Registration of Members’ Financial Interests
Kevin Barron Excerpts(15 years ago)
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Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That—
(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Tenth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, on Registration of income from employment (HC 749); and
(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 30 April 2009 relating to the Registration of Members’ Financial Interests be amended, by leaving out paragraph (2) and inserting:—
“(2) That such a payment shall be registered
(a) where its value exceeds one tenth of 1 per cent. of the current
Parliamentary salary; or
(b) where the total value of payments from the same person, organisation or company in a calendar year exceeds 1 per cent. of the current Parliamentary salary.”
Hon. Members will recall that the Leader of the House is one of my predecessors as Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee. I know that he will be as pleased as I am that time has been found to take forward two sets of proposals in which he played an important part in a former life, particularly as one of them was agreed in the 2008-09 Session.
The more recent of the two reports seeks to make a simple but welcome change to the rule requiring Members to register each payment they receive for work carried out outside the House. As we note in the report, it might not have been the intention of the House when it agreed the original resolution in April 2009 to require Members to register bottles of wine or bunches of flowers, but that has been the effect. The problem is that when a Member receives a bottle of wine, a bunch of flowers or maybe even a ballpoint pen as a thank you for giving a speech or hosting an event, it might be intended as a gift, but it has the characteristics of a payment. A gift is given in its own right, without the expectation of anything in return. Where something is given in return for a service rendered, however, it is a payment, and therein lies the difficulty. As we state in our report, the Committee considered whether it might be possible to draw a line between the circumstances in which the bottle of wine or bunch of flowers is clearly a gift, and those in which it is clearly a payment. We concluded that, wherever such a line is drawn, the distinction is unlikely to be sufficiently clear and so the risk that Members would unintentionally fall foul of the rule would remain.
The Committee therefore favours a threshold, but to preserve confidence in the register we propose that it should be set at quite a low level. The level we propose is 0.1% of a Member’s salary for individual payments, which is £66, and 1% of a Member’s salary for the cumulative total of payments from the same source in the same year, which is £660, which we think is proportionate. By linking it to Members’ pay, the House will ensure that we do not have to keep resetting it.
I want to emphasise that we do not take issue with the intention behind the resolution of April 2009, which was that the public should be able to know how much MPs are paid for other employment and who pays them. We simply want to make the rules more workable and to catch only the sorts of payments that are relevant to the central purpose of the register, which is to show whether a Member has received a material benefit that might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her actions, speeches or votes.
There are, of course, other recommendations that we could have made, two of which are particularly worth mentioning. The first is the requirement to register the hours worked. I know that that requirement has not been universally popular in the House, but any proposal to amend it would require proper consideration. I will of course listen to any comments made in today’s debate and discuss them with my colleagues in the Committee. The second requirement, which is mentioned in the report, relates to the threshold that applies for gifts. The threshold is currently 1% of the salary, or £660, and was set in 2001. I think that the Committee needs to consider whether that remains the right level and I intend to invite it to do so later in the Session.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
I should declare an interest, as I speak quite a lot for colleagues, although so far I have never been given anything—I am not sure what to make of that. The right hon. Gentleman is not only Chair of the Committee, but a long-standing member of it, so he has considerable experience of these matters. On a serious point, does he not agree that if we all lose sight of common sense when it comes to declaring interests, we really will run out of road. We really must return to some form of understanding that, although codification of these matters is now deemed necessary, because of events that we all deeply regret, it does nothing for the standards of this House or for what it might think of itself if we have to codify the value of a gift given to a Member who makes a speech on behalf of a colleague.
Mr Speaker
Order. Just before the right hon. Gentleman continues, I note that he has referred to matters that are in motion 3. I make no complaint about that, but it leads me to think that, for the purposes of his speech, he is conflating the two separate motions. As I say, I make no complaint about that. No request was made that the motions be taken together, but if it is for the convenience of the House, the Chair is very happy that they be taken together. [Hon. Members: “Aye.”] I get the impression that that is the position. I am grateful. So we shall also consider the following:
That—
(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Eighth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges of Session 2008-09, on All-Party Groups (HC 920); and
(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 17 December 1985, as amended on 10 March 1989 and 29 July 1998, be further amended by leaving out paragraph 3 and inserting:—
“3. Groups whose membership:
• is open to all Members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, and
• includes at least 20 Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords), comprising: at least 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and at least 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of whom at least six must be from the main opposition party), and
• includes at least one officer who is a Member of the House of Commons be required to register the following information on the Register of All-Party Groups:
(a) The full title of the group. If persons other than Members of the Commons or Lords are allowed full membership (i.e. voting rights) the term ‘Associate Parliamentary Group’ must be included in the group’s title. If such persons are not allowed full membership the term ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group’ must be included instead. The rest of the group’s title should simply reflect the group’s subject so that the latter is obvious from its title alone.
(b) A brief summary of the group’s main purpose.
(c) The names of the group’s officers. At least one officer must be an MP; each of the other officers must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords.
(d) The names of exactly 20 qualifying Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or Lords), comprising: 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of which at least six must be from the main opposition party).
(e) The contact details of the group’s registered contact, who must be both an officer of the group and a Member of the House of Commons, and is the person ultimately responsible for the group’s compliance with the rules of the House.
(f) Any relevant gainful occupation of staff to the group who hold a parliamentary pass (relevant gainful occupation means any occupation that is advantaged by the privileged access afforded by the pass).
(g) The source and extent of any financial benefit (e.g. donations) and the source and nature of any non-financial material benefit (e.g. provision of goods or services) received by the group from a single source outside Parliament, if the value of the benefit equals or exceeds the financial threshold for registration (currently £1,500) in a calendar year. Once the group has made that initial registration, any further donation received from the same source in the same calendar year should be registered if its value exceeds £500.
(h) The website address of any organisation registered as the group’s secretariat.
(i) If a consultancy is registered as the group’s secretariat, the names and website of the consultancy plus the name of any client of theirs who is specifically paying the consultancy to act as the secretariat must also be registered. The consultancy must either publish on its website its full client list or agree to provide such a list on request, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.
(ii) If a charity or not-for-profit organisation is registered as the group’s secretariat, the former’s name and website must also be registered. The charity or not-for-profit organisation must agree to make available on request a list citing any commercial company which has donated either as a single sum or cumulatively more than £5,000 in the course of the 12 months prior to the month in which the request is made, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.
(i) The address of the group’s website, if it has its own website.
(j) The date of the group’s inaugural election of officers and of any Annual General Meeting held thereafter.
(k) Affiliation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, if the group is affiliated to either or both.”
I call Mr Kevin Barron, dealing with the two motions.
Mr Barron
I now turn to the report on all-party groups, published in July 2009. The proposals set out in the report are a package, most of them originally recommended by the previous Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir Philip Mawer, to whom I pay tribute. In summary, the proposed changes will require each group to register the website address of any organisation acting as its secretariat, where the secretarial assistance is more than £1,500 a year; in the case of a charity providing such support, require the charity to make available on request a list of commercial donors who have donated more than £5,000 to it in the previous 12 months; in the case of a consultancy providing such support, require the consultancy to publish on its website its full client list or provide such a list on request; require groups to register their website address; require groups to include on their website details of their sponsors and providers of secretarial services; and require each group to nominate an MP, who must also be an officer of the group, to act as the main point of contact for the group and also as the person who is ultimately responsible for ensuring its compliance with the rules.
In my view, those are sensible tidying-up changes that will increase public confidence in the Register of All-party Groups. The Committee’s report also proposes tightening the rules for the registration of all-party groups by aligning them with those for inclusion on the separate approved list maintained by the Commissioner’s office. This means that groups will no longer qualify for inclusion on the register unless they comply with the more extensive requirements of the approved list, such as the need to provide the names of 20 qualifying Members.
Taken as a whole, the changes should improve the scheme’s operations, providing clearer rules for those running the groups and those compiling the register, and greater transparency and ease of use for those who wish to consult the register.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I am just interested in knowing the right hon. Gentleman’s general approach. Does he not realise that we had the least corrupt system of any Parliament, perhaps in the world? The more rules and regulations we bring in, the more the registry office will be snowed under. The absurd rule that it has to register every payment is, frankly, ridiculous; it cannot cope at present. The more rules we have, the more people will break them and the more corruption will be driven underground. We should have a general approach, because the public want to know broadly what we earn when that might affect our behaviour—in other words, a fairly large sum. That is where we should be—with as deregulatory an approach as possible.
Mr Barron
As I said earlier, I shall invite the Committee to look into those matters to see whether any changes ought to be made.
I just spoke about the Committee report of July 2009 on making all-party groups more transparent, so that we know exactly who runs those organisations and what moneys go into them. That seems to be an obvious thing for us to do. The report has been waiting for our attention since July 2009, and I hope that the House will commend both reports, so that they can go ahead and make us better at what we do. We might want to look at the issues that were raised in the two interventions, and if we do, we will ask the House and individual Members for their view. On that basis, I commend the reports to the House.
Mr Kevin Barron
The vast majority of hon. Members who have spoken agree that these motions should go through tonight and that we should alter the arrangements.
The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) raised the issue of the limit of 0.1% of a Member’s salary. We have tried to find a seer in public life to tell us what the approximate worth of a gift should be. Some local authorities have a level as low as £25, and some have no levels at all. It seems to us that £66—some people interpret the figure as £65—is about right. We will reconsider the matter, if we feel that it is not working in future.
On all-party groups, it would clearly be a matter for the House to consider the provision, if it is a burden on some all-party groups. The aim is to find out who is behind the secretariats of all-party groups and not necessarily their motivations, which is a point that has been raised tonight. We need the situation to be transparent if a commercial organisation is effectively funding all-party groups. I am not saying that that would necessarily be wrong—I am not sure whether the House would say that that is necessarily wrong—but it is right that we know exactly who the secretariat are and how they operate.
The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) discussed duplication and overlap. I once considered setting up an all-party group on all-party groups to see how many members we could get to join. I chair all-party groups, which are an effective aid to legislation. This House should practise a wider democracy, and people with knowledge about individual issues come and talk to us on a regular basis—there is nothing wrong with that in my view. However, the situation needs to be transparent, so it is clear what has motivated them to do that and what is motivating us to make arguments on the Floor of the House.
The hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) raised the issue of pro bono advice to an all-party group rather than secretarial support. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) said from the Front Bench, we need to consider that matter, but it should not take us away from making improvements tonight.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said that any reasonable person knows the difference between a gift and remuneration, but, as Members of Parliament, we do not always deal with reasonable people. I have had 27 years in this place and on the odd occasion I have dealt with people who are not reasonable. [Interruption.] I was talking not only about people outside here, but some in here too. The Committee has said:
“A Member who chooses to treat as a gift the bottle of wine he or she receives after making a speech exposes him- or herself to an allegation that he or she has failed to register a payment received for a service provided.”
That is the reality of the situation. It might be that people have seen someone receive a bouquet of flowers, a declaration has not been made and nobody has made a complaint, but an unreasonable person might think that that is open to investigation and might write in, and that would start an investigation. We are trying to stop that happening and that is what we are going to do.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I am aware that I slightly bounced the right hon. Gentleman with my question about paragraph 13(b). If he is not able to say tonight whether the reference to
“a direct interest in the work of the APG”
was taken out deliberately, could he ask someone to let me know whether it was deliberate or whether it was just one of those things?
Mr Barron
I will make sure that the hon. Gentleman gets that information.
The Committee also said:
“The trivial nature of some of these payments and the disproportionate effort involved in recording and then registering them has called into question the utility of the rule. The February 2010 edition of the Register contained over 100 more pages than the June 2008 edition.”
The figures were 264 pages as opposed to 157. If what we have heard is correct, it is clear that the many hon. Members who have not registered bouquets of flowers, pots of honey and so on could eventually find that they are outwith the register. Given those circumstances, we need to address this area.
Chris Bryant
The main change was that previously we had to register remuneration in our capacity as a Member of Parliament and we did not have to register things all the way down. We have introduced much greater transparency, which has meant that we now know about earnings of hon. Members that have nothing to do with their membership of the House.
Mr Barron
I accept that, although I believe that my hon. Friend said that he saw no real difference between gifts and remuneration. It seems to me that if I make a speech to a company and am given a £500 gift, it is more likely that that is remuneration, it is declarable and should be declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As I said in my opening speech, this is a grey area and we are trying to make things as clear as we can. Both these motions will help the House and I hope that the House will support them.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That—
(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Tenth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, on Registration of income from employment (HC 749);
and
(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 30 April 2009 relating to the Registration of Members’ Financial Interests be amended, by leaving out paragraph (2) and inserting:—
“(2) That such a payment shall be registered
(a) where its value exceeds one tenth of 1 per cent. of the current Parliamentary salary; or
(b) where the total value of payments from the same person, organisation or company in a calendar year exceeds 1 per cent. of the current Parliamentary salary.”
All-party groups
Resolved,
That—
(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Eighth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges of Session 2008-09, on All-Party Groups (HC 920); and
(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 17 December 1985, as amended on 10 March 1989 and 29 July 1998, be further amended by leaving out paragraph 3 and inserting:—
“3. Groups whose membership:
• is open to all Members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, and
• includes at least 20 Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords), comprising: at least 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and at least 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of whom at least six must be from the main opposition party), and
• includes at least one officer who is a Member of the House of Commons be required to register the following information on the Register of All-Party Groups:
(a) The full title of the group. If persons other than Members of the Commons or Lords are allowed full membership (i.e. voting rights) the term ‘Associate Parliamentary Group’ must be included in the group’s title. If such persons are not allowed full membership the term ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group’ must be included instead. The rest of the group’s title should simply reflect the group’s subject so that the latter is obvious from its title alone.
(b) A brief summary of the group’s main purpose.
(c) The names of the group’s officers. At least one officer must be an MP; each of the other officers must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords.
(d) The names of exactly 20 qualifying Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or Lords), comprising: 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of which at least six must be from the main opposition party).
(e) The contact details of the group’s registered contact, who must be both an officer of the group and a Member of the House of Commons, and is the person ultimately responsible for the group’s compliance with the rules of the House.
(f) Any relevant gainful occupation of staff to the group who hold a parliamentary pass (relevant gainful occupation means any occupation that is advantaged by the privileged access afforded by the pass).
(g) The source and extent of any financial benefit (e.g. donations) and the source and nature of any non-financial material benefit (e.g. provision of goods or services) received by the group from a single source outside Parliament, if the value of the benefit equals or exceeds the financial threshold for registration (currently £1,500) in a calendar year. Once the group has made that initial registration, any further donation received from the same source in the same calendar year should be registered if its value exceeds £500.
(h) The website address of any organisation registered as the group’s secretariat.
(i) If a consultancy is registered as the group’s secretariat, the names and website of the consultancy plus the name of any client of theirs who is specifically paying the consultancy to act as the secretariat must also be registered. The consultancy must either publish on its website its full client list or agree to provide such a list on request, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.
(ii) If a charity or not-for-profit organisation is registered as the group’s secretariat, the former’s name and website must also be registered. The charity or not-for-profit organisation must agree to make available on request a list citing any commercial company which has donated either as a single sum or cumulatively more than £5,000 in the course of the 12 months prior to the month in which the request is made, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.
(i) The address of the group’s website, if it has its own website.
(j) The date of the group’s inaugural election of officers and of any Annual General Meeting held thereafter.
(k) Affiliation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, if the group is affiliated to either or both.”—(Mr Barron.)
Standards and Privileges
Kevin Barron Excerpts(15 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
Before I turn to the three former Members who are the subject of the motion, I wish to make a few remarks about the behaviour of the people who duped them. They would no doubt argue that they have served the public interest, but they were also taking advantage of the need of retiring MPs in the run-up to a general election to provide for their future employment. They dangled the bait in front of our former colleagues and unfortunately some of them took it. If that was not entrapment, it was something close to it, and although I do not seek to excuse the conduct of those three former Members, I think the whole House will feel some sympathy for them because of the way they were deceived.
Three former Members—Sir John Butterfill, Patricia Hewitt and Adam Ingram—were cleared by the commissioner and the Committee that I chair of any breach of the rules. Whatever we may feel about the poor judgment they showed in agreeing to take part in the bogus interviews, and however ill-judged some of the remarks made in the interviews may have been, they did not break the rules and the Committee has therefore made no recommendations about them.
The remaining three former Members did break the rules, and the Committee has recommended sanctions accordingly. I will deal with each of them in turn, because although they were all part of the same deception practised by the media, their cases are different in important respects.
Stephen Byers has made a full and I would say gracious apology. He recognises that he made claims to the bogus interviewer that were untrue, and it is evident that he deeply regrets the damage he has caused not only to his reputation but to the reputation of the House. I do not dispute the genuineness of his apology, but unfortunately the seriousness of his offence means that saying sorry is not enough. That is why the Committee has recommended that Mr Byers’s entitlement to a parliamentary pass should be suspended for two years.
The Committee also found that Geoff Hoon committed a particularly serious breach of the code which, like that of Mr Byers, brought the House and its Members generally into disrepute. As those who have read the Committee’s report and the evidence will know, Mr Hoon has not accepted this conclusion.
He argued that the code of conduct should not apply because he was discussing his private life and what he might do after he had left the House. The Committee did not accept that argument. Mr Hoon was a Member of Parliament when he attended the bogus interview, and he talked in the interview about information that he had been given while he was a Member of Parliament, so the code applied.
Secondly, Mr Hoon suggested that the meaning of what he had said to the bogus interviewer had been misinterpreted. It seemed to come down to whether he had said “this” or “it”, or perhaps neither. Some of us refreshed our memory of what he said by watching a recording of the “Dispatches” programme, and he clearly said “this”. Ultimately, however, it is not so much about the exact words that he used as about the impression that he was giving. The Committee concluded that Mr Hoon was giving the clear impression that he could brief paying clients about defence policy on the basis of his inside knowledge. That is, as we said in our report, a particularly serious breach of the code, because it brings the House and its Members into disrepute. Unlike Mr Byers, Mr Hoon has neither accepted that he breached the code nor apologised. The Committee has therefore recommended that Mr Hoon’s entitlement to a parliamentary pass should be suspended for five years. Hopefully, the apology will ensue.
The Committee found that in Richard Caborn’s case there were several minor breaches of the rules in relation to his failure to declare an interest when arranging or taking part in functions in the House. They were most likely due to carelessness on Mr Caborn’s part; there is no evidence that he deliberately set out to break the rules. Mr Caborn accepts that that was the case, and he has apologised unreservedly for those breaches.
The Committee found that Mr Caborn committed a further breach when he failed to declare a financial interest in the course of a meeting with a senior NHS official at which a proposal was raised which might have benefited the members of an organisation for which he was a paid consultant. In our judgment and that of the commissioner, that breach was also due to carelessness. There is no evidence of intent on Mr Caborn’s part. The commissioner therefore described it in his memorandum to us as “less serious” than the breaches committed by Mr Byers and Mr Hoon, but that does not mean that it was not a serious breach. It was a breach both of the rules on declaration of interests and of paragraph 12 of the code of conduct, which covers all members.
The Committee took the view that, because that was a less serious breach than those committed by the other former Members, a less severe sanction was appropriate. We could have recommended just an apology, but Mr Caborn had written to us stating that he did not accept that he should have declared his interest and did not accept that he had breached the rules. As we pointed out in our report, we could have invited the House to summon Mr Caborn to the Bar to apologise in person, but if he did not accept that he had breached the rules, it was not clear what that would achieve. We therefore agreed that Mr Caborn should also lose his privileged rights of access, and, because his was a less serious case than the others, we set the tariff at six months.
Mr Caborn wrote to me on 12 December seeking a meeting with the Committee. I consulted my colleagues on the Committee, who agreed to offer him an opportunity to give oral evidence at its meeting on 14 December. We had, of course, invited Mr Caborn and the others to give oral evidence before we produced our report, but he had declined that initial invitation. We would not normally agree to a request to give evidence after the publication of a report, but in this case we felt that it was right to grant Mr Caborn’s request to have his say, because, as a former Member, he was unable to speak in today’s debate. The transcript of his evidence, and his letter to me of 12 December, are in the Vote Office, and I hope that Members have had an opportunity to read them.
I do not propose to go through Mr Caborn’s evidence in detail, but this is the nub of it. First, we are finding against him on the basis of a rule that we ourselves say is insufficiently clear and needs reviewing. Secondly, he is being treated in the same way as those who have committed particularly serious breaches of the code of conduct.
The Committee says that the rules on lobbying need to be reviewed. The 1974 resolution refers to
“transactions or communications...with Ministers or servants of the Crown”;
the guide to the rules refers to
“correspondence and meetings with Ministers and public officials”
and the code of conduct, article 12, refers to
“any activities...with Ministers, Members and officials.”
That all needs to be brought together and tidied up, but, as the Committee’s report states:
“Mr Caborn should have had greater regard to the purpose of the rule”.
The purpose of the rule is quite clear: it is to ensure that Members are transparent in their dealings with people who might be in a position to influence public policy or the spending of public money. Mr Caborn tried in his evidence to tie the rule very tightly to people who are in a position to influence legislation, but such a narrow interpretation is not one that most of us would recognise. To sum up: yes, the rules need reviewing and clarifying, but the purpose of the rules is clear and the evidence that Mr Caborn breached the rules is, in my Committee’s view, also clear.
Turning to the Committee’s recommendation, I have already explained that we felt that a sanction was appropriate. If Mr Caborn had apologised up front, that might have been enough, depending on what he said, but the fact is that, until I received a letter from him this morning, Mr Caborn did not accept that he had breached the code and had not apologised. In his letter today, Mr Caborn writes that the Committee has “given a new interpretation” of the rules and set a new precedent. I do not accept that, but in his letter he continues:
“Your Committee have come to its conclusion which I accept and in respect to the House, apologise.”
I welcome this apology, although I am disappointed that it has come so late in the day.
An apology was sought and has been given, but that still leaves the House with a decision to take on what sanction should apply. We could, as I said earlier, have recommended that Mr Caborn be summoned to the Bar of the House for a formal reprimand. That would have been humiliating for him, and I am not sure that it would have been all that great for the House. The media would have loved it, and the pictures no doubt would have been broadcast around the world, but it would have been a bit like a public flogging, and we did not think that right or appropriate, so we did not go there.
Given that Mr Caborn is a former Member, the only real option that the House is left with is to take away his pass. He told us that losing his former Member’s pass is just like being suspended from the service of the House. With respect, it is not. A serving Member who is suspended loses his or her pay and expenses for the period of suspension and is excluded from the precincts of Parliament. All that Mr Caborn will lose is his ability to enter the building without going through the visitors’ entrance and his access to certain facilities, such as the Strangers Bar. He can still come here as a member of the public. Some might say that losing those privileges for a period of just six months is a very light punishment. Well, it is 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. In that respect, his case is different from the other two.
In the view of the Committee, its recommendations in respect of those three former Members are regrettable but necessary. They are also proportionate. Once the period of suspension of the former Members’ privileged rights of access is over, and assuming an apology has been made, they will be free to re-apply for their passes. It is painful to have to take such action against former colleagues, but by agreeing to the Committee’s proposals today, the House will send an important signal that it does not tolerate breaches of its rules.
Publication of Information about Complaints against Members
Kevin Barron Excerpts(15 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
I beg to move,
(1) That this House approves the Sixth Report of the Standards and Privileges Committee, Session 2010-11, HC 577; and
(2) That accordingly—
a. The Commissioner may publish papers relating to complaints rectified or not upheld since the beginning of financial year 2008-09 and information about complaints received and matters under investigation since the beginning of financial year 2010-11.
b. Standing Order No. 150 be amended, by inserting the following new paragraph after paragraph 10.
“(10A) The Commissioner shall have leave to publish from time to time—
(a) information and papers relating to—
(i) matters resolved in accordance with paragraph (3) of this order;
and
(ii) complaints not upheld;
and
(b) information about complaints received and matters under investigation.”
Mr Deputy Speaker
With this we will consider the following:
Motion on the Power of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to Initiate Investigations—
(1) That this House approves the Seventh Report of the Standards and Privileges
Committee, Session 2010-11, HC 578; and
(2) That accordingly Standing Order No. 150 be amended, by leaving out paragraph (2)(e) and inserting in its place:
“(e) to investigate, if he thinks fit, specific matters which have come to his attention relating to the conduct of Members and to report to the Committee on Standards and Privileges or to an appropriate subcommittee thereof, unless the provisions of paragraph (3) apply.
(2A) In determining whether to investigate a specific matter relating to the conduct of a Member the Commissioner shall have regard to whether in his view there is sufficient evidence that the Code of Conduct or the rules relating to registration or declaration of interests may have been breached to justify taking the matter further.”
Motion on the Lay Membership of the Committee on Standards and Privileges—
That this House agrees with the principle as set out in the Twelfth Report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that lay members should sit on the Committee on Standards and Privileges; and invites the Procedure Committee to bring forward proposals to implement it.
[Relevant document: The Second Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, Session 2009-10, implementing the Twelfth Report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, HC 67.]
Mr Barron
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for providing debating time for the three motions relating to the Committee on Standards and Privileges. It is right that they should be debated and I welcome the opportunity to answer any questions that hon. Members might have about them. All three motions relate to unfinished business from the last Parliament and, to that extent, they can be seen as a package. However, each is free-standing and I will speak to them in turn, in the order in which they appear on the Order Paper.
By agreeing to the first motion, the House will bring its publication policy on the complaints handling process into line with best practice. The current regime, which greatly limits what is published, no longer meets legitimate public expectations. Sections of the media have been able to portray the way in which less serious breaches of the rules are rectified as “secret deals”. There has also been inaccurate reporting of who is, and who is not, under inquiry, and what they might be under inquiry for. By enabling the commissioner to publish the information, the House will ensure that it is both accurate and complete. The alternative is to leave us exposed to unfair allegations of cover-ups and to allow the media to continue to set the agenda for us, often on the basis of inaccurate or incomplete information.
Under the new policy, each month the commissioner will publish on his web pages statistical information about the number of complaints and self-referrals he has received, the number he has accepted, and the number he has not accepted. He will not publish the names of Members who have been the subject of complaints that he has not accepted for inquiry or the details of those complaints. To do so would be unfair and would encourage malicious complaints and publicity seekers. To put this into perspective, if the new policy had been in place in 2009-10, no details of the 245 complaints that were not accepted for inquiry would have been published. All that would have been published would have been the information on the 72 complaints that were inquired into.
As for complaints that are accepted, each month the commissioner will list on his web pages inquiries that are under way, including in each case the name of the Member who is subject to the inquiry, with a brief description of the nature of the allegation and an indication of whether the inquiry is active or has for any reason been suspended. Other than in exceptional circumstances, which would have to be approved by the Committee, he will not publish other information about specific inquiries while they are under way. As our report makes clear, the commissioner already confirms or denies to inquirers that a complaint against a named Member is being investigated. The change will introduce consistency into a process that at the moment is random and largely media-driven.
The commissioner will also publish on his web pages his determination letters on specific complaints or allegations that, after inquiry, have either not been upheld or have been rectified as soon as possible after they are produced. He will also publish relevant evidence he has received about such cases. In the Committee’s view, it is in the best interests of the Member concerned and of the House that where evidence of a possible breach has been fully investigated but the allegation has not been upheld or the matter has been rectified with the commissioner’s agreement, both the decision and the reasons for it should be made public.
It is perhaps worth repeating that complainants—some of them politically motivated—have always been free to publicise the outcome of the commissioner’s inquiry into a complaint that is either rectified or not upheld, but at a time and in a manner of their own choosing. That unregulated state of affairs will be replaced by one that is consistent and, I believe, fair and that is under the authority of the House. Publishing the information will help Members to set the record straight publicly and will go some way to redressing the balance.
The motion also proposes that historical information going back to April 2008 should be published. I know that that has caused some concern, but the reason for backdating the information is to make it broadly consistent with other recent decisions of the House to introduce greater transparency. I remind the House that, contrary to what sections of the media have claimed, the commissioner’s determinations are not secret. Much of it is already out there, although often in incomplete form, because complainants have always been free to publicise the outcome of their complaint. By allowing the commissioner to publish his determinations and the relevant evidence, the House will ensure that what is published is both accurate and complete. If the House supports the Committee’s proposal, the commissioner will start to publish information on his web pages later this month.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
For the record, is my right hon. Friend in a position to tell the House how many of the complaints that the commissioner accepted for investigation resulted in a finding against the Member and how many were dismissed at that stage?
Mr Barron
I quoted the figures from the commissioner’s last annual report. During the time of the leaks, The Daily Telegraph and everything else, 245 complaints were never followed up whereas 72 were. My hon. Friend will know that they were not necessarily all upheld, and in such cases the commissioner wants to say that in terms so that there can be no equivocation.
The numbers that are investigated and the number of complaints that are not upheld are sometimes published by the commissioner, as my hon. Friend will know, through the commissioner giving a memorandum to the Committee and the Committee doing its own investigation on that basis and publishing it. All the information has been around in the House in one form or another for many years—since before I became a member of the Committee. I do not have the exact figure for the number of people among the 72 whose cases were followed up who were not found to have done anything wrong. If my hon. Friend is interested, I will try to get that figure from the commissioner, but we must recognise that the commissioner works independently from the Committee, although we have contact with him.
The second motion seeks to implement a recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life—I think we used to call it the Kelly committee—that the commissioner should be able to carry out an inquiry without receiving a complaint. As my Committee’s seventh report points out, that would bring the House’s procedures into line with those of the House of Lords and of the compliance officer. It will also allow the commissioner to investigate a matter that has been reported on by the compliance officer and that raises code of conduct issues. For the first time, it makes proper provision for self-referrals, although they will continue to be subject to the Committee’s agreement.
There is a risk, as the report acknowledges, that giving the commissioner such a responsibility might raise public expectations that each and every allegation will be investigated or that the commissioner will turn into some kind of witchfinder-general. Let me make it clear that that is not going to happen. The Committee does not want it and the commissioner is not asking for it.
The amendment to the Standing Order provides for the commissioner to inquire into
“specific matters which have come to his attention”.
There is also a built-in requirement that there must be sufficient evidence of a possible breach of the code or rules to justify taking the matter further. In the 245 cases in the last annual report there was no evidence and they were not acted on. A lurid newspaper headline or unsubstantiated speculation will not lead to an inquiry. The process must be driven by the evidence and the evidence must come to the commissioner.
It is important, as my Committee’s report recognises, that the commissioner has the resources he needs to do his job. We supported the temporary expansion of his office to deal with the increase in the number of complaints over the past two years and, if necessary, we will do so again. However, there is no expectation that that will happen. The current work load is somewhat smaller than that of 12 months ago.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for missing his opening remarks, but it was his subsequent remarks that I wanted to hear. Will the motion allow right hon. and hon. Members to make self-referrals, which we know the commissioner discourages?
Mr Barron
It would do that. Self-referrals would carry on and, indeed, there has been one since the election. However, self-referrals will still have to come in front of the Committee and the commissioner will effectively ask permission, although we do not direct the commissioner by giving permission or telling him not to do things. He works independently of the Committee. Self-referrals will carry on in much the same way as they do at the moment.
Of course we can all help to ensure that the commissioner has the resources to do his job by acting at all times in full compliance with the code of conduct and the associated rules. Members of this House decide what workloads are and whether treatment is fair or unfair by what we do on a regular basis.
The third motion, tabled in the name of members of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, was not on our original shopping list, but we are grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for adding it to today’s business. It relates to a proposal that was put to Sir Christopher Kelly and the Committee on Standards in Public Life by our former Chair, now the Leader of the House, to add lay members to the Standards and Privileges Committee. The proposal was supported by the Kelly committee in its 12th report. Lay members already serve on the Members Estimate Audit Committee and they will soon sit on the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. Lay members provide the public with reassurance that the Committees are not cosy gentlemen’s clubs, where deals are stitched up and scandals are hushed up. They can also bring valuable outside experience and expertise with them. It is common practice for standards bodies dealing with the professions to have lay members, and in the view of the Committee on Standards and Privileges it should be the practice here too. I say that as a now former lay member of the General Medical Council; I spent nearly nine years in that role, sitting with various clinicians.
That said, adding lay members to one of the House’s senior Committees raises some important questions. For example, the Committee on Standards in Public Life recommended that the lay members should have full voting rights on the Standards and Privileges Committee. The question is whether that would mean that the lay members could vote on matters relating to privilege. I assume not. I know that the Clerk of the House has reservations about allowing lay members to vote at all, because he wrote to me about it following the publication of the motion. In practice, of course, we have to recognise that any decision of the Committee that was not supported by the lay members present would lack public credibility. It may be that the lay members will not need to have a formal vote to have a decisive influence.
The Procedure Committee might wish to consider other questions identified in my Committee’s report, such as how many lay members there should be and whether they should form part of the Committee’s quorum. The Kelly committee suggested there should be two lay members, but a case can be made for more than two. I hope that the Procedure Committee will wish to consider that. We also suggested that lay members should receive modest remuneration, directly related to the volume of work that they carry out. We felt strongly that to provide the public with the greatest possible confidence in their appointments, the lay members should be appointed to the Committee but not by the Committee. The Procedure Committee may wish to consider what would be the best way of making the appointments, what qualifications those appointed should have, what should be the term of the appointments, and who should be involved in making them.
My Committee’s understanding until recently was that progress on the issue was being held up by the Government’s work on their recall policy. However, a recent letter from the Leader of the House to Mr Speaker has put us right on that, and the House has now been given the green light to proceed. In the Committee’s view, the best way forward is to ask the Procedure Committee to come up with some workable proposals for putting the matter into practice. It is an important reform and it needs to be got right.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Many of us are very concerned about whether these three proposals will improve the system’s ability to ensure that justice is done for people who are referred to my right hon. Friend’s Committee. We feel strongly that over the past two or three years, the way in which people have been referred to his Committee has been partial. Some have been referred and a report made, leading to a prosecution by the police. Others have never had the opportunity to put their case before the Committee. Will these three changes bring some sense of justice back to what goes on?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Interventions have got to be shorter.
Mr Barron
Only one referral of the nature that my hon. Friend sets out has happened in my five years on the Committee, and the matter is out of the Committee’s hands. My understanding is that it happens elsewhere and is not done by the Committee. As I emphasised earlier, there has to be an evidence base for any complaint that is taken up and investigated by the commissioner. The last annual report showed that 245 cases had not been pursued because there was no evidence, but that 72 had been, although some of the Members involved will have been found to have done nothing wrong. I commend the motions to the House.
Mr Heath
I do not think that I can add anything to what I have already said. This is a matter for the Standards and Privileges Committee and for the commissioner, and certainly not a matter for a Minister at the Dispatch Box to comment on, other than to say that I hope that justice will always be done in the most transparent way.
Mr Barron
I have two points to make in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). First, I do not believe that Ian Gibson ever went to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards or in front of the Committee. Secondly, on a wider matter, discussions are currently taking place between the compliance officer, the commissioner and others on a memorandum of understanding about referrals, and whether cases will go to different organisations rather than to the commissioner and then on to the Committee.
Mr Sheerman
Is the hon. Gentleman absolutely sure about all this? This is a very important point, because in his earlier remarks he said that the Government should not be involved, but he subsequently said that the recall element meant that they should be involved. The recall element is very important. Can a Member be recalled only when they have been through the Committee and been found wanting? What about Members of this House who were prosecuted, never having had the opportunity to go through—
Mr Sheerman
My right hon. Friend is shaking his head, but people were prosecuted, and people are being prosecuted, without having gone through the Standards and Privileges Committee process; they were just taken down to the police station and charged. Where is the equality there? Do we have recall in both Houses or both—
Mr Barron
What I said in my speech was that we thought that the question of lay members serving on the Standards and Privileges Committee was being held up because of the likelihood of a recall Bill. The reason the motion is on the Order Paper today is that it is about having lay members on the Committee—certainly in respect of standards—so that people can have more confidence that the Committee is not about gentlemen or gentlewomen looking after other gentlemen and gentlewomen.
Mr Heath
I thank the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee for making that clear. We have had enough of this House appearing to be a cosy club for its own benefit. The previous Parliament took steps towards improving the situation. What we are debating today is a continuation of that process, and I commend it to the House.
Mr Barron
The hon. Member for Worthing West (Peter Bottomley) spoke of media headlines serving as reasons for investigation. That is not the case now, and it will not be the case in future. Investigations are not made on the basis of media headlines; they are made when the commissioner is provided with evidence and he or she is satisfied that there are grounds for examining, for instance, a potential breach of the code of conduct.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) discussed rectification, which involves two issues. Rectification sometimes takes place on the basis that the individual concerned has been found to have done no wrong, but, as I explained, it does not always take place in a right and proper way. It may take place in a very ill-informed way, and a complainant who has done no wrong can still go to the media and say “Yes, but…”. I think it eminently sensible to improve that process of rectification.
When people have done wrong and have admitted doing wrong, rectification has been the right and proper thing to do from the commissioner’s point of view. It is his decision and no one else’s to take the matter no further. Money is paid back, and matters are settled. However, the information is not published in a right and proper way at the moment. We need more transparency, so that people can understand exactly what is happening. I entirely accept that that involves the question of retrospection. We are trying to put the last 18 months behind us, and, as I said, in that context I think that retrospection is right and proper. I hope that the House will accept it on that ground.
I think it highly unlikely that there will be further complaints on the basis of these publications. Even if there were, evidence beyond that which had enabled the commissioner to reach the point at which he had arrived would presumably be required for any investigation to take place. I do not believe that cases that have been rectified will be reopened, whether they have been upheld or not.
My hon. Friend also mentioned a spike in major complaints just before a general election. Political opponents often make complaints. That is a judgment to be taken not by the House or the Committee, but by the commissioner, who I hope would use common sense in those circumstances. I say that because it would be wrong—I am only one voice, but I chair the Committee—for us to define a code of conduct for the commissioner. The commissioner is independent of the Committee and must remain so. We cannot have a situation where someone investigates complaints against MPs, but works to a code of conduct written by a Committee of MPs.
Tony Lloyd
It would not necessarily be my right hon. Friend’s Committee that created the code of conduct. The commissioner could operate his own code of conduct. That might give the House the reassurance that it needs.
Mr Barron
That is entirely a matter for the commissioner. From what was said earlier, I gather that he is with us not just in spirit for the debate. I am sure he will read the report in Hansard tomorrow. The Committee should not be a party to drawing up a code of conduct for somebody who works independently of the Committee. That would be wholly wrong.
On the subject of lay members, we have said that that will be a matter for the Procedure Committee, and I hope the House will agree. I mentioned that I had been a lay member of the General Medical Council. The Procedure Committee may want to know something about my journey to that role. The first time I was appointed to it, I was the Labour appointee. There was also a Liberal Democrat and a Conservative appointee. They were appointed by the Leader of the House.
That is what used to happen under the old system. The GMC was a big body, consisting of 124 members and three MPs, one from each major party. The second time that I served as a lay member on it, I had to attend an appointments session up in Leeds. I was appointed by a panel who asked me questions about what I had to bring to the table.
I say to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) that I would hesitate to suggest to the Procedure Committee that it ought to have some form of permanent secretary. I had worked in industry as an electrician. I had been to see doctors, of course, because everyone gets ill from time to time. I used to sit on fitness to practice committees when a doctor had done wrong. Those were national cases. I was not qualified to take on the medical profession. I was there in a different role. My role was to bring to the committee what I thought ordinary people would think about the situation—to bring common sense to the issue.
That is what we ought to ask of the Procedure Committee. How it achieves that is entirely up to the Committee. I hesitate to go down the route suggested and lay any sort of guidelines whatever. If lay members come on to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, as I hope they will at some stage, it will be up to the Committee to decide whether they have anything to do with privilege. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that as soon as we get a privilege Bill, or a draft privilege Bill, as we are promised, we can see what that means. There has been a ruling of the Supreme Court on these matters in the past 24 hours. We should look at that in the context of what has come to light in the past few months. The Procedure Committee should get on with the job, if the House agrees to the motion.
I hope the House will accept all three motions without Division. As I said, they serve to clear up issues from before the general election and make sure that the workings of the House are as transparent as is humanly possible, so that people outside have more confidence in us than they have had in the recent past.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
(1) That this House approves the Sixth Report of the Standards and Privileges Committee, Session 2010-11, HC 577; and
(2) That accordingly—
a. The Commissioner may publish papers relating to complaints rectified or not upheld since the beginning of financial year 2008-09 and information about complaints received and matters under investigation since the beginning of financial year 2010-11.
b. Standing Order No. 150 be amended, by inserting the following new paragraph after paragraph 10.
“(10A) The Commissioner shall have leave to publish from time to time—
(a) information and papers relating to—
(i) matters resolved in accordance with paragraph (3) of this order;
and
(ii) complaints not upheld;
and
(b) information about complaints received and matters under investigation.”
power of the parliamentary commissioner for standards to initiate investigations
Resolved,
(1) That this House approves the Seventh Report of the Standards and Privileges Committee, Session 2010-11, HC 578; and
(2) That accordingly Standing Order No. 150 be amended, by leaving out paragraph (2)(e) and inserting in its place:
“(e) to investigate, if he thinks fit, specific matters which have come to his attention relating to the conduct of Members and to report to the Committee on Standards and Privileges or to an appropriate subcommittee thereof, unless the provisions of paragraph (3) apply.
(2A) In determining whether to investigate a specific matter relating to the conduct of a Member the Commissioner shall have regard to whether in his view there is sufficient evidence that the Code of Conduct or the rules relating to registration or declaration of interests may have been breached to justify taking the matter further.”—(Mr Barron.)
lay membership of the committee on standards and privileges
Resolved,
That this House agrees with the principle as set out in the Twelfth Report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that lay members should sit on the Committee on Standards and Privileges; and invites the Procedure Committee to bring forward proposals to implement it.—(Mr Barron.)
Business of the House
Kevin Barron Excerpts(15 years, 3 months ago)
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Sir George Young
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It should be made absolutely clear which food is genuinely produced in the UK and which is processed in the UK having been reared somewhere else. I shall pursue his concerns with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to see what action the Government are taking to secure the ambitions that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) and I share.
Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
The Leader of the House has added his name to two motions on the Order Paper laid by members of the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges regarding two recently published reports. When will those motions be debated on the Floor of the House, thereby allowing us to take a decision on them?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and his Committee for producing those two reports. I envisage that those motions will be on the operative part of the Order Paper next week. The House can then decide whether to let them through on the nod or to debate them.