Standards in Public Life

Debate between Baroness Beckett and John Penrose

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[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.