Question

To ask the Chairman of Committees what role the House of Lords authorities had in agreeing the new rules for All-Party Parliamentary Groups issued by the House of Commons Committee on Standards to take effect at the start of the Parliament.

In June 2012 a working group established by the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lord Speaker reported on the operation and funding of all-party groups. The working group had three members of the House on it. It heard from the then chairman of the House of Lords Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct; conducted an email survey of members of the House; and held a discussion meeting open to all members of the House.

Following the working group’s report the House of Commons Committee on Standards began an inquiry into all-party groups, taking its first evidence in June 2013. In view of concern that the inquiry had yet to hear from any member of the Lords, in July 2013 the Lord Speaker wrote to the party whips and the Convenor of the Crossbench peers to alert them to the inquiry and the fact that members of the House of Lords were entitled to make submissions.

Shortly before the Standards Committee’s report on All-Party Parliamentary Groups was published in November 2013 the chair of that committee wrote to the Lord Speaker alerting her to its emerging thinking and enclosing the new rules which that committee was proposing. The Committee’s report, and the proposed new rules, were agreed by the House of Commons on 13 May 2014.

Since the House of Commons passed the first resolution regulating all-party groups in 1985, decisions on the rules for all-party groups have been for the House of Commons. The Register of All-Party Groups is maintained by the House of Commons Registrar and complaints of breach of the rules are investigated by the House of Commons Commissioner for Standards.