Standards in Public Life

Debate between Toby Perkins and Alex Sobel

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Once again, the Labour party has to use one of our precious Opposition days to debate not the cost of living, NHS waiting times, court delays, falling apprenticeship numbers or any of the other manifest ways in which the Government are failing, but the standards and conduct of the Prime Minister. I do not say that critically—I am pleased that we have chosen to use today’s debate for that purpose—but it shows once again why the Prime Minister is not able to get on with it as a result of yesterday’s vote: in fact, he is the distraction that prevents this House from moving on. It shows why the 148 of his Members of Parliament who voted yesterday that they had no confidence in him were right.

British parliamentarians have often been asked to go overseas to nations considered to be less developed and provide them with advice about what a functioning democracy looks like. It is not an exaggeration to say that if we arrived as parliamentarians in another country to find that it had a leader whose response to being convicted of breaking the law was not to set about changing his behaviour, but to lower the standards to which members of his Government could be held, we would take a very dim view of that sort of democracy—but that is precisely what is happening here in the United Kingdom.

I have never had any regard for the political priorities of the Conservative party. I do not expect Tory Governments to be good for my constituency or to share my values. But I have respected the fact that, regardless of the difference in approach to matters such as public services and the economy, when it came to the basic rule of law there were things that united parliamentarians of all parties. Under this Prime Minister, I fear that that is no longer the case. That is why it is so important that Conservative Members are willing to be brave enough to stand up and speak out, because some of these matters are more important than narrow party political advantage, and so it is with today’s debate; and that is why I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Newton Abbott, who resigned yesterday as the Prime Minister’s anti-corruption tsar. I think that his letter was of real significance. He wrote to the Prime Minister:

“The only fair conclusion to draw from the Sue Gray report is that you have breached a fundamental principle of the ministerial code – a clear resigning matter.

Butt your letter to your independent adviser on the ministerial code ignores this absolutely central, non-negotiable issue completely. And, if it had addressed it, it is hard to see how it could have reached any other conclusion than that you had broken the code.”

I think those words are incredibly significant, I think they are brave, and I think the hon. Gentleman should be commended for having written them.

The Prime Minister’s own briefing to Conservative Members, which featured widely on Twitter yesterday, suggests that they must tolerate his behaviour because no one else is capable of leading them. I am afraid that too many people are missing the point here. The hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) said earlier that we were raising this issue because we did not like the Prime Minister, and he advocated a system of self-regulation. I think that if Conservative Members look daily at the Prime Minister and think, “There is no one in our whole parliamentary party with 360-odd members who could possibly perform in this way”, they must have a pretty low opinion of themselves, and I think that they may be wrong. I also think that the question of standards is not about whether or not one likes a person, but about whether the behaviour that that person has exhibited is tolerable in a functioning democracy, and I am afraid that, in the case of this Prime Minister, it is absolutely not.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

One way to cheat is to change the rules. We have seen the rules in the ministerial code being changed, and we are seeing a general levelling down of standards in public life. The idea that the Government can carry on marking their own homework is absurd. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need an independent commission on ethics and standards in public life, so that there is some accountability?

[Mr Perkins]

I certainly do. That is why I am happy to support the motion today, and why I was happy to support the committee’s recommendations.

I agree with Lord Evans that a graduated sanctions approach must go hand in hand with increasing the independence of the adviser. Recommendation 6 states:

“The Ministerial Code should detail a range of sanctions the Prime Minister may issue, including, but not limited to, apologies, fines, and asking for a minister’s resignation.”

The Paymaster General spoke about that more graduated approach, and I agree with that, but I also agree with Lord Evans that it must go hand in hand with recommendation 8, which states:

“ The Independent Adviser should be able to initiate investigations into breaches of the Ministerial Code”

—the Government propose not to heed that—and with recommendation 9, which states:

“The Independent Adviser should have the authority to determine breaches of the Ministerial Code.”

That seems to be the point: that the independent adviser determines whether the code has been breached, and it is for the Prime Minister then to decide what sanctions should be applied. What we have now, however, as we heard from the Paymaster General, is an approach whereby if the Prime Minister believes that he still has confidence in people—and I suspect that he will have confidence in the Culture Secretary almost regardless of what she says, because of her slavish support—that is good enough, and no standards are relevant.

As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), all of us in this place suffer from the allegation that “they are all the same.” Despair is the most corrosive emotion possible when it comes to politics, because it leads people to disengage and to decide that there is no point in engaging in politics in any way. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) spoke of a cross-party consensus, but how is that possible if the Prime Minister is willing, for political reasons, to overlook breaches of any kind if he thinks that it is in his political interests to do so?

A politically motivated standards regime that allows rules to be rewritten if they become inconvenient, and places the future of Ministers in the hands of the Prime Minister to vanquish or rescue as he sees fit, is not itself fit for the 21st century in a supposedly developed democracy. How can it be that the ministerial code, detailing the way in which those at the very top of the political tree operate, actually lags behind that which applies to MPs, peers and civil servants?

I also support the committee’s recommendation for reform of the powers of the commissioner for public appointments to provide a better guarantee of the independence of assessment panels.

Our politics is suffering from a crisis of public confidence, which is particularly dangerous at a time of national economic difficulty such as the one that we are currently experiencing. Only by increasing the independence and clarity of the rules and the rule arbiters can we have a hope of restoring public confidence in our politics, and it is for that reason that I support the motion.

Beer Taxation and Pubs

Debate between Toby Perkins and Alex Sobel

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), who called at the end of her speech for more to be done to support our pubs—the theme of this entire debate.

Pubs are absolutely crucial to our communities and certainly to my constituency. Chesterfield has 105 pubs, and 1,419 people there rely on beer and pubs for their employment. In Chesterfield alone, £15 million goes into the local economy through wages paid to people who work in our pubs. Alongside the economic value that pubs provide—we have talked about the huge tax contribution that they make—pubs also make an incredibly important social contribution. As we have heard from other hon. Members, when a pub closes on an estate there is no longer a focal point for the community.

What is the first thing that comes to mind when we think about soap operas? We think of The Rovers Return or the Queen Vic, which are the hub of their communities. When people visit our country, the first thing they want to do is visit the local and have a pint of British ale. We cannot overestimate the incredibly important role that pubs play in our social fabric.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a wonderful speech. In the market town of Otley in my constituency, there are two grade II listed pubs—the Black Bull Inn and The White Swan, operated by Star Pubs & Bars. It has ruined the heritage of those pubs. Does my hon. Friend agree that that goes against the heritage and tourism that we need to engender? Should we not have more local powers to ensure that that sort of thing cannot happen to grade II listed heritage pubs?

[Toby Perkins]

I certainly feel strongly that the owner or landlord of a pub is its custodian for the local community. Pubs valued by a community have often been lost as a result of the irresponsibility or inadequacy of the people who have run them. When pubs close, that has a huge impact on the local community. Sometimes, we have got too bogged down with the numbers; where pubs close is also important. We have heard about the importance of rural pubs, and I mentioned previously the importance of pubs on the local estate.

The Brampton Mile is a famous area in Chesterfield with 17 pubs within a single mile. Some have attempted to visit them all in a single night—I cannot entirely remember how it ended, but it started well. When a pub closes in an area with a huge number of pubs, the impact may not be the same, but when there is only one pub in an area, it is incredibly important, and we feel strongly about that. Some 243 people in Chesterfield signed the “Long Live the Local” petition.

Here in Parliament, we recognise how important pubs are. The hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) who started the debate, is chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group. I am chair of the all-party parliamentary pubs group. This year, we held the first ever parliamentary pub of the year competition. I was delighted that so many MPs entered. There was a fantastic array of entries. My own entry, the Chesterfield Arms in Chesterfield, was a finalist, but was ultimately defeated by the Four Elms pub in Cardiff, Central. It was an event in which we came together and celebrated the role that pubs play in our communities.

There are always claims that if the Government only taxed businesses less, the pubs would do better. As a former shadow Business Minister I recognise the extent to which such calls are heard. The Government were elected in 2015 on a manifesto that promised a fundamental review of business rates. I appreciate that that commitment disappeared from the 2017 manifesto, but the Government have not considered themselves to be held to many items in that manifesto. The system of business rates disincentivises investment, whether in pubs, manufacturing or retail. When people make their premises better they pay a higher tax bill, which flies in the face of the sort of investment that we all want to see. I would love the Government to put less focus on reducing corporation tax at the expense of business rates. Corporation tax is businesses paying tax on profits that they have made, whereas business rates are a tax on owning a property. At a time when pubs and so many retail units are closing, the taxation policy achieves the opposite of what the Government intend.

If I had more time, I would talk about the pubs code, and I look forward to the review that the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), is undertaking. Pubs are crucial to our communities, and I am delighted that this debate has taken place. May we all continue to trumpet that crucial role.