Committee on Standards: Decision of the House

Bob Seely Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

With respect, Mr Speaker dealt with that at the opening of this debate and made it clear that both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the SNP had discussed with him the debate today.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I abstained last week, so I thank the Government absolutely for the apology; it is completely the right thing to do. I want to put on record that, despite the fact that I abstained and I occasionally have the misfortune to vote against this Government, they continue to be nothing but supportive of both myself and the people of the Isle of Wight.

[Steve Barclay]

It is helpful to get that on the record.

The Government will now redouble our efforts to engage on a cross-party basis—and, indeed with you, Mr Speaker—in the days ahead, because we know what we can achieve when we do so. For example, in collaboration with others, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) worked hard when she was Leader of the House to establish the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme. The scheme, to which the Government are wholly committed, is a model with many strengths. It includes an appeals process and an ability to adjudicate complex cases by virtue of its independent expert panel that is led by a High Court judge. Overall, the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme brings with it the expectation of rigour, impartiality and fairness for both the complainant and respondent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I make two points. The first is that the hon. Gentleman basically just agreed with me wholeheartedly, because the whole point of these panels is that they are there only where there are disputed facts and there were no disputed facts in this case. The second point, where I would wholeheartedly agree with him, is that the facts speak for themselves—they certainly did in this case. Mr Paterson at no stage denied that he had engaged in the various different meetings with Government Ministers and officials. So I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman’s argument falls on both counts.

Let me just read the words of Thomas de la Mare, a highly respected lawyer at Blackstone Chambers, who reviewed this matter. He did not do so for the Committee; he has published this himself. He says:

“If the decision-maker has had the 17 witness statements, read them and rightly found them to be irrelevant there is no conceivable breach of natural justice in not calling them in…The idea that this pretty exhaustively conducted 2 stage case of inquiry by the commissioner and then full review by the Committee evinces a broken system or justifies the egregious step of changing the rules mid game is absurd.. All in all the Cmtee decision looks pretty bomb proof: balanced, fair once you understand how relevance of material works, carefully reasoned (and probably carefully lawyered) and the very appeal/review of the Commissioner OP”—

Owen Paterson—

“wanted. Given this what has happened next is tawdry”.

So what next? In the end, the Standards Committee exists only to serve the House and to try to protect the reputation of the House. First, we are already reviewing the code of conduct. There are perfectly legitimate arguments to be made about how we should change various different elements. MPs are now regulated by so many different bodies that it is sometimes difficult for right hon. and hon. Members to understand exactly what the rules are that affect them. I hate the idea that a right hon. or hon. Member will be tripped up by a rule that they simply did not understand through some inadvertent action. So I do want to make sure that we have greater clarity in the way that the whole of our code of conduct and guide to the rules is available to Members.

[Bob Seely]

The hon. Gentleman speaks with his customary eloquence, and he knows how much his speech was impactful last week. Are there specific issues that he would like to see improved or does he think that the current process is fundamentally sound?

[Chris Bryant]

I think we gave Owen Paterson a fair hearing; in all honesty, it is very difficult to argue that we did not. I have wracked my brain as to measures that we might evince, but I am only the Chair of the Committee and want to allow the Committee to come to a view on reforms that we might suggest, although I have suggested in the newspapers over the past few days a few things that I personally would like to see.

The important point is that we are reviewing the code of conduct, as we are required to do in every Parliament. We did not manage to do it in the 2015 or 2017 Parliaments because we kept on having general elections, so it would be great if we did not have a general election for a while so that we could finish our work on the code. It is worth saying that we published the terms of reference for our code of conduct review on 22 September 2020 and have been engaged in the review since then. We took evidence from the Leader of the House earlier this year.

There is an argument for improvements to some of the process. As the hon. Member for South Leicestershire knows, I personally favour clarifying what we do about appeals. There is currently an appeal, and a Member can appeal to the Committee on any basis whatsoever, whereas if we were to have a de jure appeal instead of a de facto appeal process, we would need a set of criteria against which a Member could appeal, which might actually restrict Members’ rights of appeal rather than enhance them. That is a difficulty that we have to deal with.

There is an issue in respect of whether a Member should be able to appeal against the sanction rather than the findings, and I am quite happy to listen to what the Committee eventually decides on that, as I am sure the House will want to do as well.