Private Members’ Bills

Debate between Richard Bacon and Helen Jones

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I have a lot of time for the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), but I, too, was a little disappointed in her statement that Members who thought they had no serious chance of making progress with their Bill should just withdraw it.

[Helen Jones]

I did not say that.

[Mr Bacon]

The hon. Lady did say words to that effect, as the record will show. I have paraphrased, but that is essentially the meaning of what she said: that Members who thought they had no serious chance of making progress with Bills should withdraw them. I have been trying for seven years to get food labelling legislation on to the statute book. The fact that I have now had to introduce a Bill four times, and that at each stage people have said I have very little chance of succeeding, has never stopped me trying.

Bill of Rights

Debate between Richard Bacon and Helen Jones

Thursday 17th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

If the hon. Gentleman allows me to proceed a little, perhaps I can touch on the issues that he raises, but I want to keep my remarks to the subject of the debate.

One reason why becoming a Member of this House confers huge privileges on us all is that it enables us to act on behalf of our constituents. To be able to do that effectively, as several hon. Members have said, Members of Parliament must have access to information. A number of cases have been raised today, and many of us have had experience of hospitals, schools sometimes and councils trying to deny hon. Members the information that they request. In my experience, that is normally fairly easy to deal with, although the cases involving the courts are much more complex. I hope to be able to come to those in a moment.

Hon. Members know that they must use the protection granted by parliamentary privilege sparingly and not for their own advantage, but use it they must if it is necessary to right a wrong or to get justice for a constituent. Since I came into the House, I have seen a number of examples of hon. Members rightly taking up issues on behalf of their constituents and using parliamentary privilege to do so, because that is the only way to get something done.

If I may speak anecdotally, I have had experience of that myself. Not long after I came into Parliament, I felt it necessary to initiate an Adjournment debate about a charity that I felt was not operating properly. I came under huge pressure from the people running that organisation, but I felt that it was necessary to do that and to use parliamentary privilege to do it, because I believed that the people who were supposed to be being looked after by that organisation, many of whom suffered severe learning difficulties and did not have friends or family to speak up on their behalf, were being done out of their rights. Many other hon. Members will have come across cases such as that. At some point or other, we have all known of constituents who have been told that they cannot or should not approach their Member of Parliament. I say gently to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley that I have known councils and public bodies tell people that, and he must have known of it, too. I have also known Liberal Democrat councillors tell my constituents that they should not come to see me.

A case can probably be made for educating people, but we certainly need a clearer definition. Indeed, the rights of Parliament need to be made clear to many who work for public bodies. In these circumstances, I normally find that a fairly stroppy letter from me—I can write very stroppy letters when I need to—usually puts the matter right. However, some of the cases that we have heard of today are much more serious.

We have to face up to the difficulties of interpreting article 9 that arise simply because of its age. Parliament has developed and changed since 1688. It would be strange if it had not. We now live in a multi-media age, which covers aspects of communication that were not known when the Bill of Rights was drafted.

Many Members would be surprised to learn the limits of parliamentary privilege. For that reason, a review of parliamentary privilege was undertaken by a Joint Committee in 1999. The Committee drew attention to the fact that although Members are not exposed to any civil or criminal liabilities in respect of what they say and do in the course of proceedings in Parliament, there is no comprehensive definition of what “proceedings in Parliament” covers. Equally, there is no proper definition of what constitutes a place “out of Parliament”. That needs to be tackled.

It is generally accepted that proceedings in Parliament are covered by the formal proceedings of the House and its Committees and any documentation directly associated with those proceedings, but there are grey areas around that, as the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) noted about the documents that he had received. The Committee said that article 9 needs clarification. It clearly does, in light of Members’ experience and given what we have heard today.

[Mr Bacon]

Does the hon. Lady agree that in so far as article 9 needs to be clarified, it should be undertaken in such a way as to expand and strengthen the role of Members of Parliament rather than in any way inhibit or constrict them?

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Gentleman touches on an important point. I am a great defender of this House and of Members of all parties having the right to carry out their functions properly. Any review should strengthen the work of Members of Parliament, not undermine it.

The Committee believed that the general principle of article 9, which prohibits the examination in any court of parliamentary proceedings, should be confirmed. It also believed that three exceptions should be made to that general principle. That is something that the House will have to consider in due course.

First, the Committee believed that nothing in article 9 should prevent proceedings in Parliament being examined in court in so far as the examination related to the interpretation of an Act of Parliament or subordinate legislation. That would enshrine in statute the decision of the court in the case of Pepper v. Hart; that case made many Ministers much more careful about what they said in Committee and on the Floor of the House, because their words could be used to help the courts consider what purpose Parliament intended for an Act.

Secondly, the Committee suggested that nothing in article 9 should prevent parliamentary proceedings being used in court for the purpose of judicial review, or in other court proceedings where a Government decision was a material factor. That is not to question the decision itself; again, it is about interpreting the decision.

Thirdly, the Committee believed that courts should be able to examine parliamentary proceedings when there is no suggestion that anything forming a part of those proceedings is untrue or misleading, and—the “and” is very important—there is no question of legal liability.

I suspect that these recommendations, especially the last, will provoke hours of debate when we come to the privilege Bill, but other matters will probably need to be considered as well. The first is the status of Members’ correspondence, particularly that between Members and Ministers about constituency cases or proceedings before Parliament. At the moment, that is not covered by privilege. As we do more and more of our work through correspondence—not everything is done on the Floor of the House, as it was in 1688—the House will need to consider carefully how to deal with it.

The second matter is correspondence with Members of Parliament, a subject raised by the hon. Member for South Norfolk. It is clearly difficult to get the drafting right in such cases. Taking the two extremes, one wants to protect genuine whistleblowing and disclosure without protecting those who write to accuse their neighbours of all sorts of crimes but who have no evidence.

The third matter that we shall have to deal with is defining proceedings in Parliament that are placed “out of Parliament”, and the replacement of section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996. The Joint Committee recommended a new procedure, allowing the House to waive article 9 in appropriate circumstances. Again, that allows Members to defend themselves in defamation proceedings, and we have seen cases like that in past years.

There are serious matters to be considered. I know that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley has already had a case referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee, in which a law firm was held to be in contempt of the House for telling him not to repeat something in the House. I confess that I do not understand how a firm of lawyers could ever draft a letter suggesting that; it is first-year law stuff. It seemed to take the firm an awfully long time to discover its error, but in the end it apologised unreservedly to the House.

The hon. Gentleman and others raised various important matters. One is that in order to redress grievances Members of Parliament need access to information. The hon. Gentleman was right to say that the family courts are opening up, and that information can be given to Members of Parliament with the agreement of the parties concerned, but it is often not recognised. Another problem, when minors are involved in proceedings, is the question of who is able to give consent on their behalf. There is also the question of bullying constituents, and Parliament needs to consider that very carefully. As I said earlier, such matters are often dealt with swiftly; but if they go beyond that, Parliament needs to consider carefully people’s right to consult their MP.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

First, Parliament needs to define what it wants to do. The question of privilege is complex. Although I might disagree with the hon. Gentleman on numerous issues, I would defend absolutely the right of any of his constituents to consult him whenever they wished to do so, as I would for any other Member of this House.

Another matter of concern was raised today—the role of the courts and of court orders when the preamble to the order or the order itself prevents people from speaking to their Member of Parliament. That is a serious issue, which the House needs to consider in some detail. Like the hon. Member for South Norfolk, I have great concern about whether such an order can stand in law. None the less, I understand that in some cases, particularly family cases, the pressure is on people to agree to such a preamble.

The hon. Member for South Norfolk asked how information coming to MPs should be protected. Many of us remember the case of Clive Ponting, who was tried for giving out information about the sinking of the Belgrano. His defence was that he had given the information to a Member of Parliament.

[Mr Bacon]

I remember the case very well because I wrote a book about it. Unfortunately, I was not able to persuade a publisher to publish it, but that is another matter. When my papers are published, it will come out. Ponting’s defence was that he communicated the information to a person to whom it was, in the interests of the state, his duty to communicate it. That was the point; not that it was a Member of Parliament, although it was, of course, the marvellous Tam Dalyell to whom he communicated it.

[Helen Jones]

I had not quite finished my sentence, but the hon. Gentleman is right; Ponting said that it was in the public interest to communicate the information. Whether or not that defence was sound, the jury simply refused to convict him.