19:58 - The House divided: - Ayes: 261 / Noes: 334 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
I beg to move,
That, in accordance with Standing Order No. 149A, Professor Michael Maguire CBE be appointed as lay member of the Committee on Standards for a period of six years, with immediate effect.
The motion today gives the House the opportunity to approve the appointment of Professor Michael Maguire CBE as a lay member of the Committee on Standards for a period of six years. Between 2012 and 2019, Professor Maguire was the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. His previous role, from 2008 until 2012, was chief inspector of criminal justice for Northern Ireland. He will bring a wealth of experience to the Standards Committee.
The lay members of the Standards Committee play a vital role in providing an independent voice to the Committee’s decisions. When lay members were first proposed over a decade ago, the rationale given by the Committee on Standards in Public Life was that they would be
“a step towards enhancing public acceptance of the robustness and independence of the disciplinary process for Members of Parliament.”
The independent and impartial status of lay members is therefore critical to maintaining confidence in our process. If today’s motion is agreed, it will ensure that one of two lay member vacancies is filled with immediate effect. I ask the House to support Professor Maguire’s appointment.
Standing Order No. 149A requires that the House of Commons should decide on the appointment of lay members. It also stipulates that the decision should follow a debate of up to one hour. As I said in business questions on 22 October, it is only right that time is properly provided and that the House has the right to take a decision and debate a matter so that we should not assume that such a debate is simply a rubber-stamping exercise.
The House will have realised that only one of the two candidates put forward by the House of Commons Commission is named in the motion today. As I have previously said, this has no bearing on the character of the other candidate. Instead, it reflects the fact that there is disquiet in certain quarters, as well as wider concerns over the recruitment process, and in particular the criteria relating to impartiality that were applied.
That brings me to amendment (a) in the name of the shadow Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). My intention had been to keep the timing of the motion to appoint Ms Carter under review pending continuing conversations. That motion has been tabled under remaining orders. However, the amendment seeks to bring forward the appointment now. It is a matter of regret that the right hon. Lady has expedited the decision on this matter. We have been striving to achieve a resolution through correspondence and conversations, which I had hoped would lead us to a more desirable outcome. It is regrettable that we now find ourselves debating this matter on the Floor of the House at an early stage.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
In the discussions I had yesterday, I was led to believe that the Government Chief Whip had indicated that the Government would be voting against that motion next week. That is the reason the amendment has been tabled tonight—for no other reason than because the Government were letting it be known that they were going to vote against.
Mr Rees-Mogg
It was a leader of the hon. Gentleman’s own party who once said that a week is a long time in politics and an opportunity for considerable discussion to take place.
Let me be clear: across public appointments as a whole, political activity is not and should not be a bar to appointment. Membership of a political party is an important right under freedom of association. However, some public appointments will necessarily be independent, where individuals must ensure they are separate from party politics precisely because of their public functions. This is especially the case for quasi-judicial or disciplinary roles, as in this case. The Standards Committee is an especially sensitive parliamentary Committee, with significant powers to adjudicate on the conduct of Members of Parliament. Its lay members must be able to command absolute trust and confidence across the whole House.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is vital for lay members of the Standards Committee not only to be impartial but to be seen to be impartial?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend makes an absolutely right and important point. The perception of impartiality is as important with lay members of the Standards Committee as the reality, and just because somebody says “I am impartial” does not mean that they are necessarily impartial or that others will accept that assurance.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I very much regret it, but I do not think I can support my right hon. Friend on this particular matter, because I do not believe that being a member of a political party makes someone incapable of being impartial. Indeed, all the members of the Standards Committee who are Members of this House are members of political parties and we strive to be impartial, but my right hon. Friend has just indicated that we are not capable of doing that. Will he explain what he thinks was wrong with the appointment process that arrived at these two names? If there was no unauthorised departure from the appointment process—this is a question not of rubber-stamping but of making sure that a proper appointment process has been followed, and that seems to be the case—for us just to say, “We don’t like the look of this particular person so we are not going to approve them” does not seem to me to be a respectable way to conduct the business of this House.
Mr Rees-Mogg
Had my hon. Friend been a little more patient, he would have heard more details and may have come to an understanding as to why the motion has been introduced. I disagree with him: this House, when a motion comes before it, has a right to make the decision. Motions of this House are important and our Standing Orders provide for an hour’s debate; they do that not for entertainment value but to ensure that the House is satisfied with the appointments process. It is important that if the House is not satisfied with the process, it has the right to debate it. Let me continue, because if I do, I think my hon. Friend will see why the opposition to this particular individual has arisen and why the question over impartiality is quite fundamental.
I became immediately concerned on learning from House of Commons Commission papers that this candidate was a member of an unspecified political party. It was not material to me—I said this both in the Commission and to my private office—which political party she belonged to—[Interruption.] I said that in the Commission. The point of principle that mattered was that the politicians on the Standards Committee should be the Members of Parliament, not the lay members.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House confirm that both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) first raised objections before knowing which political party the person was a member of?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct—that is absolutely true. The initial Commission papers did not say which party, and both my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) and I raised exactly the same concern before we knew that it was a member of the Labour party under question.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
The Leader of the House is a member of the House of Commons Commission, which is of course responsible for the oversight of the whole process, including the issuing of the recruitment pack, which specifically indicated what party political activity would and would not be acceptable in a candidate for appointment. Why did he not raise his objection about the nature of the political activity that would be acceptable at the time that the Commission commenced the recruitment?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The Commission looked at a broad paper setting out the way the recruitment would take place; it did not look at the details and the questions that the Committee would ask in terms of political affiliation. The issue—[Interruption.] That is just such a fatuous point. It is not about packing it; it is about having people who do not have a political affiliation of a recent kind.
As I said, objections were raised before we knew what party this lady belonged to, because the politicians on the Standards Committee are the Members of Parliament, not the lay members, who need to be impartial. Lay members should be genuinely independent and that did not seem to be the case, so questions were raised. It was at that point that it emerged that Ms Carter had joined the Labour party this year to vote in the Labour party leadership election. It seemed to me that anyone who had recently joined any political party in order to cast a vote in favour of an individual to lead that party, believing that doing so would ensure a viable Opposition, would find it hard to persuade people that they were genuinely impartial. Under those circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the House of Commons Commission did not achieve consensus in approving the appointment.
In the light of this candidate’s noted support for one particular Labour leadership contender over another, I find myself in the perhaps unexpected position of juggling the interests of the rival factions of the Labour party. A lay member of the Standards Committee should be impartial towards politics that I do not like as well as politics that I do like.
As Leader of the House, I have a responsibility to all Members to protect their interest, which extends to all Members who competed in the Labour leadership election, some more successfully than others. Let me ask the House what view it would have taken of somebody who applied to join the Standards Committee who had joined the Conservative party just to vote for my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) in the Conservative leadership contest because they believed in the need to get Brexit done. Under those circumstances, we would not be having this conversation. The same principle applies to somebody who joined the Labour party to support one particular candidate.
I do not make these points in an academic, theoretical or philosophical way. It is likely that, in the near future, the Standards Committee will be asked to consider a case relating to the activity or conduct of an MP. In this instance, there is a real risk of the appearance of bias, because this proposed member has made clear her support for one candidate over another and joined a party specifically to vote for that one candidate over the other. We cannot have a situation where a lay member of the Standards Committee is perceived as being linked to a faction within a political party—as it happens, within the Labour party, but it would be just as unsuitable if someone were to be linked to a faction within the Tory party, although of course the Tory party does not have factions. What happens when that lay member is asked to make a judgment about the activity or conduct of an MP from within that faction?
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The Leader of the House just said that this individual is a member of a faction. Is it not the case that that individual might have just wanted to vote for one candidate? Does he have any evidence that she is organised as part of a faction within the Labour party, because that is what he just implied?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The point is self-evident: if somebody joins a party specifically to vote X, they also specifically vote against Y. Y is a Member of this House. The person in question who joined the Labour party clearly has a view that is unfavourable to Y and favourable to X. Y may appear in front of the Standards Committee. At what point could Y possibly have confidence that this lady, who claims not to be anything other than impartial in normal circumstances, should be impartial against them after she voted against them and specifically joined the Labour party to vote in that direction?
Mr Jones
I have to say the Leader of the House is tying himself up in knots, because that is not the question that I asked. He said that she is a member of a faction. Does he have any evidence that, apart from casting a vote for a candidate in an internal Labour party election, she has been organising with others to support a certain candidate? If he does not, he should correct the record.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I said quite clearly that she supported a faction. If someone supports one candidate in a leadership election, they are self-evidently supporting a faction. That is just normal use of English, which I am surprised the right hon. Gentleman questions, because he is quite hot on that normally. Any perception of partiality undermines the important role of lay members, who are there to provide a vital balance to the political membership of the Standards Committee. That is why we ask for lay members in the first place.
Chris Bryant
I can honestly say that I do not think a single member of the Standards Committee, whether they are a lay member or an MP, thinks of themselves as a politician when they are engaged in the work of the Committee. It is a really important part of the way we try to do our business. There is no partisanship—party membership is completely irrelevant. The only reason why anybody knows about this particular person’s party membership is because the Leader of the House asked about it. I have no idea whether all the other lay members on the Committee have been members of a political party, or were recently. The specific point is that the criterion for appointment was explicitly that party membership was not a bar, provided a candidate had not held office or campaigned on behalf of the party. She has done neither. I am afraid that this is turning the Committee into a party political football.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think that is completely wrong, and I also think that the hon. Gentleman is trying to put the cart before the horse. The House is not bound by the rules set for it by the selection process. It is entitled to challenge and question that process. That is the job of the House. We are not a rubber stamp, here merely to approve it.
I come to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green). She is a lady of considerable integrity, and I do not and would not question—and would not even think of questioning—that, but the process undertaken by the selection panel has inadvertently created the appearance of a political pas de deux, because the person who was selected by a Committee that had only one Labour politician on it was somebody who had joined the Labour party to vote for a candidate for the Labour party leadership. It is the recruitment process that is at fault here, so I make the observation that we must do better than we have done in this sorry affair and that any future recruitment process for lay members should not make the same mistakes. I reiterate that had somebody been a recent member of the Tory party joining to vote in the leadership election, my view in the Chamber would be exactly the same.
Kate Green
I am grateful to the Leader of the House for giving way again. I note what he said about learning lessons for the process in future and I think that is very good advice, but is it not unfair to the candidates who applied for appointment this time to move the goalposts at this point in the process? Does that reflect well on this House, and does it speak to a process that is conducted with complete integrity?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The process is quite clear and it ends with an hour’s debate in this Chamber. The hon. Lady did not tell the candidates that that was the process—that is a matter for her, not for me. That is a right of this House and we must use our rights in this House; that is what we are here for. There has been no change to the process.
Chris Bryant
The process in Standing Order No. 149A says very clearly that the person who tables the motion does so
“on behalf of the…Commission”—
not on behalf of themselves or the Government, but on behalf of the Commission. I think that this is only just in order because, frankly, the Commission made a decision—it voted on it; it decided—and this should be a single motion coming from the Commission that should be here tonight. All the rest, I am afraid, is party political shenanigans.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman is wrong and, as so often, overstates himself. The Commission makes a recommendation to the House and the Commission motion has been brought forward—there is one on Standing Orders and there is one we are debating now. If the motion were not in order, it would not be on the Order Paper, and I assume the hon. Gentleman is not questioning the decision of Mr Speaker.
In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to the outgoing members of the Standards Committee, the lay members Ms Charmaine Burton and Sir Peter Rubin, for their contribution to the Committee on Standards and to the standards system in the House more widely. I urge Members to consider the points I have made carefully. The decision of this House is an important one and an essential part of the recruitment process.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I speak as a member of the Standards Committee. I have listened to the debate this evening and, I have to say, I would vote against a member of the Conservative party, were they to be put forward to represent lay members on the Standards Committee. It is deeply regrettable that we are having this debate this evening and that the name of an individual has been released to the public. I am very sorry that the Opposition tabled this motion. It has been discussed at great length in the Standards Committee. I recognise fully that the lay members are an important part of the Standards Committee, but this is a very sensitive position. This involves making judgments on Members of this House. Everybody should have certainty that there is impartiality and integrity.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful. The issue of impartiality is a fundamental one and Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion. Unfortunately, that has not been achieved in this case. My hon. Friend is right: it would have been better if this name had not come to this stage, because it is not a great thing for the person who put her name forward. I recognise that. This has been a very unsatisfactory procedure. It has led to somebody who joined the Labour party recently and for the specific purpose of supporting one candidate in the leadership election having her name brought forward. It seems to me to be a self-evident mistake, so should the House agree to the appointment of Professor Maguire today, I wish him well as he takes up his new role, and I commend the motion to the House.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I confess—I will try not to overdo my argument, if the Leader of the House will bear with me—that I am saddened by this debate. All the members on the Standards Committee try extremely hard to be impartial, to put our party membership completely to one side and to put our prejudices, whatever they may be, to one side when we are dealing with difficult cases, which are very sensitive to the individuals concerned and sometimes to the complainants as well. My experience so far—it has not been very long, but my experience so far—is that every single member, both lay and party political member, keeps their counsel, is not available to be lobbied by others and comes to what they believe to be a wholly impartial and fair decision.
I have some complaints about the way we have got to where we are tonight. The first is that we have kept these candidates waiting for months and months: the process started in February. We knew that the two previous members were leaving in May, and we have been two members down now since May. The Committee is meant to have a majority of lay members. We do not have a majority of lay members at the moment because the Government have refused time and again to bring forward the motion to allow us to put even one member on.
The Government have also kept on changing their mind. At one point they tabled a single motion for both candidates. Then I was told that there were going to be two separate motions for the two different candidates but they would be taken on the same day, and suddenly we were told that we are having the debate today for just one member to be added. Then suddenly yesterday afternoon it was announced that the Government were going to table another motion for debate next week, and then half an hour later the Chief Whip—I think he will confirm that now—indicated to our Chief Whip that the Government would be voting against that motion, even though they had tabled it. I think he can confirm that.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mark Spencer)
indicated assent.
Chris Bryant
Yes. So the Leader of the House was wrong earlier when he suggested that this was going to be resolved and it was not decided yet how the Government were going to be voting next week. I am sure he inadvertently misled us.
The second point is that we have moved the goalposts. How can we ask people to apply for a job and say that there is no bar to their applying just because they have been a party member, and then suddenly change three quarters of the way through the process once they have already been offered it? The point for the individual candidates—both Michael Maguire and Melanie Carter—is that they have been hanging around for months. I know Melanie Carter’s situation: she has resigned from various different posts because she thought that she was going to be having this post, because that is what the House of Commons Commission had decided.
The Leader of the House’s motion should be the motion that came from the House of Commons Commission. That is what Standing Order No. 149A says. He is doing it
“on behalf of the…Commission”—
not on behalf of the Government or on behalf of himself, but on behalf of the Commission, and I know that the Commission is not happy about this.
This is House business. It should not be whipped, let alone when the Government have more than 200 proxy votes in their back pocket. This is just wrong. It is the wrong way to do our business. This is House business, and we have to find ways of reclaiming some elements where we actually decide things not on the basis of which party we are a member of, but on the basis of what we think is right for Parliament.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). If I were on the other side of this issue and it were a Conservative under question, as I said earlier, I would still think it was an unsuitable appointment.
The shadow Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), made points about the panel, the discussions within the Commission and the CV of the lady in question. I have always tried to make it clear that I do not wish to question the lady’s bona fides—it is merely the impartiality issue.
There is a fundamental point, which the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) raised in his speech: the reason we have lay members is that, for better or worse, the political members were not trusted to sit in judgment upon themselves and therefore needed non-political members. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden that being a member of a party is something that one should be proud of—it is civic activity. I also think it is perfectly reasonable for people to put their political beliefs behind them. The hon. Member for Rhondda was a member of the Conservative party at university; that does not remain the case, for better or worse. It is merely a question of whether the membership is immediate and close to the point at which the appointment is made.
Chris Bryant
I understand that the Leader of the House is saying that he is not questioning the bona fides of Melanie Carter, but that he is questioning her impartiality. I hope he is not. She is a tribunal judge. She shows her impartiality every day of the week. He is simply saying that, under his new rule, which he has invented, because she has been a party member, she cannot be a lay member of the Committee. Is that right?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am questioning her impartiality between various factions within the Labour party, because she joined the Labour Party to support one particular faction. The right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) slightly gave the game away, because I think he thinks that it was his faction that she supports. I do not know that and I am not stating that for certain, but he seemed to imply that in his joy at welcoming the proposed appointment.
The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) asked what the Commission knew. The draft person specification that was approved by the Commission in February made no reference to the issue of whether or not it was suitable for a prospective candidate to be a member of a political party. If that information made its way into the more detailed recruitment pack to candidates, that was not with the authority of the Commission.
We come to the failures of the recruitment process. It would have been absolutely reasonable and wise and sensible for the recruitment process to say that somebody who had been immediately involved in politics—not 20 years ago or not five years ago—could not be certain of being impartial and would not give the impression of impartiality to Members of the House. The hon. Member for Rhondda says that, absolutely, prejudices should be put to one side, but as I said, if people had confidence in that being so easy, we would not have lay members in the first place. The reason we introduced lay members is that we thought people could not put their prejudices aside. From a panel on which, as the hon. Lady the Member for Stretford and Urmston told us, she was the only politician—a Labour politician—we get somebody who was a supporter of a particular candidate in a very recent election. That seems to me to leave the impression, the risk, the danger of partiality.
Kate Green
I know that the Leader of the House would not question my integrity; he was kind enough to say so a few moments ago. I am probably the only person in the House who knows who Melanie Carter said she had joined the Labour party to support, and it may help the House to know that it was not the same leadership candidate who I supported.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The point is that we have the presentation of partiality. That is why I was so careful to say that I have the highest respect for the hon. Lady’s integrity. I was careful in my speech not to say that I have the greatest respect for the hon. Lady, because everybody knows those are bogus words; I chose the word integrity because I think it is genuine. However, I think her panel made a mistake, and that is why we are here.
Yes, of course, it is a shame that we are here, but if Opposition Members were to think for a moment, had this person joined the Conservative party to vote for my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), they would unquestionably think that that smacked of partiality. I am afraid it is the same the other way around and I will therefore oppose the amendment. I obviously support the motion.
Question put, That the amendment be made.