Prime Minister’s Adviser on Ministers’ Interests

Debate between Alun Cairns and Bernard Jenkin

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Government to implement the recommendation made by the Public Administration Select Committee in paragraph 44 of its Twenty-second Report of Session 2010-12, The Prime Minister’s Adviser on Ministers’ Interests: independent or not?, that the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests ‘should be empowered to instigate his own investigations’; and notes that this motion has been agreed by the Public Administration Select Committee.

I am extremely grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving the House this brief opportunity to express an opinion on this question today. The Public Administration Select Committee motion is supported by no less than 18 Select Committee Chairmen. The issue turns on a simple question of principle, which is whether or not the Prime Minister’s adviser on Ministers’ interests should be able to decide for him or herself to investigate a potential breach of the ministerial code. All the credible advice that we have received suggests that such a decision should be a matter for the adviser and not for the Prime Minister.

The Public Administration Select Committee—PASC—has advocated that course of action since the first adviser, Sir John Bourn, was appointed by Tony Blair in March 2006. The ministerial code sets out the circumstances in which the adviser—always referred to as the “independent adviser”—is requested to investigate alleged breaches of the code. Under the present arrangements, the question of whether or not to investigate is therefore in the hands of the Prime Minister of the day, on the advice of the Cabinet Secretary.

In 2006, in paragraph 17 of PASC’s report entitled “The Ministerial Code: the case for independent investigation”, the Committee warned:

“It is hard to see how the Independent Adviser can command public confidence if the Prime Minister can decide that prima facie breaches of the Code will not be investigated. Put simply, there is no point in having an investigator in post if he is not given discretion to investigate very public allegations that the Code has been breached.”

Paragraph 20 of the report points out:

“The decision to instigate an investigation still lies with the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is clearly not an impartial figure when it comes to deciding whether or not to instigate an investigation. If the regulatory system is to have credibility, that decision must be taken out of political hands.”

In paragraph 34 of the report, the Committee therefore concluded:

“Until the changes we outline have taken place, it is inappropriate to refer to the new investigator as an Independent Adviser.”

The previous Government refused to accept PASC’s recommendation because they believed that

“it must ultimately be for the Prime Minister to account to Parliament for his decisions and actions in relation to the appointment of his Ministers”.

I have to say that that rather missed the point. The Committee was not suggesting that the Prime Minister should cease to make decisions about who to appoint or to dismiss as Ministers, or that he should cease to account to Parliament for those decisions. It merely suggested that he should be supported by truly independent advice.

PASC’s most recent report on the subject, entitled “The Prime Minister’s adviser on Ministers’ interests: independent or not?” was published this year. In it, we concluded that, because our previous recommendations had not been implemented,

“the title of ‘independent adviser’ is a misnomer.”

Paragraph 44 of that report also reiterated PASC’s central recommendation

“that the independent adviser should be empowered to instigate his own investigations. The Prime Minister could do this on his own initiative, without any need for legislation, but placing the post on a statutory footing would be preferable.”

The disadvantages of the present arrangements have been manifest in recent months. Sir Philip Mawer, the previous incumbent, expressed his frustration to the Committee that he was given no role in the investigation of the conduct of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) in respect of Adam Werritty, and suggested that there needed to be a willingness to engage the adviser earlier in the process of investigating potential breaches of the ministerial code. In that case, the Cabinet Secretary conducted the investigation instead of the adviser. Why? We were told that the adviser would have taken too long. However, PASC has established that Sir Philip’s successor, Sir Alex Allan, will conduct swift preliminary inquiries if asked to do so, so that he can play his proper role. The problem of public perception was all the more acute in the case of the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport and the conduct of his special adviser, Adam Smith.

The problem with the present system is that as soon as the question of a serious potential breach of the code and a possible referral to the Prime Minister’s adviser arises, the Prime Minister is damned if he does, and damned if he does not. Referral is seen either as condemnation of the Minister’s conduct or as an attempt to protect the Minister from a full investigation. The same damage is done to the reputation of the Minister in question who, if innocent, would doubtless prefer the clean bill of health given by an independent investigation. In the more recent case, we finished up with one of the most unpleasant and acrimonious debates in the House of Commons that I have ever witnessed. The office of the independent adviser was set up to improve public confidence in the conduct of Government, but that episode does not vindicate it as a success.

Changing the procedure would avoid all that. It would make the adviser more genuinely independent, and it would help to remove the public suspicion that ministerial conduct can be protected from proper investigation. Short preliminary investigations, unimpeded by political considerations, would speed up the whole process.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his chairing of the Committee and for the contribution that he is making today. I strongly support what he is saying. Can he offer the House any guidance on how we can best protect against potential witch hunts by those in the media who simply want to make life difficult for a Minister and get an investigation under way?

[Mr Jenkin]

I submit that that would be a question of the robustness of the adviser. The process would operate in a similar way to that of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, in that if the adviser felt that there was a serious case to answer, he would pursue it. If he thought that it was based on hearsay or tittle-tattle, he would dismiss it. Obviously, the moment at which he announced an investigation would be a threshold moment, but we have experience of that with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who operates in that manner.