Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Another week with absolutely no ideas for the country and absolutely no plan. The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about the cost of living and the economy, but he never actually brings it up, and we all know why: because things are improving and we are making progress. Wages are now rising, debt is on track to be reduced and inflation has more than halved from 11% to 4%. He knows that our plan is working and that his £28 billion tax grab will take Britain back to square one. That is the choice: it is back to square one and higher taxes with him, or a plan that is delivering a brighter future with the Conservatives.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work on this issue. As I am sure he will appreciate, establishing a new bespoke institution is a significant endeavour, but I know that he has discussed it with the Foreign Secretary, who will look at the proposals in more detail. In the meantime, as he knows, our Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 has a raft of new measures to crack down on dirty money, and we will shortly publish our second anti-corruption strategy. We will set out ambitious plans for combating corruption both here at home and internationally.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Alex Burghart
We have established the Public Sector Fraud Authority to clamp down on fraud. As a former DWP Minister, I assure the right hon. Lady that this Government go after fraud wherever it is found. Every time we find new opportunities for fraud, we come forward with new means of clamping down on them. We are a Government committed to efficiency, which we are delivering. As the right hon. Lady will have heard me say in answer to the first question this morning, the Cabinet Office, in the most recent financial year for which figures are available, delivered £3.4 billion-worth of savings to the British taxpayer. That is work we will continue to do.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)
Nominations are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) will know, taken on merit. The criteria that we use are regularly reported to Government, with our most recent report on the operation of the honours system published last month. We are confident that the process for honours selection, including adequate probity and propriety checks, is proportionate and robust and that all due process is followed.
John Penrose
Does the Minister agree that as proven by recent controversies, the system must be transparently meritocratic, so that it is crystal clear that everybody receiving an honour legitimately deserves it? Now that we have introduced a points-based immigration system to choose the best and the brightest from around the world to live here in Britain, should we consider a similar points-based system to choose this country’s brightest and best to receive honours in future, too?
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend is too modest to mention that he came up with this idea some time ago, and it is one that we have considered, but it is not one that we will be taking forward at this moment in time. We go to great lengths to ensure that the process remains transparent, and he can read the most recent report, which was published last month. It is essential that we ensure that the committees that make the considerations around the honours system can do so and can report to this place and to the public. While I am aware that he would like us to go further, we do not believe it necessary to uproot the entire system. We want to ensure that the honours system represents people from the length and breadth of the country.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Chloe Smith
The hon. Lady raises an important matter, on which my Department and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are working closely together. Can I draw her attention to information that I know my right hon. and learned Friend the Culture Secretary will be bringing forward shortly? I reassure the hon. Lady that intellectual property is at the heart of our approach to support the creative industries in this country.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure (Sir John Whittingdale)
First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he has done to promote the use of smart data across the economy. The Minister for Enterprise, Markets and Small Business, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) is working with Departments, regulators and industry to agree common principles for future smart data schemes in different sectors. Individual Departments will set out when and how they will use the powers, following appropriate consultation and impact assessments.
Procurement Bill [Lords]
John Penrose ExcerptsTuesday 13th June 2023
(1 year, 5 months ago)
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John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The hon. Lady is being very complimentary about an amendment that I tabled and she kindly signed to show cross-party support. Does she agree not only that the cost of evaluation is a rounding error but that the savings from weeding out dud contracts early would dwarf any possible cost? In any case, we already have a network of so-called what works centres, which are arm’s length, independent bodies that have been doing precisely this for ages. The problem is that they cover only about 8% of all that we buy, but they are already in place, so the additional marginal cost would be even smaller.
Dame Meg Hillier
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Of course, if evaluation is built in from the beginning, the company that has been contracted to do the work would be required to collect data. They will say that that involves more cost but, over time, it would wash out. We need a better standard of data collection on all sorts of issues.
Take the example of a contractor that was asked to run a prison. The Government provided data on the prison’s maintenance, but the data was not right as it did not count the number of windows and toilets, and so on, that needed to be fixed, so the company had to come in and count them. In that case, the company had not banked on prisoners breaking more windows than the average in other buildings. There is lots of data, and we keep pushing for it to be collected, and that data could be built into evaluations.
The hon. Gentleman is bang on about making sure we do not send good money after bad. If something is not working, we need the evidence and the political courage, sometimes, to end the contract. We need to make sure that the people delivering a contract are clear that they are delivering the contract’s aims. Evaluation should have the impact of tightening procurement, tightening the management of contracts by the civil service and sharpening up those who bid for contracts to do a better job and to be proud of that job, in the knowledge that doing a good job may well mean that the contract is extended, but not if they do not do a good job. We should also reward good behaviour. I am keen to hear what the Minister has to say about that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) tabled amendments that would ensure that organisations involved in nefarious activities are excluded from public procurement. It is extraordinary that companies that are making money in nefarious ways can bolster their activity and give themselves credibility through public procurement. Others have talked a lot about the issues around China, so I will not go into that much more. My right hon. Friend has a strong reputation in this area, and her amendments speak for themselves.
We do not want to miss this opportunity. I recognise that not everything in procurement is about legislation. It would give me some comfort, as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, if the Minister showed that that is being thought about a bit more deeply across Whitehall.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I wish to associate myself with the remarks made by hon. and right hon. Members across the House about the dangers of sourcing from high-risk countries and parts of countries and those implicated in serious human rights abuses. The appalling persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang is a very powerful case in point that has been echoed by many Members around the House, and I agree very strongly with that.
I rise to speak to amendment 60 and new clause 17. I welcome the provisions in the Bill that aim to help small and medium-sized enterprises to access public contracts. SMEs are often best placed to meet the needs of the communities in which they operate, providing numerous social and economic benefits. Those benefits, often referred to as a social value, cannot simply be reduced to a tick-box exercise. Nor can we allow social value to amount only to crumbs of compensation from corporate giants, while they extract wealth from our communities. Wider economic, social and environmental priorities need to be built in from the start of every procurement process.
The UK spends about £300 billion a year on public procurement. We could question whether that is a good thing. That has already been hinted at—whether some of these services at least would be better off delivered in-house by public bodies themselves rather than via contracts. However, this is probably not the place to go into that debate. I want to focus on the need to use that procurement spend as a force for good—to keep wealth in local economies, to ensure that public money goes to responsible companies and not those that exploit people and nature, and to help us meet our climate goals and to preserve a liveable future for all of us. I want to see values, not just value, at the heart of the public procurement process in public life.
That brings me to amendment 60 on the national procurement policy statement, which sets out the strategic objectives that the Government want public procurement to achieve. The amendment would require the Government to assess and report on the impact of the national procurement policy statement on meeting environmental and climate targets and to set out any steps that they intend to take to meet them.
Thanks to the efforts of climate campaigners across the country, we are now seeing the net zero goal and the need for climate action acknowledged in strategies and policy statements across the public sector. But these acknowledgements remain meaningless unless we assess the real world impact of those statements. Are our plans to reduce emissions actually being implemented and are they working? The amendment would signal to contracting authorities and businesses that the Government are serious about aligning procurement with climate and environmental goals. It would also enable Government to see where policy might need to be strengthened if it is not having the intended impact.
New clause 17 would require public contracts that include the supply of food to be aligned with nutritional guidelines and to specify options suitable for a plant-based diet. We know that animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to global heating and biodiversity loss, representing around 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. More and more people are choosing to move to more plant-based eating and almost one quarter of people in Britain now follow a mainly or entirely meat-free diet.
The 2022 progress report to Parliament by the Climate Change Committee urges the Government not to ignore the role of diet and notes:
“Government can influence diet shifts, through mandating plant-based options in public settings”.
My amendment would require public contracts for the supply of food to be in line with the Eatwell Guide, which drew inspiration from the nutritional guidance of what was then Public Health England, developed in conjunction with the devolved nations. Analysis by the Carbon Trust found that, thanks to lower consumption of meat, dairy and sugary foods, the environmental footprint of the Eatwell diet is around one third lower than the current national diet.
In settings such as hospitals and schools, where good nutrition can make all the difference, our public sector should lead the way by offering nutritious and sustainable food. That is too often overridden by a narrow notion of value for money, resulting in vulnerable people being given food that does not meet nutritional guidelines. As we all remember, during the pandemic the Government were forced to U-turn on school meal vouchers after widespread outrage at the poor quality and quantity of food being distributed to families. That was not just one isolated failure; it was symptomatic of a political culture that thinks we can package up children’s nutrition, health or any public service and hand it over to whichever corporate giant says it will do it most cheaply. That is the culture that has to change.
Last year the all-party parliamentary group on the green new deal, which I co-chair, produced a report setting out how local community-based solutions are key to climate action. As part of that inquiry we heard from the Sustainable Food Places network, as well as from community farms and kitchens. A key recommendation that came up again and again was to use the procurement system to support more local food and plant-based diets.
The Government’s own food strategy proposes a target of at least 50% of food spend to be on food produced locally or to high environmental standards, a move I certainly applaud. However, nine months on from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs consultation, we are still awaiting the Government’s response.
Pioneering local authorities and public bodies are leading the way, and my constituency has had some notable successes. In 2020, Brighton received the first-ever Sustainable Food Places gold award. It has brought in improved standards for procurement as part of a wider campaign to get more people eating more vegetables and its school food supplier meets the Food for Life gold standard for championing healthy, local, climate-friendly food.
A more joined-up approach to food, climate and nature and a real commitment to supporting local businesses and community organisations would have huge benefits for our health and our local economies. In addition to the provisions in this new clause, I would therefore hope to see much more support for public bodies that want to put social value at the heart of procurement, to help them to find out how best to get sustainable food from local producers into public sector canteens.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
I rise to speak to my amendment 68, which was tabled with not just my signature on it, but those of the Chairman and the deputy Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.
The amendment is about value for money and evaluation. We have heard during the course of this debate that this excellent Bill, which covers an enormous amount of much-needed reform in this area, deals with about £300 billion-worth of taxpayers’ money every year. That is a vast amount of cash and it is vital that we spend it as effectively as we possibly can. It matters not just for the value for money that taxpayers get, but for the efficiency and effectiveness with which our public services are delivered. That ought to be a compelling dyad if there ever was one.
The aim of amendment 68 is to achieve that evaluation, which we have already heard about from the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. I stress that this is not just a cross-party amendment, with support from both Labour and Conservative Members and from the cross-party Public Accounts Committee. It also has a very unusual political coalition behind it, which includes not only the Centre for Policy Studies, the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Adam Smith Institute—all good, solid free-market, centre-right think-tanks—but Transparency International, Spotlight on Corruption, the Campaign for Freedom of Information and the Centre for Public Data. In other words, it is a very unusual political coalition, backing something because it is right in principle and because it yields better value for taxpayers’ money.
I urge Ministers to give the amendment much closer attention. I appreciate that it is different from the equally important questions that we have also addressed during the course of this debate, about exploitation of workers, exploitation of Uyghurs and human rights abuses around the world. However, domestically, in the middle of a cost of living crisis, it really matters to everybody in our constituencies, the man and woman in the street and hard-working families up and down the country and it can make a prompt difference.
Mary Robinson
Value for money is, of course, at the heart of procurement, and we all want to see it. The Royal Institute of British Architects has recommended post-occupancy evaluation. That would be an effective tool for public buildings such as hospitals and schools. Could it form part of the evaluations that my hon. Friend is talking about?
John Penrose
Absolutely; that is a good and broad-based example that proves the concept’s breadth of applicability.
The whole idea behind that is based on the What Works Network, which is currently backed up by the evaluation taskforce—a joint unit between the Cabinet Office and His Majesty’s Treasury. That is long-standing expertise—over 10 years’ worth—in arm’s length evaluation of Government contracts. It is a great idea in principle, and it has its roots very firmly in successful examples such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which does a crucial job relating to the medicines bought by the NHS.
But—and it is a very big and important “but”—just how much of that £300 billion-worth of public expenditure is properly evaluated each year? The answer, or the “stat of shame” as it is described in the civil service, is 8%—£1 in every £12. That is shocking and should worry us all. Whether or not we are concerned about value for money or the effectiveness of our public services, 8% is far too low. It is true that some major projects have their own arrangements, including gating agreements and a much more structured approach, which we hope will drive improvements, but for everything else—the annual contracts granted on a three-year rolling basis, then renewed, extended and renewed again—that is where the opportunity is, that is where the magic is, and that is where the potential for massive savings and better value for money really lies.
It is an old marketing truism that most marketing and advertising directors will say that they know that they waste roughly 50% of their advertising budget, but they just do not know which half. This will be an opportunity for us, when it comes to Government expenditure, to break that particular truism in half and say, “We will know.” The amendment allows the Minister to exclude contracts if he thinks they are too small or are governed by national security, but for everything else in that £300 billion, or as much of it as we can possibly manage, we will know up front what the contract is supposed to achieve, which is, after all, a rather basic thing—one would think that that would be automatically recorded, but at the moment it just is not.
We have to say up front what we are trying to do, and we are supposed to say at the end of the contract, “Well, did we do it?” That has to be evaluated by an arm’s length body according to the existing independent criteria laid out in something called the Magenta Book, which is long established and well respected. If we do that evaluation, we can then ask, “Did it work?” If it did not, we get a learning loop; an opportunity—as the new economy specialists and entrepreneurs call it—to “fail fast”, to ensure that we spot the duds and do not renew or extend them, or allow them to carry on rolling over willy-nilly. Instead, we say, “We are going to change something because this did not work.” That will be published, and then we will not renew that contract in that form. We will change it to fix the faults that would by then have been identified. At the moment, those faults are not being identified and are allowed to continue to roll and roll.
That is a blessedly simple idea. It will also pay for itself, as I said earlier when the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee was giving her speech, because the amount of money that it would save would pay rapidly not just for the existing costs of the What Works Network, but probably for a huge expansion, were Ministers so minded, of such evaluations to other parts of the national procurement effort. It would therefore cost the taxpayer net not a bean, it would dramatically improve value for money, and it would improve the credibility of our public service delivery, which all Governments of every stripe always struggle with. It would be a ready-made arm’s length route for politicians of any party to say, “We are doing the right thing. This is done independently. We will make sure that, next time around, we weed out the bad and expand the good.” That could be genuinely revolutionary.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats support the provisions in the Bill that will speed up and simplify procurement, and create greater opportunities for new entrants, such as small businesses, to access public contracts. However, we have concerns about those areas of the Bill that create opportunities for circumventing the rules that govern the procurement regime. The Government’s shambolic procurement of personal protective equipment during the pandemic exposed the weaknesses in our procurement system, and showed what can happen when Ministers are awarded too much power, and face too little scrutiny. It is vital that safeguards are in place to ensure that billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money does not go to waste.
Amendment 1, which is in my name, seeks to prevent the use of VIP lanes in the procurement of public contracts. The bypassing of the usual procurement rules via VIP lanes during the pandemic saw £3.8 billion of taxpayer funds handed over to 51 suppliers, many of whom were closely tied to Conservative Ministers and their friends. We all know of the scandals that emerged off the back of those contracts; they included reports of excessive profits and conflicts of interest. The Public Accounts Committee, of which I am proudly a member, has, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), carried out an inquiry on the management of PPE contracts. We found that at no stage was any consideration given to potential conflicts of interest between individuals making referrals through the VIP lane and the companies that they were referring.
The Prime Minister said that he was “absolutely shocked” to read of the allegations against Baroness Mone, but future scandals will not be a shock unless the Government take action to ensure that our public procurement regime cannot be exploited, and prevent Ministers from giving special treatment to their friends without proper scrutiny. Transparency of procurement decisions is paramount. I therefore urge the Government to accept amendment 1, ban VIP lanes and crack down on future cronyism and sleaze.
New clause 9 would ensure that the national health service complied with the public procurement rules set out in the Bill—I would like to press it to a Division this afternoon. Liberal Democrats in the Lords successfully amended the Bill to bring the NHS into its scope, so I am extremely disappointed that the Government have overturned the Lords amendment and are reinstating a huge carve-out for the NHS. Without new clause 9, the Secretary of State for Health will be able to make up their own rules for huge swathes of NHS procurement via secondary legislation. Handing over such a wide-ranging power to the Secretary of State without ensuring proper scrutiny is not the hallmark of a Government who wish to govern with integrity and transparency.
The Government argue that the procurement rules are important for all procurement decisions, so it is unclear why they believe that the NHS, which has a procurement spend of many billions of pounds, should fall outside the new regime. Surely it is essential that the largest public organisation in the country follow the same procurement rules as all other organisations. I therefore urge the Government to accept the new clause, and support the Liberal Democrats in ensuring that NHS procurement represents value for the taxpayer and is subject to proper scrutiny.
To conclude, the Liberal Democrats support efforts to reform our procurement regime, and to introduce new rules to increase transparency and create opportunities for small businesses, but there is too much room in the Bill for the rules to be circumvented. The Prime Minister’s pledge to act with integrity and professionalism risks becoming an empty promise unless the Government take action to prevent the use of VIP lanes. Further, it would be ludicrous for NHS spending to be left outside the regime that governs all other public bodies. Public procurement is the largest area of public spending, totalling approximately £300 billion a year. It is vital that the taxpayer has confidence that the Government are taking due care, and confidence that money is spent in accordance with fundamental principles of transparency and fairness.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
The proportion of persons released from custody employed at six months from their release rose by almost two thirds over the last year, and we are delivering the further measures set out in our White Paper because we know this has a huge impact in cutting reoffending.
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a doughty campaigner on this issue. He is right about the Government, who are a significant employer and can show a lead. I can tell him that we have committed to recruiting more prison leavers to civil service roles, with nearly 200 offered or filled across Government. I am pleased to say that, in the Ministry of Justice, we have offered or filled almost 100 of those roles—not that I am competitive.
John Penrose
It is great to hear that more offenders are finding jobs after being released. Will the Secretary of State undertake to publish the outcomes and success rates of all publicly commissioned programmes to prepare offenders for work, together with an independent evaluation of their effectiveness and value for money from the evaluation task force, so everyone can learn what works and what does not, taxpayers can see whether they are getting value for money, and ever more offenders can get a second chance to put their lives back on track?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right to focus on the data. We are doing this because it gives offenders a chance to turn their lives around, but we also know that getting offenders into work can cut reoffending by up to 9 percentage points, which keeps our streets safer. We publish a range of data—there is the justice data lab, and we review international evidence—and we will certainly publish as much as we can on the Government’s website so the analysis he talks about can take place.
Procurement Bill [Lords]
John Penrose ExcerptsMonday 9th January 2023
(1 year, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Procurement Act 2023 View all Procurement Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 75(a) Amendment for Third Reading - (8 Dec 2022)
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
I welcome this Bill, particularly because, as the Minister rightly points out, it introduces far greater transparency and competition, precisely as I was calling for two years ago in the Government-commissioned report on competition policy. I am delighted to see the Bill coming forward with those measures. May I push him on value for money, which he mentions and which is clearly important? The evaluation task force, which exists jointly between his Department and the Treasury, is a tiny unit that covers a tiny fraction of Government procurement spending. Will he pledge, either today or later in the Bill’s progress, that its role will be expanded to cover far more of what we are buying, in order to make sure that we are buying things that genuinely work and it can say that things have been evaluated and either they have produced the goods or they have not, and therefore should or should not be renewed or rolled over in future?
Jeremy Quin
I thank my hon. Friend for the ideas he threw in our direction, which have been picked up. He is right to say that greater transparency is absolutely reflected in this Bill, and I thank him for the work he did. There has been a long lead-up to get to this Bill and we thank him very much for his support. I am proud of the evaluation task force and the work it does, not only on procurement, but on other areas of policy, looking into them to make certain that they are delivering what we intended when they were announced. That is an important tool for all Governments. I would love to see the evaluation task force grow. It is growing in experience and in the amount of projects it is taking on. It has covered a fair bit of the waterfront, but I appreciate that it is merely a small element at the moment and I would like to see it grow. However, he will forgive me if I do not start making commitments of that sort at the Dispatch Box—
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
Having modern, up-to-date standards is vital, and I will make sure I raise this with the appropriate Department.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The COP26 President (Alok Sharma)
On this day, I want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for his domestic and international leadership on tackling climate change and biodiversity loss. He has championed both during his time as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, and he charmed, cajoled and corralled his international counterparts to ensure that more than 90% of the global economy is now covered by net zero targets. Under his premiership, the UK forged the historic Glasgow climate pact, bringing together almost 200 countries, and he has been the driving force to deliver a net zero emissions economy. He has championed the creation of well-paid green jobs, bringing in billions of pounds of private sector investment in the UK. In all these areas, he leaves a legacy to be proud of.
John Penrose
Is my right hon. Friend aware of the Whitetail project in Teesside, where an Allam cycle electricity generating plant will burn either gas or coal in pure oxygen, with zero carbon emissions? Does he agree that projects such as this ought to be fully compatible with not only our net zero commitments, but improved energy security, and that they could therefore form a long-term and permanent part of our future energy generating needs?
Alok Sharma
I am indeed aware of that project. My hon. Friend will know that the Government’s innovation funding has supported the development of Allam cycle power generation technology since 2012. Almost £5 million has been provided to fund research and development, and £1.3 million has been provided for technical studies.
Standards in Public Life
John Penrose Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Michael Ellis
The hon. Gentleman takes a sanctimonious tone. When it comes to this Government, he wishes to set himself up as judge, jury and executioner, but the reality is that taking the moral high ground is not something that fits well. He should bear in mind that it is also moral to treat people fairly; that includes victims and the accused. That is what I have done, and what I seek to do.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Minister rightly pointed out in his introductory remarks that the seven Nolan principles of integrity in public life underpin and run all the way through the ministerial code, but it is clear from Lord McDonald’s letter today that No. 10 has not been honest in what it has said. That is what Lord McDonald says in terms. One of the seven Nolan principles is honesty. No. 10 was previously accused, without rebuttal, of lacking leadership by Sue Gray in her report on what went on over partygate. How many more of the seven principles have to be breached before my right hon. and learned Friend stands up and says, “Enough is enough”?
Michael Ellis
I do not accept the premise of my hon. Friend’s question. As I think he will note, when, after the exercise—the investigation that I referred to a few moments ago—the former Minister in question was appointed to the Department for Levelling Up, and then to the Whips Office, I am not aware that any further objection was made by the senior civil servant in question. That is something from which my hon. Friend can draw a note.
Adviser on Ministerial Interests
John Penrose Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Michael Ellis
What I can say to my right hon. and learned Friend is that the matter is being given very careful and full consideration. I hope that answers the point.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
I am gravely concerned about what I have just heard. A number of us were given to understand, before the debate began, that the Government were willing to say that there is a strong commitment to finding a replacement for Lord Geidt in short order. I have not heard the Minister say that. Will he please make that very clear right now?
Michael Ellis
I do apologise if I have not made that clear; I thought that I had. I can confirm that that is the position.
Let me conclude by reassuring hon. Members that it is the Government’s intention to act swiftly. I emphasise that to hon. Friends around the House. We will act swiftly to undertake a review of the arrangements in place to support the ministerial code and ensure high ministerial standards. During that period, the process of managing ministerial interests will continue in line with the ministerial code, which sets out that the permanent secretary in each Department and the Cabinet Office can provide advice to Ministers and play a role in scrutinising interests. The latest list of ministerial interests was published just two weeks ago, and the Government’s publication of transparency information will of course continue unaffected.
Alberto Costa
I understand why the hon. Gentleman makes that point, but the counter-argument to that is that this is the locus and the forum for having thorough debates. When the Government of the day make proposals in respect of our legal system—of course the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament are wholly in control of the Scottish legal system, which is another great legal system of the United Kingdom—our respective Parliaments are the arenas to discuss, debate, vote on, challenge and scrutinise them. This motion and this short debate do not begin to scratch the surface of the scrutiny required in those sorts of debates, so hon. Members who are thinking about voting for this motion ought to ask themselves whether this short debate is justifiable in terms of length and scrutiny before making such a change.
I re-emphasise the Minister’s point about the accountability of the individual appointed. At present, as I said, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is an officer of this House and is not accountable to the other place or to the Government; she is accountable to us—this House of Commons. It is wholly unclear in the motion whether, in appointing an adviser, that adviser would hold the same authority as an officer of this House. Would that individual also acquire the right to conduct investigations under parliamentary privilege? Would they have the power to command any witness to appear before them and demand the disclosure of evidence? Exactly what is meant by an “adviser to the Committee”?
PACAC is a distinguished Committee, and it has a distinguished Chair in my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), but exactly what sort of powers does the motion suggest should be given to that putative standards commissioner? That is what I think the motion entails: it creates another standards commissioner.
John Penrose
Does my hon. Friend agree that one worrying thing about the motion is that there is no end date to the adviser’s position, once established? Were the adviser to be in place and then the Prime Minister were to appoint his or her own adviser, we would have two different advisers, one advising the Committee and one advising the Prime Minister, potentially arriving at different conclusions from the same facts.
Alberto Costa
Indeed, and of course that emphasises the political motivation behind the motion, which is to create mischief and the very opposite of transparency. It would just create the opportunity to castigate the Executive of the day. I say gently to the Opposition that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We have a mature democracy in our country, and whoever wins at election time—whichever party holds a majority in this House—becomes the Government immediately. There is no transition period. With this motion we would be seeking to fetter that Executive, and particularly the Head of Government, preventing them from undertaking their important constitutional duties.
For those reasons, and many more that would come out if we had a proper debate on the motion and proper scrutiny of it, I believe that it is deeply misguided. I encourage all Members to put aside party politics and vote it down.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow such illustrious members of a series of Committees, all of which focus on this area and all of which have shown the importance and critical nature of the issue that the motion is trying to address—[Interruption.] I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will turn my phone off.
The debate also shows that there is a high degree of cross-party unanimity on the central importance of having somebody in the position of the independent adviser on the ministerial code. It is absolutely essential that everybody, from all parties, who has spoken so far has started from that fundamental principle. Everybody agrees with it. That was why I was delighted at what was said. I think we got there in the end, but I hope that when my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister winds up, with the leave of the House, he will take the opportunity to repeat his comment, which we prised out of him after a number of interventions: that he and the Government agree that a successor to Lord Geidt must be appointed, and must be appointed as promptly as possible. I think he wants a degree of flexibility about the process through which that happens and should the role be split, for example, between people so that we ended up with a panel or something like that. I think he wants the flexibility to allow those changes to be introduced, but the principle that there should be somebody or some group of people—
John Penrose
Let the record show that the Minister is nodding vigorously. It is essential that we get on the record the principle that the role must be pursued and continued. I think that he has said that already, but I hope that he will take the opportunity to make that clear again in his concluding remarks. It is essential that that is clarified, because a number of us were expecting it to be made clear and I hope that we have heard it and will hear it being made clear again.
An awful lot of the concerns that led the motion to be tabled in the first place would be greatly allayed by such a clarification. People are worried, as there have been briefings in the press saying a successor to Lord Geidt might not be appointed at all, and that it might not be an important position to fill in future. I think that the Minister has already said, and I hope that he will repeat, that that is not true, it is not the way that the Government are thinking and that there will be successors appointed to make sure that that crucial role is filled. It is vital that it is filled, because it is independent, and because the independent reports are made public, it provides not just the Prime Minister but everybody in this Chamber, more broadly in society as a whole and in the press with an independent set of facts on which to proceed, to say, “This happened, this did not; this is serious, that is not,” and from which we can all start our conversations, discussions and debates about essential items of probity, integrity and, ultimately, honesty from a shared base of fact.
I venture to make a suggestion to my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister as he goes around trying to find the successor to Lord Geidt. A number of people have said that that might not be terribly easy at the moment and I have a couple of gentle suggestions that might make it a simpler and easier succession. It might be easier for the Prime Minister to find successors if he were to upgrade the role further than the power enhancements that have already been made. I think he should consider two further enhancements of the role. The first is that the adviser or advisers, whatever format the thing takes—[Interruption.] Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I definitely turned my phone off, but it keeps coming on.
The problem is that at the moment, the adviser believes that they must resign if their advice is not followed. I do not think that is the right approach at all—just take the case of Chris Whitty, who was advising the Prime Minister throughout the pandemic. If he had had to resign every single time his advice was not followed, he would have been resigning every week and we would not have got anywhere. Advisers advise; Ministers decide.
John Penrose
I will give way in a second.
This is an advisory post, and if the adviser’s advice is not followed, they may decide they want to resign if they are fed up, but they should not feel constitutionally required to do so. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The hon. Gentleman needs to bring his remarks to a close, but we will take one intervention.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I hear what my hon. Friend is saying, but the difference is that ultimately, Chris Whitty’s advice was based on policy. What we are talking about here is behaviour, and whether there are breaches of the ministerial code. That brings the whole area of ethics into much sharper focus.
John Penrose
I take my hon. Friend’s point. All I am saying is that it should not be axiomatic and automatic that the adviser should feel they have to resign every time their advice is not followed. Their advice is made public and is clear, and therefore it should not be automatic that they have to stand down.
Equally—this is also crucial—Lord Geidt said that he did not feel he could offer an independent set of advice on the behaviour of the Prime Minister, alone among all Ministers. Lord Geidt would have felt able to, and did, offer advice independently to the Prime Minister about other Ministers’ behaviour, but he felt he could not do so when the Prime Minister’s behaviour was in question. That is clearly wrong: there should be no free passes for any Minister, up to and including the Prime Minister, and in the same way that the adviser should not feel duty-bound to resign if their advice is not always followed, they should feel able to offer public advice on whether or not the Prime Minister has erred and strayed. If the adviser’s role is improved in those two ways, I believe that finding a successor to Lord Geidt will be a great deal easier, because the role will be a great deal clearer and more practical to fill.
I will just add one further point about the motion. It seems to me that it does not actually confer any extra powers on PACAC, and the Chairman of that Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), has already said that he is delighted and honoured to be offered these opportunities, but would politely decline them anyway. He does not want this set of powers, and is politely declining the offer that is being made. Because the motion does not offer any extra powers, it would be perfectly acceptable, constitutional, and within the rules of this House for PACAC itself to launch an inquiry into the ongoing discussions and investigations, should it wish to do so. If it felt the position was not being filled fast enough, it could fill that gap.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
PACAC has requested a number of times that Sue Gray come in front of our Committee, and we have been declined that opportunity through being blocked by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State. Is that not a problem of parliamentary scrutiny that this motion might help to prevent?
John Penrose
As I read the motion, it does not confer any fresh powers on the Committee, and therefore it would not solve the problem that the hon. Gentleman has rightly pointed out. There may be a broader question about whether some people can be compelled to come in front of Select Committees—not just PACAC, but others as well—but this motion does not solve that problem either and therefore, I am afraid, will not move the ball down the pitch at all.
None the less, Madam Deputy Speaker—with apologies for my phone misbehaving throughout—there is an essential point here that I think everybody agrees on. A successor to Lord Geidt must be appointed. I think we have heard that one will be appointed; I hope we will have that reconfirmed in words of one syllable, and while we can allow the Government a little bit of time to decide precisely how and in what form that successor will be appointed, it must be a proper replacement, ideally with the additional powers I have described.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
When the lawyers are out in force on the Government Benches—with all the references to learned and right hon. and learned Members—you can tell that the Government find themselves in a bit of a sticky situation. I have a degree of sympathy with the Paymaster General, who, if he is not the Minister for “Newsnight”, is definitely the Minister for crisis who has to make statements and answer urgent questions in the House.
We all know that the Prime Minister likes to compare himself to Churchill. On one of his recent holidays, he posed while painting in the exact same way as Winston Churchill. People can compare this Prime Minister to a number of things, but in style of government he is probably more like Lloyd George, who was arguably one of the most centralising Prime Ministers. Many people will be familiar with the garden suburb—these days, they call it the flat suburb, but at least the flat has much nicer wallpaper!
The garden suburb aroused particular hostility, even more so than the activity of Sir William Sutherland and undercover deals with the press and trafficking of titles and honours in return for contributions to Government or party funds. It is funny how history reinvents itself. Critics have also quoted Dunning’s famous resolution against Lord North’s Government in 1780 that the power of the Prime Minister was “increasing and ought to be diminished”. That gets to the heart of the debate, which is symptomatic of a wider presidentialisation of government. To be fair to the current British Government, this is not new—Tony Blair, for example, was keen on sofa government, and there is the idea that Cabinet government started to break down.
One reason why the House feels the need to step in and take control of the situation is that the current Prime Minister is like no one we have dealt with before. Most of us would accept that he has been described by his own colleagues as a bit of a slippery pig that can get out of situations. I do not doubt that, and I would not be surprised if the Prime Minister survives and leads the Conservatives into the next election. There is a great irony, which I will come back to at the end of my remarks, about our reliance on Tory MPs to remove him. This is a Prime Minister who has not played by the rules; perhaps learning from the effects of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, he has tried to clip the wings even of the Treasury. The desire to centralise more and more power to No. 10 was the reason the right hon. Friend Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) stood down as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it is something that the House should be mindful of.
The Tories would do well to support the motion. I see this as an issue not of tinkering with the constitution but fundamentally as one of House business. The motion delegates powers and tasks to a Select Committee of the House. I know very well the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) and had the privilege of serving on a Committee with him in my first Parliament. I will have no difficulty trusting the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to fulfil these functions. In many respects, the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) is dancing on the head of a pin somewhat, because he knows fine well that the Minister has not given the undertaking that the Government will move—
John Penrose
I thought I heard it. The hon. Gentleman might not have heard it, but with any luck we will both hear clarification later.
David Linden
I respect the Paymaster General enormously but it will take a lot for him to reassure me about the Government’s role on ethics.
When I asked the Paymaster General earlier to define “in due course”, he was not able to say that the appointment would take place by the summer recess or the conference recess. We might—who knows—have a general election in October. I would not be surprised if the Government ended up not appointing an adviser. As they have said before, they are tired of experts. I think they see the role of an adviser as a hindrance, particularly at a time when they will almost certainly have to break international law, albeit in a “very specific and limited way” as the Government like to do in their legislation.
I find some of the contributions I have listened to in this debate a little jarring, with people talking about accountability and respecting the importance of democracy. Let us not forget that this Government have increasingly taken recently to appointing people who are essentially failed election candidates to the House of Lords.
Look at someone such as Malcolm Offord, now Lord Offord, who is now a junior Minister in the anti-Scotland Office. He has given money to the Conservative party, he has not had to have the inconvenience of going through an election and was appointed as a junior Minister to the Scotland Office. Or there is Ian Duncan, a former Tory candidate against my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). He could not beat my hon. Friend in an election, but he got into the House of Lords anyway. Zac Goldsmith, a friend of the Prime Minister and his wife, who failed in the last election to be elected to this House is in the House of Lords as a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minister. When the Tories start to talk about accountability, we should be slightly aware of the context, because it is not a particularly good one.
I have one suggestion I want to pursue. The Government seem to think that the way out of this is talking about an office of the Prime Minister. That is a half-baked suggestion. I do not disagree with having an office of the Prime Minister, but if we are going to have one, they should have something akin to what they have in New Zealand. At the moment, the office of the Prime Minister is merely a rebuttal in a press release; it will create a new office with a new permanent secretary, but who will it be accountable to?
We in this place trust that the Prime Minister is accountable every now and again to the Liaison Committee, but we all know that the Liaison Committee, with the greatest of respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire on the Front Bench and the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), is largely an opportunity for Select Committee Chairs to grandstand. If we are going to have an office of the Prime Minister, there must be a mechanism through which we can hold it to account. That is why I think the idea is half baked.
Standards in Public Life
John Penrose Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Ellis
I will give way in a moment. I must get through my remarks.
Let me return to the reforms that have been introduced. It is the role of the independent adviser to provide the Prime Minister with independent advice on whether a Minister’s conduct has met the standards set out in the code, as well as providing independent, impartial advice to Ministers on the management of their interests. The role is an advisory one. In the event that an allegation of a breach of the code is referred to the independent adviser, his task is to investigate and, following that investigation, to give his independent advice to the Prime Minister in order that the Prime Minister may then reach a decision. Those decisions are taken by the Prime Minister—constitutionally it is essential that they are taken by the Prime Minister—in line with his democratic accountability for such decisions. The Prime Minister has the democratic accountability—the elected authority—and advisers and officials do not.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
May I take my right hon. and learned Friend back to the Prime Minister’s response to the independent adviser—the letter that he mentioned that was published on 31 May? He is right to say that it goes through in some detail and with great care—rightly—the question of fixed penalty notices being issued and sets out the Prime Minister’s position for all of us here to know, to understand and to debate. The thing that it does not cover, and which in my view, I am afraid, is a very serious omission, is the further charge in the Sue Gray report that there have been serious failings of leadership at the top of No.10 and the Cabinet Office —both the Prime Minister and the civil service leadership. Because it is about leadership, which is one of the fundamental seven Nolan principles of integrity in public life, does that not also involve a serious and material breach of one of the fundamental underpinnings of the ministerial code, and is it also not a problem that he has managed to ignore that entire section of the report, gloss over it and fail to address it and to address it publicly?
Michael Ellis
I respectfully disagree with my hon. Friend for the simple reason that there is the issue of inadvertence. That is a relevant factor. As someone who has been involved in the law for many years, I think that one should take the approach of accepting that there is a difference between inadvertence and deliberate conduct.
The initiation of investigations by the independent adviser has been subject to much comment. I assure hon. Members that the Government have considered the range of views on this carefully. The revised terms of reference set out an enhanced process to allow for the independent adviser now to independently initiate an investigation, having consulted the Prime Minister and obtained his consent—[Interruption.] That is an improvement on what was the case before. It is also stated in the new iteration that the Prime Minister would normally provide that consent. I note here that Lord Evans has made it clear that the introduction of a range of graduated sanctions means that the independent adviser should be given the full authority to independently initiate investigations, and that these recommendations were part of the package. The Government have considered that carefully. While they take this view seriously, please allow me to lay out why we consider it critical that the Prime Minister retains a role in the initiation of investigations. [Interruption.] Because this is a constitutional imperative. The Prime Minister is head of Her Majesty’s Government and is accountable for the conduct of the Executive. That authority and that accountability derives from the Prime Minister’s ability to command the confidence of this House, and that derives from the Members of this House, including those who hold office —all of us—at the behest of the electorate. This Government are committed to maintaining that constitutional position and the accountability of the Prime Minister, including in decisions. If we usurp that and hand that authority to someone who does not have electoral accountability, that would be a constitutional irregularity. To hand such decisions to another appointed individual without a check or a balance would be to undermine that position fundamentally.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Let me begin by welcoming this motion, and particularly welcoming the response by my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister when he said that he basically supports the principle behind the motion, even though I think that we on the Government Benches intend to abstain on it. The principle behind the motion is important because standards in public life matter and the Nolan principles matter. If any of us, in any part of this House, start to think that they are technical, passing fancies or things that come and go, then we are fundamentally misunderstanding our role here, misunderstanding the importance of the integrity that the Nolan principles enshrine, and putting in danger the way that our democracy is being perceived among constituents—the people who voted to send us here in the first place.
The crucial thing is that many of us will often face the situation where people say, “Oh, those MPs up in Westminster, they’re all the same—apart from my local MP.” That is great if you are the local MP they are referring to, because you know that they know you and hold you in high regard, but just think about what it says for democracy in general if they say that, as a class, MPs are held in such low regard and democracy is so mistrusted and distrusted. It cannot be good for this place as an institution and it cannot be good for our democracy. Therefore, it is essential that none of us underplays or forgets the central and enduring importance of the Nolan principles and of standards in public life. I was therefore delighted to hear that there is, broadly speaking, cross-party agreement on the principles of this. That is absolutely great. It bears repetition—constant repetition—and I am glad to see it.
I support much of the motion, particularly regarding an awful lot of the 34 recommendations in the report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life—but not quite all. There are many things that are extremely admirable and that I have called for myself. I would disagree with what the committee has said on a couple of things, despite the fact that overall its report is excellent. I want to add one or two things that it has become clear over the past few days need to be done to further strengthen the role of the independent adviser on the ministerial code. Many parts of the report have already been introduced. I will not repeat what my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister outlined and go through those things again, but they are welcome and they are necessary. I supported them as they were introduced and I still support them today.
However, a great number of the recommendations in the CSPL report have not yet been introduced, and I devoutly hope that they will be. Incidentally, a parallel report, the Boardman report—No. 3; he has done several—was issued in the middle of last year, and a Government response remains outstanding. I hope that I can press the Minister to explain to us in his closing remarks—or any Member on the Front Bench to explain to us—when and whether the response to the Boardman report will be put out. Logically, the Government should respond to that report at the same time as they respond to the CSPL report. The two go together; they have mutually complementary recommendations, and they should be responded to at the same time.
For example, both the Boardman report and that from the Committee on Standards in Public Life recommend proposals for the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments—that is, on what we as Members of Parliament can all do after we have left this place, such as the jobs we can take outside, and on whether we should be bound by that committee’s recommendations. There is a really simple, clear and sensible recommendation in the Boardman report, which I think is duplicated in the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, to require Ministers to sign a legal deed to say, “I will abide by the decisions of ACOBA.” Those decisions would therefore become legally binding on the Minister concerned, even if they ceased to be a Minister.
There are a series of very sensible proposals in the report by the CSPL and in the Boardman report that need to be implemented. They need to be introduced, and quickly, because as we have heard today the noise of public drumming of fingers and tapping of feet while we wait to say that this is not good enough and that we need to raise our standards and our game as a democracy is getting ever louder. We cannot afford to wait.
Those proposals need to be introduced, and ditto the proposals on lobbying, incidentally. The CSPL makes a series of recommendations on lobbying—recommendations 26 to 30 for anybody who is interested—that complement the recommendations that have been either discussed or recommended by the Select Committee on Standards. I forget their precise status, and I suspect the Chair of that Committee is about to put me right.
Chris Bryant
We have already made our recommendation and produced our report, and I hope that the Government will allow time before the summer recess for us to adopt a new code of conduct for the House.
John Penrose
I thank the Chair for that clarification, and he is absolutely right. If we put those recommendations alongside the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s proposals on lobbying, they make a suite of proposals that will make our democracy much more robust, much cleaner, much more transparent and, in general, much better. We should do those things immediately, and I encourage the Minister to put his foot down on the accelerator as hard as he possibly can to get them out, agreed and announced as quickly as possible.
There is much to agree with in the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I would, however, venture to agree with the Minister when he says that there is one major concern—one, but it is important—about the notion of putting some of the recommendations on a statutory footing rather than adhering to the traditional constitutional principle that it has to be the Prime Minister who appoints and can dismiss his or her Cabinet. That is absolutely fundamental for any Prime Minister. It does not matter if they are a Labour Prime Minister, a coalition Prime Minister or a Conservative Prime Minister, it is absolutely fundamental. On that one important point I would respectfully depart from the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
I will not trouble the House very much longer, but I said at the start of my speech that I wanted to add a couple of points about the role of the independent adviser on the ministerial code that I believe have been revealed in the past couple of days. We heard earlier in an intervention from the Chair of the Standards Committee that the independent adviser feels that it is impossible for him to make a recommendation because if his advice were not followed, he would feel that he had to resign. In this particular case, when the question is whether the Prime Minister’s conduct has followed the ministerial code, which has never happened before, that has led to the adviser not issuing any recommendations or findings of fact, as he would with any other Minister. That is not good enough. It cannot be allowed to continue and is not strong enough as a way in which the independent adviser should work.
I will propose to further changes, which I hope the Minister will listen to and follow. The first is that we should be very clear that it should not be a resigning matter for the independent adviser if his or her advice is not followed by the Prime Minister of the day. They should issue independent advice. In the same way, Sir Chris Whitty issued advice to the Prime Minister during the pandemic on the medical and scientific options available to him. Sometimes the Prime Minister took that advice, sometimes he did not, but Sir Chris Whitty did not have to resign every time he did not. It would have been plainly bonkers if he had done so and I believe that the same principle should apply to the independent adviser. They should offer advice and it is then up to the Prime Minister to accept it or not and to justify his or her decision to Parliament as a result.
The corollary of that is that, although it is too late now, in this case the independent adviser should have been able and expected, had we introduced such a change, to issue a report on whether the Prime Minister had followed the ministerial code. The independent adviser had the Sue Gray report in front of him and could therefore have said, “This means that the Prime Minister followed the ministerial code here, and did not follow it there. This one is a serious breach, that is a minor breach and that is not a breach at all.” At that point, we as a House would have had something to get our teeth into, and that would have clarified the situation and stripped out an awful lot of inevitable party political posturing as we would all have had a common shared base of facts. Without that, the subsequent debate has been a great deal less targeted, a great deal less clear and a great deal less effective.
Chris Bryant
I completely agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has just said about the supposedly independent adviser on the ministerial code. I wonder whether his interpretation of what Lord Geidt wrote is the same as mine. My reading of it was that he basically felt that the Prime Minister had breached the ministerial code but he did not feel he could say so.
John Penrose
I did not reach that conclusion, which is why I waited until I saw the Prime Minister’s reply justifying his view of his approach to the ministerial code, which he published last week and on which I intervened on the Minister earlier. That was what then led me, very sadly and with great regret, to resign my post yesterday. None the less, I am pleased to note that the hon. Gentleman agrees with my broader point about the way in which the independent adviser’s powers should be further amended. I am afraid that that has only just become apparent in the course of the past week or so, but it is a further important omission. Without those changes, the entire process remains toothless if in future we have a question over whether the Prime Minister him or herself has adhered to the ministerial code.
Margaret Beckett
I have been thinking about what the hon. Gentleman said earlier, when he said that he differed from the views of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Perhaps I did not follow exactly the terms of his observations, so I would be grateful if he would correct me, but I got the impression that he was saying that he could not go all the way with the committee because he thought that we were giving the power to the independent adviser to decide whether a Minister came and went. That is not the case. In the committee’s recommendations, the independent adviser is to advise on whether there has been a breach, but it is for the Prime Minister to make the decision.
John Penrose
I can reassure the right hon. Lady that I meant what she just said. My point about departing from the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life is about whether to make some of these bodies statutory and to allow court oversight, which is a constitutional point rather than the one she is making. I was entirely content with the point made by the committee that she has just clarified.
My final point about the role of the independent adviser on the ministerial code is that if we make the two changes that I have just described, we will make sure that the process has teeth, but one further change will still be required. If the Prime Minister is found by the independent adviser to have made a material breach of the ministerial code, it will then be necessary for this Parliament to sit in judgment on that report, because no one else can do it. The Prime Minister certainly cannot because he or she would be judge and jury in their own case, which is fundamentally never going to work. We will have to do that in a democratic way—we are ultimately the high court of Parliament; that is what we are here to do. At the moment, I do not think that our Standing Orders allow us to address that point—not about the Government, which I remain strongly in favour of and I support, but about the Prime Minister as an individual. The provision to censure or introduce other motions is, I believe, insufficiently clear and easy in that one specific and important case. Without it, the process will not have the necessary teeth and claws. We hope that they will never have to be used, but they have to be there just in case they are needed. With that, I will leave the debate to go on.
Several hon. Members rose—