Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Oh goodness me! My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition, in contrast with the Prime Minister, is actually trying to strengthen the rules, not weaken them. In strengthening them, he is showing no fear, no favour and no concern for whether that has an impact on MPs on the Opposition Benches or on the Government Benches. He is trying to propose something that strengthens the rules across the board. I think that is important and really matters. The Leader of the Opposition has also quite properly declared everything. We should note that in all parties there are lawyers, doctors and members of the armed forces who serve as reservists, whose professional qualifications we may wish them to keep up. Since he became the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. and learned Friend has not taken on any private practice, and I believe he has relinquished his licence. That shows admirable dedication, in contrast with the Prime Minister: all he has done is try to rip up the rulebook.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I apologise for interrupting the flow of my hon. Friend’s excellent speech. Does she share my dismay over where we have got to today? We are still debating this issue and, rather than raising and elevating this House, the interventions from Government Members appear to wish to drag us all into the gutter.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is a very sad day, because, rather than taking this on the chin, admitting they made a mistake, which they seemed to be doing last week, and moving on constructively, the Government just want to give the very false impression that all MPs are for sale. That is simply not true and they know it.

Paid advocacy has been against the rules since 1695, so it is not a new rule, but, throughout the centuries, especially in the past three decades, the standards system has been strengthened—until the last fortnight. That consensus has been systematically shredded by this Government—whether it is the Prime Minister not enforcing the ministerial code on his Cabinet or the Leader of the House seeking to undermine the standards procedure—and this has to stop. It is not good enough. The public—our constituents—rightly expect and deserve better than this.

The previous Labour Government legislated to clean up politics after the Tory sleaze of the 1990s. I give as examples: the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000; the ministerial code; freedom of information; public registers of donations and national election spending; and the Electoral Commission, which this Government also seem to want to undermine. Those all came about because of the Labour Government, whereas in 2018, when the independent and external Committee on Standards in Public Life, set up to deal with the previous Tory scandal, recommended that the MPs’ code of conduct should be updated, the Tory Government ignored it. The report said:

“MPs should not accept any paid work to provide services as a parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant, for example, advising on parliamentary affairs or on how to influence Parliament and its members. MPs should never accept any payment or offers of employment to act as political or parliamentary consultants or advisers.”

It could not be clearer, and that is what our motion today sets out to achieve. I hope that the Government will be supporting this, because, as I have said and I will say it again, no MP should be for hire. This is not about outside interests per se, because the vast majority of Members work tirelessly to represent their constituents and are not seeking to privately profit from that work. Outside interests are often a way for MPs to connect with the world outside of this place—a point that has been made by many MPs and others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

One thing on which we can all agree today is what a sorry state of affairs it is that we are having to debate how to strengthen standards in public life. We need to be clear on how we got here, because this was coming a lot earlier than the vote on Owen Paterson and the Government’s decision to reject the Standards Committee’s report and findings into his activities.

In our system of parliamentary government, it has, quite rightly, been the convention that Ministers are accountable to Parliament for the actions of their Departments, but the current Conservative Government seem to take a somewhat different view. They have been content to close ranks to protect political allies from accountability and see no problem in hanging departmental officials out to dry for policy failures, deflecting blame and avoiding ministerial responsibility.

It was telling that when the Business Secretary was asked to name a single thing that the Prime Minister had done to deliver integrity and probity in public life, he was unable to do so. The best he could come up with was to say that the Conservative manifesto pledge to leave the EU had been delivered. What a low bar this Government have set when they find delivery of one of their election pledges somehow remarkable—good grief. The truth is that, while the Prime Minister says he believes in high standards in public life, his actions too often demonstrate the opposite.

When the Home Secretary was accused of bullying civil servants, the Prime Minister rejected the findings of his independent adviser, effectively forcing his resignation. When the Government ignored repeated warnings over last year’s GCSE and A-level results, it was senior officials at Ofqual and the Department for Education, not the Education Secretary, who took the rap for that inevitable fiasco. By saying that he considered the matter closed as soon as the former Health and Social Care Secretary was found to have breached covid rules, the Prime Minister seriously undermined the ministerial code.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

On the issue of Ministers breaking the code, last weekend The Sunday Times wrote about a Transport Minister who allegedly misused taxpayers’ money?

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I think that we have got the point.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I think that we could all raise example upon example of this Government’s saying, “Do as I say but not as I do”, and not following through on their promises.

It is difficult to imagine 10 or 20 years ago a Government unlawfully proroguing Parliament without even the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House resigning, or at least having the decency to admit that they were wrong. It is unclear what the Prime Minister thinks that he, his Ministers and sometimes his MPs should be held accountable for, if anything at all. For our system of accountability to work, we need the Government to be open and willing to learn from their mistakes. The deterioration in standards that is happening under this Government is not only morally wrong; it is the opposite of good governance. Covering for incompetence or corruption—and sometimes both simultaneously—can only lead to poor leadership and bad policy, which harms the people we are elected to represent. The scapegoating of unelected officials when things go wrong must stop.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the Chair of the Standards Committee, put it well last week when he reminded the House that parliamentary democracy in its present form has not been around for long at all. It is fragile and precious, and must be protected from Governments who seek to undermine it for their own short-term gain. The Chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Lord Evans, clearly anticipated this danger when he said:

“The risk is that we think it couldn’t possibly happen in this country. The fact is it could, and that is why we need to make sure we don’t take decisions which would lead us in the wrong direction”.

I will finish by quoting President Lyndon Johnson, who famously said, “It takes a carpenter to build a barn, but any jackass can knock it down”. I know that I am not alone in my deep concerns about the long-term impact on our democracy of a Government who all too frequently act with no sense of decency, dignity or shame.