Code of Conduct

Lord Campbell of Pittenweem Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barron]

Well, I thank the hon. Gentleman for the speech. He is a hard-working member of the Committee, as well as a member of other Committees that look into standards in public life. He is well worth listening to.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

I apologise for not being in my place for the start of the debate; I was rather taken aback by the speed of previous proceedings. Let me try to put it this way. Building on what the right hon. Gentleman said a few moments ago, would he accept that the purpose of paragraph 16A is to create a presumption against investigation of private life unless the Committee determines in its judgment that such an investigation should take place?

[Mr Barron]

Yes, I understand that point, but I fear that the intention could be misinterpreted. I fully understand the issue that the right hon. and learned Gentleman raises, and I hope that the hon. Member for Broxbourne will tell us about the amendment in more detail. If it is withdrawn, it will be perfectly possible to return to the issue when the revised guide to the rules comes before us in the not-too-distant future. That revision to the guide will be more detailed than what appears in the current three-page code of conduct, which is out for consultation. If the Committee itself has not proposed that the commission should consult before opening an inquiry into personal and private matters, the House could insert such a provision, but I feel that the provision would be more helpful in the guidance than in a code of conduct that tends to contradict elements of it.

The other important clarification is the introduction of a new paragraph 15 making it clear that Members are personally responsible for the extent to which their use of expenses and allowances accords with the rules. Clearly there is nothing new in that. The current Members’ handbook warns Members that the facilities and services of the House are provided to assist Members in their parliamentary work and should be used appropriately.

Defining parliamentary purposes is, of course, not easy. Members’ roles are various, and we are, with very rare exceptions, elected as party candidates and uphold our parties in Parliament. That is very different from using public funding for party campaigning, or to support party organisations. Having considered the definition extremely carefully, the Committee recommends that the rules make it clear that public money should not be used to

“confer undue advantage on a political organisation”.

Most of the other changes consist of clarifications and re-ordering to make the code more coherent. One change that has attracted some comment is the proposal to remove paragraph 12 of the code, which refers to the need to be open and frank with Ministers, Members and officials. We suggest that it should be included in a new paragraph 13, which would also cover the declaration and registration of interests in the House. That would make it clear that Members should

“always be open and frank in drawing attention to any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its House or its Committees, and in any communications with Ministers, Members, public officials or public office holders.”

That is a clarification rather than a substantive change. Its roots lie in one of the more painful cases that the Committee has had to consider: the so-called Lobbygate, in which Members were drawn into discussing jobs that they might undertake after they had left the House. One of the cases arising from that involved the failure of my good friend Mr Richard Caborn to declare an interest in a meeting with the chairman of a health authority. At the time, it was argued that the rules governing declaration did not cover such cases, as the person concerned was not a Minister or a civil servant. Our judgment was that the spirit of the rules was clear: their purpose was to ensure that Members were transparent in their dealings with people who might be in a position to influence public policy or the spending of public money. However, we believed that the rules could be better expressed, and these changes achieve that.

One of the great sadnesses involved in dealing with standards cases is that we must deal with what comes before us. The Committee cannot simply refuse to look into a matter because it was a case of entrapment or a single transgression in a distinguished career, and there are a limited number of sanctions that it can recommend to the House. It is a mark of the respect and affection in which Richard Caborn is held that extremely senior people have asked the Committee to reconsider his case. We have considered the matter carefully on more than one occasion, but ultimately we decided that we had considered the rules carefully at the time of our original finding.

It may help, however, if I discuss some of the matters that were set out clearly in the original report and debate. The commissioner and the Committee agreed that the breach of the rules was inadvertent. As I said at the time, the penalty that we proposed was

“intended to be light, because we recognised that Mr Caborn did not intend to breach the rules or to bring the House or its Members generally into disrepute.”

An inadvertent slip should not obscure Mr Caborn’s long record of distinguished public service, and I hope that it does not do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

I welcome the chance to intervene briefly in this interesting debate, and I commend the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) for his speech in moving the motion and for his work on the Committee on Standards and Privileges during his time as Chair, including his work in producing the two reports we are considering today. The House will have noted what he said in response to the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker).

I also commend the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon, for his work as commissioner. His term of office concludes at the end of this year, and it is possible that this will be the last debate on the work of his office, in general terms, during it. He has faced a work load that neither he nor anyone else could have foreseen when he was first appointed, he has discharged his responsibilities conscientiously and effectively and been a source of wisdom and good sense for the Committee on Standards and Privileges and its successive Chairs. I say that with added conviction as the Chair at the time of his appointment.

The review of the code that the commissioner has carried out reflects the experience he has gathered during his term. The overwhelming majority of the changes he has proposed represent sensible changes, improving the clarity and structure of the code without affecting its overall scope and meaning. In particular, the changes help to distinguish the aspirational parts of the code from the adjudicable part.

I want briefly to touch on four areas that have attracted particular interest, namely the application of the code to hon. Members’ private lives, the code in relation to constituency responsibilities, personal responsibility for the use of resources, and the principle of equal application to all hon. Members.

On the first matter, the commissioner, the Committee and the House have wrestled, and are wrestling, with the vexed issue of how far the code applies to hon. Members’ private lives, which is the subject of the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne and others. In my submission to the review, which has already been quoted, I said that the distinction between private and public lives was

“important, even if it is not always clear”.

I noted that an extension to private lives might lead to an infringement of human rights, a point also made in the submission by the chair of Standards for England.

I further pointed out that any such extension

“could also be used to justify intrusive and prurient media interest in Members’ private lives, on the basis that if the House chooses to concern itself with Members’ personal lives—however sparingly—then there should be no limits to the media doing likewise”.

[Sir Menzies Campbell]

As my right hon. Friend will know, the code must be read as a whole. Has he had time to look at paragraph 18, which provides:

“The Commissioner may investigate a specific matter relating to a Member’s adherence to the rules of conduct under the Code”

and the following sentence, which states:

“Members shall cooperate, at all stages, with any such investigation by or under the authority of the House”?

If the investigation is into private life, that necessarily means that if a Member refused to answer a question on his or her private life, he or she could be regarded as breaching that part of the code.

[Sir George Young]

My right hon. and learned Friend is right. Once an inquiry has been started by the commissioner, Members are obliged to co-operate and if they do not, they will face consequences from the Committee on Standards. That paragraph would then kick in.

The commissioner has concluded that being an hon. Member is a way of life. As he put it, an hon. Member

“is never off duty. Once elected, a serving Member is likely always to be seen as a Member of Parliament, with the duties and obligations that go with that position, wherever they are and whatever they are doing.”

I personally paused at the assertion that I am never off duty, and I think my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne and other colleagues might have had the same reaction. I think that there are times when I am off duty. The commissioner’s conclusion is that an hon. Member’s conduct in both their private and wider public lives is excluded from the provisions of the code

“unless such conduct significantly damages the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole or of its Members generally”.

This is a very high hurdle for investigation, and that approach was endorsed by the Committee on Standards and Privileges.

The amendment, if the subject of a complaint related only to the conduct of a Member in his or her private and personal life, would have the effect of providing that it could not be investigated. I am confident that the Members who have proposed the amendment have no wish to argue that Members should be subject to special treatment that is not available to others. The issue at stake is simply whether there would ever be circumstances in which it would be appropriate for the commissioner to undertake an investigation into a matter that did not intersect at all with an hon. Member’s conduct in his or her public capacity. That is a matter for the House and each hon. Member to consider and it is not an issue on which it is appropriate for the Government to take a collective view, although I am personally sympathetic to the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne.

The House will also want to reflect on the offer made by the Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee to take the House’s concern and address it in the revised guide, which, as I understand it, would leave the code unamended and insert an additional step in the process, in that the Committee would have to agree to the commissioner conducting an inquiry in this particular domain. I am sure that the House will welcome those offers and will want to reflect on them.

Another potential matter of contention is the application of the code to constituency matters. In his memorandum, the commissioner makes it clear that the way an hon. Member handles constituency business should not be adjudicable by the commissioner, and I agree. He suggests that the House would only wish to consider an instance that was

“so serious and blatant as to cause significant damage to the reputation of the House”.

I agree that it is very hard indeed to envisage these criteria being met.

On the third issue, in my submission to the review I supported proposals for redrafting the code in line with recommendations by the Committee on Standards in Public Life

“so that the House has a clear basis to take action against any Member who has abused the IPSA scheme”.

The commissioner proposed to do that by means of a provision that stated that the use of public resources may not confer a political benefit. The Committee on Standards and Privileges has suggested a change, arising from its observation that it is unrealistic to expect that parliamentary activities legitimately funded from the political purse might never confer an indirect political benefit. The new code rightly makes it clear that Members should be clear that the use of public resources must always be in support of their parliamentary duties and should not confer any undue personal or financial benefit on themselves or anyone else or confer undue advantage on a political organisation. I agree that that formulation is in line with the original proposals of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which used the phrase “undue advantage”.

Finally, the commissioner considered and rejected a number of proposals that would involve separate rules for hon. Members who were former Ministers or who were Opposition Front Benchers. He did so on the basis of the principle that

“the Code should apply equally to all Members”.

That is a principle that I wholeheartedly support.

The second motion, as the right hon. Member for Rother Valley said, is more straightforward. It seeks the approval of the twenty-first report from the Committee on Standards and Privileges, which recommends extending the scope of registration to individual staff of all-party groups who hold passes and to transfer the onus of registration from the registered contact of the group to the staff member him or herself. As my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House stated in the debate on all-party groups on 7 February last year, all-party groups can play a valuable role provided they are transparent. That measure seems sensible and does not represent an abdication of responsibility by hon. Members who are officers of all-party groups. Instead, it reflects the proper situation whereby individuals who have the benefits of being a pass holder in this place should personally accept the responsibilities that flow from that.

I look forward to the rest of the debate and to the House coming to a decision on these vexed matters.