Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

That normally happens before I speak, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a delight to follow the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), because she has done so much work on this. Everybody who works in this place surely has a right to know that this is a safe workplace. That is a fundamental principle. A second fundamental principle is that everybody has a right to a fair hearing. For complainants, that must mean that they have confidence in the system and that it is not loaded in one direction against them. Of course, we know that in recent years many complainants have felt that they have not had the chance of a fair hearing, and that is why the work we are doing is so important. I would also say, however, that MPs have a right to a fair hearing. That is why it is so important, as the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), who sits on the Standards Committee, said, that a full, fair, judicial or semi-judicial process is engaged in and that MPs have the right to due process and independent adjudication, the right of appeal and the right to a fair hearing.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for tabling his amendment, which I shall be supporting. On the point about due process, politics can be a dirty business, and sometimes complaints that turn out to be unfounded can be deployed against politicians for political reasons. Is he satisfied that our new independent process will be robust enough to deal with those sorts of complaints fairly?

[Chris Bryant]

I think it will, but that will obviously depend on the quality of the people that we appoint to it. I very much hope not only that the House will go through a thorough process to ensure that we get good people, but that good people around the country will seriously consider taking on this role, because it will probably be a fairly thankless task. We need to ensure that we have the right people.

I warmly commend the Leader of the House on bringing forward his motions today and on the way he has approached today’s debate and the discussions that have taken place over recent days. I should say, as Chair of the Standards Committee, that I have deliberately not spoken to any complainants, because it is perfectly possible that something might be coming to my Committee, and it would have been inappropriate for me to have done so. I have only one issue with the Leader of the House, which is about the one-hour debate, as he knows—hence the amendment that I have tabled. His motion 6 is effectively a sort of self-denying ordinance. It sort of says, “There are lots of things that you will not be able to address in the debate”, and I commend him for tabling it, but in the end you cannot be half-chaste. It is a bit like when you decide to give up chocolate for Lent. You cannot decide on Ash Wednesday to stock the fridge with chocolate, because that shows that you have not really decided that you are going to give up chocolate for Lent.

The point about a self-denying ordinance is that it has to be absolute, and in this case we have to declare an absolute self-denying ordinance in relation to debating a decision that has already been reached by an independent body, that has an appellate process within it, where all the evidence has been considered, where both sides of the argument have an equal opportunity to put their case, and where both sides have equal forces. That is not the case in a debate in the House of Commons, and many complainants would be frightened that they would be re-victimised—to use the word that was just used by the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire—and that they would be put through a second ordeal. Even words that the Speaker might allow, because they did not understand that it was a subtle way of getting a dig in, could be terribly, terribly wounding to an individual who had made a complaint. It is terribly easy in this small world to reveal what is meant to be confidential.

[Meg Hillier]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not, if she does not mind, because I have very little time and I know others want to speak.

It is important that there is equality of forces when it comes to a process such as this, and I say to those who worry that non-elected people will be making decisions about whether somebody can be suspended or expelled from the House that that is already true. It is already true, for instance, of an election court, a criminal court that decides to give somebody a sentence of more than 12 months or, I think, a bankruptcy court.

I fully understand that we are making a very significant change to our constitutional process, but my amendment would simply mean that the motions would be taken forthwith. In 1910, Asquith was absolutely blind drunk at the Dispatch Box and nobody ever knew about it. Churchill wrote home to his wife Clemmie that it was

“only the persistent freemasonry of the House of Commons”

that meant it never became a scandal. That is the fear that many complainants would have. We must not have a debate.