House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [Lords]

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 2—Bill of Rights—

“Nothing in this Act shall be constructed by any court in the United Kingdom as affecting Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689.”

This clause, modelled on section 1 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, preserves the exclusive cognisance of the House of Lords over its own proceedings and membership.

New clause 3—Code of conduct—

‘(1) Standing Orders of the House of Lords may provide for the adoption of a code of conduct.

(2) A resolution passed by virtue of section 1(4) must include a reference to the relevant provision of any code of conduct which the House of Lords may have adopted and which has not been superseded by a subsequent decision of the House.”

This clause allows the House of Lords to adopt a code of conduct and also requires the application of penalties under this Bill to be linked to that code, if there is one.

Amendment 18, in clause 1, page 1, line 6, at end insert

“on the ground of that member’s conduct as set out in the resolution”.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

New clauses 1 and 2 stand in my name, and new clause 3 and amendment 18 are in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).

This important Bill enables a lacuna to be filled in the procedures of the House of Lords, and to enable the House of Lords—where appropriate—to suspend or expel Members. The House of Lords currently has powers to suspend Members, but rather curiously it can do so only for the remainder of a Parliament. Therefore, if a Member of the House of Lords were to be suspended today, they could effectively be suspended only until 30 March, or whenever this Parliament is dissolved. If, on the other hand, the House of Lords decided to suspend a Member early in the next Parliament, they would be suspended for the duration of that Parliament. That is curious and it is difficult to justify why the length of suspension should vary. The House of Lords wanted to clarify that position as well as the position on expulsions. The measure had wide support in the other place, and I am sure it will win support throughout this House.

This is a somewhat thin House today. I speak not personally about my bodily weight—although, as my wife points out to me, I have a body image problem because I do not see my body as everybody else sees it—but it is a thin House because there are very few of us here. That, I think, is a consequence of five-year fixed-term Parliaments, because for the last few months, although the House has been sitting, large numbers of colleagues understandably want to be in their constituencies or elsewhere campaigning.