maintain and strengthen the public’s trust”—

that is good—

“and confidence in the integrity of Parliament and never undertake any action which would bring the House of Commons, or its Members generally, into disrepute.”

The key is “into disrepute”, and it is well known; everyone understands it. Now, for some reason—I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would be good enough to explain it—paragraph 16 says simply:

“Members shall never undertake any action which would cause significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole, or of its Members generally”,

but leaves out the whole question of disrepute. What is the difference and why the change?

[Mr Barron]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. First, interventions should be brief. Secondly, I can see that many Members have the code of conduct with them, so the hon. Gentleman could have simply referred to the two paragraphs and the pertinent words in them.

[Mr Barron]

I will come back to that, if I may, but I want to carry on citing what the commissioner said in the memorandum, which the Committee accepted. He continued:

“But the conduct would need to be so serious and so blatant as to make it imperative that the House be given the opportunity to consider the damage done to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole or of its Members generally.”

The code does not seek to judge the behaviour as right or wrong—only the effect it has on the reputation and standing of the House. In my view, that is a hugely important thing to defend in our democracy, particularly after the events of the last four years.

Let me deal with other issues that we need to look at. The Government are currently consulting on proposals to allow the House to decide whether or not to permit the opening of a recall petition in cases where the House considers a Member’s conduct warrants it. Does that mean purely in respect of their public life, or does it mean in their private or personal life as well? I think that we stray into these issues with the amendment, which is why I think the House would be better to stand back from it and have a look at things in the round at a later stage. Without a provision such as the one I am proposing, the House risks being either ineffectual, because the code does not allow it to deal with behaviour that everyone agrees is reprehensible, or arbitrary because it takes action even though such behaviour is not covered by the code. That seems to be the intention. The alternative is that we end up relying on legal semantics to decide whether something is still “purely personal and private”, which is absolutely not how the code should operate.

As our report says, this is a provision for extreme circumstances. It does not invite the Committee or the House to judge a Member’s purely private and personal relationships and will not be used to do so. This is not to turn the House into a moral arbiter, but to allow it to protect the integrity of Parliament. It is a judgment on the effect of a Member’s conduct on that vital objective, not a judgment on the Member’s morals.

I cannot support the amendment, but I can suggest an alternative, more appropriate, way forward. The commissioner consults the Committee on certain matters. For example, if someone is referred to the police because the commissioner is concerned about a police investigation that might have implications for the criminal law, the commissioner comes to the Committee and provides evidence to show why the referral should take place. We are then asked either to agree it or reject it. Paragraph 104 of the guide to the rules also makes it clear that the Committee expects to be consulted before accepting an investigation of a complaint against a former Member, a complaint that goes back more than seven years, or one where a member has asked the commissioner to investigate allegations without being the subject of a specific complaint. With a self-referral, the commissioner has to come before the Committee and ask our permission for this to take place. The commissioner is currently consulting on revisions to the guide to the rules.

Let me say to the House and to those who tabled the amendment that I would be happy to ask the Committee to consider adding consideration of complaints relating to a Member’s private and personal life to the category of matters for which the commissioner should not accept investigation without first consulting the Committee.

[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman would want to point out that the commissioner has tried in the new version to separate what are aspirations for us all to behave well from things that we really should not do. If my hon. Friend were to look at page 42 of the review of the code, he would see that paragraph 15 is now different because of the separation in part 2 of certain aspirational requirements of the code from those things that we really must not do, which appear in the later parts of the code. It is largely a stylistic matter. I wondered whether the right hon. Gentleman might want to make that point.

[Mr Barron]

Well, I thank the hon. Gentleman for the speech. He is a hard-working member of the Committee, as well as a member of other Committees that look into standards in public life. He is well worth listening to.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

I apologise for not being in my place for the start of the debate; I was rather taken aback by the speed of previous proceedings. Let me try to put it this way. Building on what the right hon. Gentleman said a few moments ago, would he accept that the purpose of paragraph 16A is to create a presumption against investigation of private life unless the Committee determines in its judgment that such an investigation should take place?

[Mr Barron]

Yes, I understand that point, but I fear that the intention could be misinterpreted. I fully understand the issue that the right hon. and learned Gentleman raises, and I hope that the hon. Member for Broxbourne will tell us about the amendment in more detail. If it is withdrawn, it will be perfectly possible to return to the issue when the revised guide to the rules comes before us in the not-too-distant future. That revision to the guide will be more detailed than what appears in the current three-page code of conduct, which is out for consultation. If the Committee itself has not proposed that the commission should consult before opening an inquiry into personal and private matters, the House could insert such a provision, but I feel that the provision would be more helpful in the guidance than in a code of conduct that tends to contradict elements of it.

The other important clarification is the introduction of a new paragraph 15 making it clear that Members are personally responsible for the extent to which their use of expenses and allowances accords with the rules. Clearly there is nothing new in that. The current Members’ handbook warns Members that the facilities and services of the House are provided to assist Members in their parliamentary work and should be used appropriately.

Defining parliamentary purposes is, of course, not easy. Members’ roles are various, and we are, with very rare exceptions, elected as party candidates and uphold our parties in Parliament. That is very different from using public funding for party campaigning, or to support party organisations. Having considered the definition extremely carefully, the Committee recommends that the rules make it clear that public money should not be used to

“confer undue advantage on a political organisation”.

Most of the other changes consist of clarifications and re-ordering to make the code more coherent. One change that has attracted some comment is the proposal to remove paragraph 12 of the code, which refers to the need to be open and frank with Ministers, Members and officials. We suggest that it should be included in a new paragraph 13, which would also cover the declaration and registration of interests in the House. That would make it clear that Members should

“always be open and frank in drawing attention to any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its House or its Committees, and in any communications with Ministers, Members, public officials or public office holders.”

That is a clarification rather than a substantive change. Its roots lie in one of the more painful cases that the Committee has had to consider: the so-called Lobbygate, in which Members were drawn into discussing jobs that they might undertake after they had left the House. One of the cases arising from that involved the failure of my good friend Mr Richard Caborn to declare an interest in a meeting with the chairman of a health authority. At the time, it was argued that the rules governing declaration did not cover such cases, as the person concerned was not a Minister or a civil servant. Our judgment was that the spirit of the rules was clear: their purpose was to ensure that Members were transparent in their dealings with people who might be in a position to influence public policy or the spending of public money. However, we believed that the rules could be better expressed, and these changes achieve that.

One of the great sadnesses involved in dealing with standards cases is that we must deal with what comes before us. The Committee cannot simply refuse to look into a matter because it was a case of entrapment or a single transgression in a distinguished career, and there are a limited number of sanctions that it can recommend to the House. It is a mark of the respect and affection in which Richard Caborn is held that extremely senior people have asked the Committee to reconsider his case. We have considered the matter carefully on more than one occasion, but ultimately we decided that we had considered the rules carefully at the time of our original finding.

It may help, however, if I discuss some of the matters that were set out clearly in the original report and debate. The commissioner and the Committee agreed that the breach of the rules was inadvertent. As I said at the time, the penalty that we proposed was

“intended to be light, because we recognised that Mr Caborn did not intend to breach the rules or to bring the House or its Members generally into disrepute.”

An inadvertent slip should not obscure Mr Caborn’s long record of distinguished public service, and I hope that it does not do so.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

As one of those who made representations to my right hon. Friend on behalf of my former colleague the then Member of Parliament for Sheffield, Central, I welcome the tenor and nature of his speech. Does he agree that in future, and specifically in the guidance that is to be offered, there should be absolute transparency about the operation of the Committee and about basic rules of fairness? For instance, should the guidance not make clear what is a constituency matter and what is not? Richard Caborn has rightly argued that that was a problem in the interpretation of the previous rule.

[Mr Barron]

I do not want to go into any great detail, but the changes in the code are intended to do precisely that. They are intended to clarify areas so that they are not open to interpretation—or, some would argue, misinterpretation—in years to come.

The code does not need radical revision, but it does need to evolve to meet the changing expectations and circumstances of not just the House of Commons but the public outside, and, as I have said, it needs to be as clear as possible. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the commissioner for his thorough consideration of the code and the work that he has done to produce a clearer, more coherent document, which I commend to the House. I hope that those who tabled the amendment will reconsider their position, but we will be able to revisit it. The guidance will reassure the House that no commissioner will be able to forage into areas that would be unfair on Members of Parliament, and I hope that that will be acknowledged.

I also hope that the second motion will prove entirely uncontroversial. It introduces an additional register to record the interests of those who provide secretariats for all-party groups. It will deal with an anomaly between the registration requirements for staff of all-party groups and those for Members’ staff. It will make the arrangements easier to administer, and will reduce the risk that, owing purely to inadvertence, interests will not be registered. The proposal is the result of a paper from the Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests, and the Committee is grateful to her for it. The staff of all-party groups are currently required to register only income from employment, whereas secretaries and research assistants are also required to register gifts, benefits and hospitality. The motion proposes that the registration requirements should be the same for both groups.

The motion also proposes the transferring of the requirement to register to the staff member from the Member who is the registered contact for the all-party group, who may not be closely involved in the group’s administration. That would make it easier to ensure that the registration requirements are complied with, as the relevant forms can be issued with pass applications, and it will not be necessary for an officer of the group to take such action. As Members may know, the Speakers of the two Houses have set up a bicameral working group to consider all-party groups. I am a member of it, as are others who are in the Chamber this evening. There may be more changes to come, but there is no need for us to delay this change.

I trust that the House will approve my modest proposal to streamline and tighten the registration requirements for staff of all-party groups. Indeed, I hope that it will agree to both motions. I look forward to ending any misgivings relating to one of the reports at a later stage in our proceedings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barron]

With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker, before the amendment is pressed, I ask Members to remember my offer to look at the code of conduct and ensure that any commissioner—this current one or any in the future—would have to come to the House before considering any of the issues referred to in the amendment.

The current code states in paragraph 15:

“Members shall at all times conduct themselves in a manner which will tend to maintain and strengthen the public’s trust and confidence in the integrity of Parliament and never undertake any action which would bring the House of Commons, or its Members generally, into disrepute.”

There is no mention in that paragraph of personal and private lives, or, indeed, of public lives, although they are mentioned in other parts of the code. The provision has never been enacted in such a way and I fear that if the House goes down the route of accepting that people’s personal and private lives are not covered by the code of conduct, that will be a step back. It seems to me that the House would be better advised to consider the genuine proposals that anybody wanting to look into someone’s private and personal life would have to come to the Committee to do so. This House should have confidence in its Members who sit on Committees and in the fact that we have an independent commissioner whom we appoint, whose terms and conditions we set and who is independent of us. It should have confidence in a Select Committee on Standards and Privileges that operates in a non-party political way that was unanimous in saying we should accept the paper before us. We certainly are not unanimous in accepting the amendment. The House should have confidence in itself that if the commissioner or the Committee ever did something wholly wrong, the House could reject that.

Let me finish by saying to hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) on the Front Bench, who mentioned morals, that this is not about morals. I can tell the House, as the Chairman of the Committee, that if the commissioner came to me with a report about morals I would go around the Committee first before I would discuss the memorandum before us. It is not something we should do or that would be acceptable to Parliament or the general public. However, there are circumstances and occasions on which Members have gone overboard but have not been covered by the code. I genuinely think it would be wrong for us to agree to the amendment today. We can look at the guidance and these issues more widely if need be, but what is proposed would be a backward step. If the amendment is accepted the code will be weaker than the code I have in my hand. I genuinely think we should not do that.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Mr Walker, do you intend to press this to a vote?

Committee on Standards and Committee of Privileges

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I welcome this motion standing in the name of the Leader of the House; indeed, as Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee, I appended my name to it. As he said, the Committee has long called for lay members, and I personally have no doubt that having them will be of worth.

The House has accepted that principle. Indeed, in the debate back in December, I said that for a number of years I had been a lay member of the General Medical Council and that I felt that I had brought some experience to the table—albeit not experience of clinical decision making, but experience that doctors and others could consider in sitting in judgment on their fellow professionals and in assessing whether their decisions were the right ones.

In an ideal world, the Committee would have liked lay members to have had full voting rights and single, non-renewable terms to guard their independence, very much as the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has. He has five years and that is it; there is no reappointment. As a consequence, there is no way that he might be looking for any preferment for a second term, from this House or anybody within it. However, we are not in an ideal world. There are significant constitutional barriers and uncertainties about giving lay members full voting rights, and the Leader of the House has made the Government’s position on fixed terms clear. However, this motion still represents a significant step towards ensuring that the House’s disciplinary processes are fair and seen to be fair, and that we benefit from outside experience and expertise. I welcome the change to Standing Orders wholeheartedly.

As for the other matters that have been discussed—how the Committee will be split up, the timing, the membership of both Committees, and everything else—these are matters for the House. However, what we are doing is the right thing for the House to do and embodies the right principle for us to be establishing, so that people outside this place can have confidence that when we sit in judgment over our peers, people are not looking after the interests of fellow professionals—if that is indeed what we are—but passing right and proper judgment on someone who may have breached the rules.

Ministerial Statements

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who made a number of excellent points. However, it is unfortunate that, in effect, only one Opposition Back Bencher is present for the debate—two if we count the hon. Gentleman, who today is a quasi-Back Bencher.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

There are three of us, in fact.

[Mr Knight]

I see that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) is sitting in the far corner of the Chamber. On Thursday he told me he did not think he could be present for the debate. Perhaps that was why I did not notice him, but I am delighted that he is in his place for this important debate.

As has been said, the Procedure Committee was asked to undertake an inquiry by the House, which unanimously agreed to a motion inviting the Committee to develop a protocol for the release of information by Ministers. This was the first debate scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee last year.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) has pointed out, the current position is that the ministerial code sets out the “general principle” governing the release of information by Ministers. It states:

“When Parliament is in session”—

as I said in an intervention, that is widely taken to mean when Parliament is not in recess—

“the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance in Parliament.”

The Procedure Committee published its report earlier this year. It set out three principles underpinning its recommendations: that statements were valued by Back Benchers and that Ministers should be encouraged to make them; that important Government announcements should, indeed, be made to Parliament before they are made elsewhere; and that it is a grave discourtesy to Parliament for information to be released before a statement is made.

The Procedure Committee decided without division that it was neither practical nor desirable to produce a detailed protocol, and recommended that the House agree the following resolution:

“That this House expects Ministers to make all important announcements relating to government policy to Parliament before they are made elsewhere on all occasions when Parliament is sitting, and expects information which forms all or part of such announcements not to be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament.”

The Government responded, agreeing with the Committee that a detailed protocol would not be a good idea, but rejecting the solution proposed by the Committee and instead favouring the status quo.

On enforcement, the Procedure Committee recommended that complaints should be made to the Speaker in the first instance, and that the Speaker should have the power to dismiss trivial complaints and complaints made without basis. The Speaker could rule in cases where a minor breach had occurred. One might envisage a case where the Speaker receives a complaint and deems it to be a minor breach, and decides to allow an urgent question in the light of that complaint. The Procedure Committee did not envisage the Speaker rapping knuckles in all circumstances. There may well be cases where the granting of an urgent question is deemed sufficient. We also took the view that more serious cases should be referred by the Speaker to the Standards and Privileges Committee.

In their response, the Government did not even acknowledge our recommendations relating to the role of the Speaker, but they rejected our recommendation that complaints be referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee and maintained that the current range of sanctions was “adequate”. In our earlier debate, a number of Members, in particular the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is not in his place, discussed what sort of sanctions should be available, over and above what happens now. The Procedure Committee concluded that a recommendation from a Committee of the House that a Minister do come to this House and apologise was a sufficiently serious sanction, and that no new sanctions were required. The Government’s response to that was that our Committee’s recommendations were disproportionately severe, which I find a little odd.

I have looked at the Government’s response in detail, and in my view it is highly unsatisfactory. As I have said, the Government agree with the Procedure Committee that it would not be “practical or desirable” to have a “detailed protocol” trying to cover all eventualities, but they said that they did not support the Committee’s approach that the House should agree a motion in terms very similar to the current position as outlined in the ministerial code. The Government stated:

“It is not clear…what purpose would be served”

by such a motion, in which the current position is simply restated.

The Government had clearly failed to recognise the significance, although it was explained clearly in our report, which was that the House would be taking control of the protocol away from the Government. We are not envisaging setting up double jeopardy; we are saying that it should be the House that should decide—via the process of a complaint going to the Speaker and then, if necessary, to a Committee—whether the protocol had been breached, and not an obviously partial and forgiving Prime Minister, who is currently the arbiter. In saying that, I make no criticism of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, because the natural instinct of any Prime Minister will be to want to defend his or her Ministers—after all, the Prime Minister of the day appoints all Ministers in the first place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Is Mr Kevin Barron not standing?

[Mr Barron]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Then I call Robert Syms.

Standards and Privileges

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

I will pick up a couple of points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has just made, but I first wish to say something about the leaks that have occurred. There have been two types of leak in connection with the report. First, from Sunday 8 May onward, there has been a steady trickle of comment on the memorandum of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to the Standards and Privileges Committee, which was, as is customary, sent to the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) for his comments as well as to Committee members and to the Attorney-General, whom Standing Orders make our adviser. My first impression was that that comment could well have been based on informed speculation, but I no longer hold that view, because on Wednesday morning the Committee’s recommendation was leaked to the media. We immediately instigated a leak inquiry, and it is not appropriate to say more at this stage, as that inquiry is now ongoing.

I will pick up two issues raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead. One is the length of time taken. He will see from reading the report that it goes far wider than the allegations that were made against the right hon. Member for Yeovil in the media last May, and I suspect that that was one reason for the time taken. However, I say to my right hon. Friend that the timing is wholly in the hands of the commissioner, who reports to the Committee and publishes a memorandum when he is ready to do so. The evidence that he takes is entirely a matter for him.

The other issue that my right hon. Friend has mentioned concerns the comparison of one case with another. I will mention in my speech the circumstances of this particular case and why we have come to the recommendations before the House. I have not commented on the matter before, because I believe it is for the House to judge, not the media or commentators. The extent of reporting of what the commissioner and the Committee would say, and what it would mean for the right hon. Member for Yeovil, has been unfortunate. It meant that the press have perhaps not looked as carefully as they might have done at what we actually said.

The Committee has been attacked from one side for being too severe and from the other for being too soft. It would be complacent to say that we got it about right, but I wish to set out what the report says and why we said it. First, I urge those who say that the Committee has been too severe—many of them are in this House or in another place—to examine what the Committee actually found and the way in which that compares with other breaches.

From 2006 onwards, the arrangements of the right hon. Member for Yeovil were simply and explicitly against the rules, because he rented from a partner. He has said that he did not regard his landlord as his partner for the purposes of the Green Book. In 2007, he gave his landlord £99,000, which was a free gift but which was put towards the purchase of a London property that the two shared. He also contributed to building work. As the report states:

“Mr Laws had made significant financial contributions to the purchase and upgrading of the property. Such commitments are unusual between landlord and tenant, or even between friends. In consequence he should have had no doubt that he and his landlord were ‘partners’ for the purposes of the Green Book.”

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend will have seen the volume of appendices to the report, which includes evidence from Mr Laws such as a rental agreement, which states at item 5:

“The Lodger will be responsible for any damages or breakages caused by him/her”.

How could the claim of £2,000 for renovation work be covered by that? There is no other reference in any of the agreements to any contribution that the lodger should make to any major renovations of the property.

[Mr Barron]

That is true. The commissioner commented on that claim in his memorandum, and it was taken into account when we came to make the recommendations that are before the House.

The right hon. Member for Yeovil was in breach before the financial contributions that I have described, by wrongly claiming that his main home was in Somerset rather than in London. It is clear that he was not the only Member who designated the wrong property. When the pattern of nights spent at two properties were changing, it would be easy to assume that the main property was the one on which a mortgage was held. If that were the main issue in the period up to 2006, it might easily have been put right, but the problem was that the right hon. Gentleman’s conduct was designed to hide his real circumstances, which formed a pattern with his later breach of the rules.

There has been a great deal of press comment on this case, much of it before the Committee reported. It has been suggested that the right hon. Gentleman saved the public money, and that that makes his conduct all right. It is certainly possible that other, proper arrangements might have been more expensive. Clearly, there could have been substantial claims against the Somerset property, but they were not made, so we cannot know precisely what would have been approved. We must judge the arrangements that were actually in place, not arrangements that might have been made. As the report says:

“Mr Laws contends that the payments were lower than they would have been had he claimed on his Somerset home, or made other permissible arrangements. In our view, it is inappropriate to judge whether the claims on property A are appropriate by reference to potential payments on another property, which is not in fact claimed for.”

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Committee has dealt with the false representation allegations—the appropriateness of the penalty, which hon. Members are here to judge, does not matter—but my submission is that it has not dealt adequately with the quantum of claim, other than by saying that the rent was above the market rent and that there were

“contributions towards building repairs and maintenance”.

The Committee and the commissioner did not go into the fact that the rent was up to 50% more than the market rent, or that sums of up to £100 a month were being charged for each of council tax, utilities, parking the car in the driveway, maintenance repairs and the purchase of capital equipment. Why has the Committee not dealt with those sums on aggregate? That is a huge amount of money for a lodger to pay to his landlord.

[Mr Barron]

My hon. Friend may wish to comment on that further, but I wish to make my comments on behalf of the Committee.

What is clear is that the rents charged to the public purse were excessive, and that charges were made for repairs that would not have been included in any normal rental arrangement. It is impossible to tell exactly how much more was charged than should have been, but that is because of the right hon. Gentleman’s desire for secrecy.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Barron]

No—I shall just carry on for a few minutes, if my hon. Friend does not mind.

The commissioner’s report suggests that the public purse was overcharged by between £80 and £270 per month, even in comparison with assured shorthold tenancies. Property advisers considered that the rent in the right hon. Gentleman’s lodging agreement was between £209 and £370 a month higher than the market price.

The right hon. Gentleman and his supporters say that he acted to preserve his privacy. Extensive press briefings suggested that the breach would be somehow less blameworthy if that were the case, but the commissioner expressed his sympathy for the right hon. Gentleman, and the Committee recognised his motivation. However, there were other ways to preserve privacy. He could have refrained from claiming. Alternatively, he could have designated his main home properly, which would have meant that there would be no need to conceal receipts that might have identified his landlord.

The right hon. Gentleman instead took the decision to preserve his privacy by concocting a rent agreement and, wherever possible, claiming below the receipts threshold. He told the commissioner:

“After the receipts threshold changed I reduced my claims below the threshold.”

Ultimately, as the report says, this case is about the fundamental principles of the code of conduct, which says, and has always said:

“Members shall base their conduct on a consideration of the public interest, avoid conflict between personal interest and the public interest and resolve any conflict between the two, at once…in favour of the public interest.”

As the Committee said:

“We consider the rental agreements submitted between 2003 and 2008 were misleading and designed to conceal the nature of the relationship. They prevented any examination of the arrangements that in fact pertained over the entire period.”

That is why this case is worse than many others in which the commissioner has found there has been a breach of the rules of the additional costs allowance. In many of those cases, the Members concerned had consulted the department of finance and administration, and in some cases both the department and independent valuers, so there was no intention to deceive. In one case, the Member’s circumstances changed, so that arrangements that were expected to be temporary lasted longer than expected.

In contrast, the case before us involved a deliberate attempt to conceal the Member’s real living arrangements that continued for many years. It is clear that he recognised the potential conflict between the public interest and his private interest. By omitting to seek advice, however, he made himself the sole judge of whether that conflict was properly resolved. It was inappropriate for him to be judge and jury in his own case. As the commissioner commented, it can never be acceptable to submit misleading documents to those charged with overseeing public finances. As this case shows, the right hon. Member’s desire for secrecy led him to act in a way that was not compatible with the standards expected of an MP. Whatever the motive, I do not think that is acceptable.

Now I will address the concerns of those who think that we have been too lenient. Since the Committee reported, my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) has asked the police to investigate. There is a protocol between the police, the commissioner and the Committee providing for liaison between the commissioner and the police, if either of them has concerns. The police will not comment on individual investigations, and the commissioner is also understandably reluctant to comment on such matters, even to the Committee. However, the fact that the commissioner has reported to us suggests the Member’s behaviour is unlikely to have been criminal.

I have already explained why we felt this case was more serious than others, but there were mitigating factors. As we stated in the report:

“Not only has Mr Laws already resigned from the Cabinet, his behaviour since May 2010 has been exemplary. He quickly referred himself to the Commissioner, has already repaid allowances from July 2006 in full, and has cooperated fully with the Commissioner’s investigation. This behaviour has influenced our recommendation.”

[Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

The Committee said that the right hon. Member’s behaviour had been exemplary since the matter became public knowledge, and the commissioner himself, in paragraph 324 of his report, stated that it was to his

“considerable and personal credit that, when his living arrangements came to public attention”

he referred himself. Did the Committee calculate what he might have done had it not come to public attention?

[Mr Barron]

No, it did not.

The repayment was one of the mitigating circumstances. The voluntary payments went further than the circumstances at the time required. The outstanding amount related to rent that might or might not have been over-claimed and not to expenses claims that were wholly wrongly based, as in other cases that sadly have come before the House. As in other cases where Members have over-claimed, we have clawed back the overpayment. Given the uncertainty over what a true comparator should be, we calculated the maximum overpayment, and it was only because it was within the amount that had been paid back, over and above housing claims, that we made no further recommendation.

It has been suggested that recommending that the suspension should begin after the recess is part of a plot to reduce the right hon. Member’s fine. It was not put in, as one of the Sunday papers suggested, by political partisans on the Committee. The Committee considered carefully and decided that a suspension of seven days was appropriate. It would have been arbitrary and unfair to have extended the suspension simply because a recess fell during the period. In 2007, the Committee recommended that George Galloway’s suspension should start after the summer recess for precisely the same reasons. In that case, he got himself named in the House and suspended in the last week of sitting, so he lost his salary for the entire summer recess plus the 18 days that the Committee recommended. In this case, we felt that it would have been wrong to have started the suspension today—if that is what the House agrees—because we knew that we are entering a short recess. It would have been unfair and resulted in a longer suspension than the one recommended in our report. If the motion is agreed to, approximately £1,500 of salary will be withheld as a result of the right hon. Member’s suspension. I recommend the report to the House.