All-party Parliamentary Groups

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I think I have to declare an interest because—I have totted them up—I am the chair of nine APPGs at the moment.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Ten.

[Tim Loughton]

All right, the figure may be 10 if I have missed one out, but, in hurriedly putting some notes together, I could remember nine.

I chair the APPG for children, which is a substantial group. Over many years, it has produced some reports that have led to changes in the law, and I do not think that anybody is going to challenge the legitimacy of that. I chair the 1001 critical days group, or the APPG on conception to age two—first 1001 days. That was the genesis of the Government’s “best start” policy, brought in by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), which has played an important part in early years provision. I chair the APPG on archaeology, which briefs parliamentarians on changes to the law regarding the influence of archaeology on the environment, agricultural matters and cultural matters, and it is very active.

I chair the British Museum APPG, which met only yesterday. It has an important job, given that it was this House that established the British Museum back in the 18th century. When there are serious challenges ahead—the future of collections such as the Elgin marbles, for example—this House must have a voice. I chair the APPG for Armenia, which I took on reluctantly from my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) because he was a Minister again. I was told there would be very little going on, and within a few weeks Azerbaijan invaded Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia became a very hot topic. I have virtually weekly conversations with the ambassador and others on this subject, so it is an active group.

I chair the reformed Wilton Park group, an important foreign affairs melting pot financed by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I chair the all-party group on mindfulness, which has done so much good for the mentality, mental health and camaraderie of Members in this House since its formation about 10 years ago, with the strapline of “disagreeing better”; that is very relevant, and it is one of the more active groups. I chair the all-party group on Tibet, which has been absolutely essential to the whole issue of China’s abuse of human rights not just in Tibet but in Xinjiang and beyond.

I chair, too, the all-party group on photography. I took that role on after the murder of our former colleague Sir David Amess. Because I was the next named officer, very shortly after his murder I was, disgracefully, contacted by the registrar to say, “You must have an EGM within 30 days to appoint a new chair,” completely oblivious to the circumstances of the loss of our previous chair. That was how I got to take on that role. The group exists largely to organise the annual photography exhibition, which Mr Speaker very kindly supports and will be attending again later in the autumn. So those are my interests—and there is apparently a tenth one that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) will tell me about. I will therefore automatically be caught under these rules, so I have a double interest.

I do not criticise the report, although I disagree with some of its findings, but I think it has gone largely under the radar and many Members are going to be very surprised if and when it goes through that they will be impacted. I absolutely take the point from my right hon. Friend the Veterans Minister, who I am delighted is here to defend these measures today, that the all-party group system is an important part of Parliament—the report itself says that as well—and that new rules should not deter all-party parliamentary groups. I am afraid they will, however, for some good reasons and for other, unintended not-so-good reasons.

[Tim Loughton]

All right then, I will, but my concern is that there has been very little profile for this report and study. I notice that only one Member of Parliament submitted written evidence and only one gave formal evidence to the Committee, and I cannot see that there were any submissions or calls to give evidence face to face from any chairs of all-party groups, let alone multiple chairs of all-party groups.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

But the Chairman of the Standards Committee is probably about to correct me.

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[Sir Chris Bryant]

Yes, I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to the second round. We had a first report, for which quite a lot of people submitted evidence—both members of the public and Members of Parliament—and we also did a survey of all Members, which a large number responded to. We had other submissions as well, and various Committee Chairs appeared before us.

[Tim Loughton]

I am referring to the second report because we are discussing the second report. Because there was quite a gap between this study being initiated and this final report being issued, with final recommendations with imminent implications, many people thought this would not happen and might be kicked into the long grass. We all have to take responsibility if we have not noticed things, but the fact that very few people took part in the second report suggests there was a large degree of ignorance that it was taking place.

I agree that there is a problem: there are too many all-party groups—over 800—and I came to that conclusion some years ago when I was invited to the inaugural meeting of the all-party group on meetings. That was not a joke; it did get established—although I do not know whether it is still going or whether it has just had one big meeting right from the start. There are a number of all-party group subjects that clearly stretch credibility, and the fear is that too many of them are in danger of being hijacked by lobbying groups, commercial trade bodies and other interests to give them a platform in Parliament that they otherwise would not be able to get. I absolutely understand that that is a problem and something needs to be done about it. That demonstrates the case for making it harder to set up APPGs in the first place and having stricter rules for the way they operate and their transparency. Everything in the report on transparency, including financial transparency and having a much better check on financial contributions or freebies to certain Members, is essential. I have no issue with any of that and will certainly support it.

On the issuing of passes, none of the groups I am involved in have, to the best of my knowledge, issued passes to any outside bodies, which I think absolutely goes beyond the pale. I agree, too, with having an annual income and expenditure statement and an annual report. Those are all sensible recommendations, and there might be a compendium of all the activities that go on through all-party groups, which would be a good selling point in highlighting why the all-party groups are an important part of this House and the work they do.

Many all-party groups, including many I am involved in, commission reports. In some cases, we act as quasi-Select Committees to take evidence and produce reviews that are intended specifically to influence Governments and political parties and feed into legislation. They get publicity and are generally a good thing.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman betrays something I have worried about for some time when he refers to quasi-Select Committees, because APPGs do not have the authority of the whole House. It is a really important distinction that they are not constituted like Select Committees or any other Committee of the House. We have striven very hard to make that important distinction, which is why a specific rubric has to be put on any APPG publication saying it is not from a formal Committee of the House.

[Tim Loughton]

That is absolutely right, but although they are not Select Committees they can adopt a Select Committee style in taking evidence in order to produce reports. The Select Committee system works really well. I have sat on the Select Committee on Home Affairs for nine years, and those Committees are one of the strengths of this House, but they cannot cover everything. The all-party groups can drill down into more specialised, niche issues that a Select Committee would never have the time or capacity to take on, in order to produce a report on something specific. A few years ago the all-party group for children produced a report on stop and search by police of young children. We took some very important evidence and produced a report with recommendations that led to a change in guidance. So there was a very clear role for doing that group, and the then Select Committee on Home Affairs did not have the time or remit to be able to cover the issue. We produced a valuable report that had a clear implication at the end of it. So all of those things are good, which is why we do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

It is sensible to have a two-tier approach for groups that have outside funding, but that funding includes benefits in kind. The National Children’s Bureau is the secretariat to the all-party parliamentary group for children. It does not give us any money. It will organise receptions occasionally to promote our work, it will pay the hire fee for one of the rooms here, for example, and it gives us its time for free, which is a benefit in kind, but none of us receives any money or any perks because of that. The NCB would certainly be caught by this measure, and so would a lot of smaller groups and charities acting as secretariats.

On groups having a minimum of four officers rather than the unlimited amount at the moment, I have been involved with groups that have had large numbers of officers. We do not necessarily need so many, but four is too few. One strength of all-party groups is in the name: they are all-party groups. One wants to get as many parties represented as possible, including in the Lords, as groups are made up of Members of both Houses. To limit them to four officers may limit representation to only two parties—I think it would still apply that they would have to have an Opposition Member as an officer—would not give us a broad spread, so I do not understand the logic of having just four officers.

On limiting each individual Member to being an officer of only six APPGs, I would instantly fall foul of that. In some cases, it may be an excuse for me to be able to say, “I’m very sorry, I can’t be a chairman of that anymore” and I can stand down. But the groups I have taken on—I have given up others in the past, and perhaps there are too many—are on subjects in which I have a strong interest, are active and I think serve a good purpose for the House that I would not be a part of otherwise. So I instantly have a problem. If the new rules are coming in on 16 October, subject to any transition rules of which we know no details—the motion states they will come in when we come back after the conference recess—how is that going to work? The Chairman of the Standards Committee is about to tell me how it is going to work, which may delete my next paragraph.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

It might be best if the hon. Gentleman waits until I make my speech, because I will lay it all out very clearly. It is printed in the documents, but groups will have to have had an AGM or an extraordinary general meeting, which they can do virtually or by correspondence if they want to, by 31 March next year.

[Tim Loughton]

Therein lies the problem. There is no common year end for all APPGs. We had the AGM of the all-party parliamentary group for photography at the beginning of this week, because yesterday was the end of our year when we had to do that by. There is another group for which I have another two months to hold it. After 16 October, when the AGMs start coming up, which groups do I then have to drop to take me down to six or below? It may be ones that I do not necessarily want to drop.

The point is, why are we bringing in this change at the tail end of a Parliament? This is quite a significant change and the obvious thing, surely, is to bring it in in the next Parliament, when none of the groups will exist until they are formed again if there is sufficient interest and a sufficient number of Members interested. There may be a larger number of Members required to set them up—that is a better way of doing it. At their genesis, APPGs, whether they are renewing from a previous Parliament or are genuinely new groups, need to justify the need for setting up that group. That could involve a higher threshold of Members needing to sign the form and somebody scrutinising in more detail whether it is a credible and legitimate APPG that will serve some positive purpose for the House.

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[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

First, may I put on record my gratitude to the members of the Standards Committee—both the MP members and the seven lay members—to all the Clerks and, in particular in regard to this paper, to James Davies, the registrar, and Philippa Wainwright, the other part of the team running the APPG register.

We have 762 APPGs at the moment. It is virtually impossible to have any kind of proper regulation or oversight of them, or examination of whether they are doing their job properly when we only have two members of staff, one of whom also does the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. So I pay enormous tribute to them for their work. They try to be as helpful as they possibly can be and to ensure that Members do not inadvertently break the rules, because the rules are complicated and there are too many of them.

We have rules for what we are allowed to do in the Chamber, the code of conduct, the behaviour code and the rules on APPGs. Then there are the stationery rules, the rules of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the ministerial code. All those bodies are different. Frankly, it is very difficult for most Members of Parliament to keep up. I am desperately keen, as is the Standards Committee, to try to have rules that are coherent, consistent and, to use a valleys word, “tidy”.

I used that phrase when we were introducing Ofcom, many years ago, and Hansard rendered “valleys” as “valets”. We do not have many valets in the valleys, so Iusb hope people understand what I mean. We are just trying to bring a bit of tidiness to the sets of rules that we have. Some of you may have valets who do that for you—I do not know why I am looking at you, Madam Deputy Speaker—or indeed batmen, if I am looking at the Minister who opened the debate.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

rose—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

And here comes my valet.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It does depend on how many Ls there are, and whether there is a T.

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[Sir Chris Bryant]

It does—and I have new hearing aids, so I am now quite precise about what I can hear and what I cannot hear in the Chamber.

The serious point here is that we have been lobbied incessantly, ever since I became Chair of the Committee, for new rules on APPGs, by successive Leaders of the House, shadow Leaders of the House, the Speaker, the Speaker in the Lords, Members of the House of Lords—because these are bicameral bodies—a large number of Members of the House of Commons, and external bodies which have been campaigning for changes in the rules because they think that the existing rules are far too flimsy and leave us exposed to a potential new scandal.

I did not like the way in which Sky presented the so-called Westminster Accounts. I thought that some of that was very unfair to individual Members, not least because it lumped any financial benefit that an APPG had received together with the financial interest of the individual Member. It looked as if some individual Members had received hundreds of thousands of pounds of financial support which had gone into their own pockets, whereas all the APPG was doing was trying to bring to the attention of Parliament and the voting public an issue relating to, for instance, a medical condition.

I am therefore keen to get a new set of APPG rules through. I have listened to everything that has been said in the Chamber, and I hope that I will have answers for pretty much everything. I am now looking at the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), because I am rarely able to satisfy him—the Member for Del Monte in his suit over there.

[Tim Loughton]

He say no. [Laughter.]

[Sir Chris Bryant]

One thing the hon. Gentleman said which I think is really important was that there are too many APPGs. That is true: 762 is just daft. One Member—I do not know who it is; I have not asked—is an officer of 88 groups. I admire their dedication, but I do not think that they can possibly exercise due diligence on 88 APPGs, especially those with financial interests. That is why we wanted to address the question of how many groups someone could be an officer of, and how many officers there should be for each one.

[Tim Loughton]

I hear what the hon. Member says, and I do not demur. I said at the outset that I thought there were too many APPGs. For example, dozens of them have some connection with children, which is why I recently brought as many of them as possible together to try to establish a common children’s manifesto. I am contacted virtually every week by someone asking whether I would be interested in setting up a new all-party group, to which my answer is invariably “No, we have too many already.” We need to merge more of these groups into one overarching interest. If there were more scrutiny at the outset, with someone asking, “Can we really justify setting up this APPG? Can it not be part of another one?”, that would be one way of cutting down the number at the beginning of each Parliament when they are set up.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

That was an idea that we toyed with. It was put to us that we should have a gatekeeper who would decide whether there could be, for instance, an all-party group for each of the Caribbean countries and one for the Caribbean as a whole, and one for each of the overseas territories as well as one for the overseas territories. The danger with that is the question of how to set the criteria for that person to be able to decide. It would mean putting a great deal of power in the hands of one individual, and that is why in the end we rejected the idea. We have reached a different set of conclusions, which we hope will lead to the same eventual outcome: that someone who currently chairs, or is an officer, of three APPGs in a fairly similar field will say, “Do you know what? I am going to try to get them all to combine, and I want to be the chair of the one.”

The guiding principle for us has been, first and foremost, that APPGs are, broadly speaking, a good thing, but there is a danger that they can be a very, very bad thing. It is certainly a bad thing if a commercial interest is effectively suborning Parliament, gaining a kind of accreditation by virtue of the APPG name. I would argue that this gets particularly acute when the secretariat is provided by an external body that is not even a charity but a PR company or a lobbying company. It seems to me that there is a commercial interest in their making APPGs just to keep themselves in business, and that is an inappropriate way for us to proceed. It leaves us open to real reputational risk for the whole House.

I will go through some of the points that have been made, starting with those made by the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers). He said that he was a trade envoy and an officer for six groups. I know that some trade envoys have decided no longer to be officers of the relevant groups because they are the trade envoy who has a relationship with the Government in relation to those countries. I gently suggest to him that that is a better, or perhaps more appropriate, way of proceeding. I understand fully why he may have ended up being a trade envoy, which is a good thing to be, although I worry about quite how the Government make people trade envoys and retain their commitment to the Government by virtue of doing so. I understand that he might have got there because of expressing his interest through those various groups. I would also say to Members that being a member of an all-party group is a perfectly satisfactory way of signifying to the country and to their constituents that they are supportive of it. They do not have to be an officer in every instance.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Has the hon. Gentleman been in for the whole of the debate? [Hon. Members: “No.”] In which case, I will not. I am sorry.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) is not giving way.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I am not giving way. It is a courtesy to the House that if you are going to start intervening in a debate, you should have been here for the ministerial openers.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think it is within the orders of the House not to accept an intervention, but to make a derogatory comment while not accepting an intervention does not allow the hon. Member who has been referred to to answer back.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am not sure that that is a point of order—it is perhaps an opinion—but I think it is courteous for those who are intervening in a debate to have been here for a long time. My feeling about this is that a lot of different views have been expressed and it is important to have heard the whole debate. I do not think it is unreasonable for the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) to say that the reason he is not allowing an intervention is that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has not been here for the whole of the debate. He is perfectly within his rights to give a reason why he will not take an intervention.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Having said that, I now feel that I have been discourteous and I am going to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. The point I was going to make is that there seems to be an issue about the definition of membership of an APPG. My understanding is that anybody who is not a member of the Government is a member of an APPG. The hon. Gentleman himself was once involved in a contested election to become chair of the APPG on Russia, and some 200 Members across both Houses we dragooned into voting in that election. They were not registered members of that APPG, but they happened to qualify because they were ordinary Members of Parliament.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

The rules specify that anybody who is not a member of the Government can be a member and an officer of an all-party group. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I remember the occasion when he, among many others, came to a meeting on the top floor and we had about 350 people voting at an APPG extraordinary general meeting just to get rid of me—over Russia, ironically enough.

The important point the Committee is trying to underline is that an all-party parliamentary group should only be an all-party parliamentary group if it has enough support among the 1,450 Members of this House and the other House to be able to have a proper AGM attended by five Members, for heaven’s sake, and with 20 Members expressing support. That is important because, otherwise, it is very easy for an APPG to be run by an individual Member on behalf of a commercial interest or in pursuit of a personal agenda, bringing along their friends just once a year. That is the evil we are trying to address.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Unfortunately, the proposed rules we are being asked to adopt this afternoon say:

“A Member of the House of Commons may be an officer of a maximum of six Groups.

An APPG must have at least 20 members”.

I think the hon. Gentleman is talking about 20 registered members, because all Members of both Houses, other than members of the Government, are automatically members of APPGs if they so wish.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

No, they are not automatically a member of all APPGs, otherwise every APPG would have 1,450 members. The hon. Gentleman needs to read the rules and the guide to the rules, both of which are available from the Vote Office, as they make all of this perfectly clear.

The point the Committee is trying to make is that every APPG should have a properly constituted annual general meeting, should have a limited number of officers—who have full responsibility for the running of the APPG, and for making sure it operates under the rules of the House and does not expose the House to further reputational damage—and should have enough registered members on the list it submits each year to be able to qualify as a proper all-party parliamentary group.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) refers to the guide to the rules on all-party parliamentary groups. I went out to try to get a copy of this document from the Vote Office and was able to get one copy, but there were no other copies available. The Vote Office is currently trying to print more copies. Considering how few Members there are in the Chamber, it seems most unsatisfactory that we have such a small number of copies of the guide to the rules, which extends to a very large number of pages. Why can we not all see this before we reach a conclusion?

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I have received no other complaints from hon. and right hon. Members that they do not have a copy. As the hon. Gentleman says, he has not been here for the whole debate, so he has not heard a lot of the other arguments. It is a bit discourteous to keep disrupting the debate in this way. We should allow the Chair of the Standards Committee to finish his speech without interruption through points of order, which is a poor approach when we are having a debate. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) is on the Panel of Chairs, so I hope he would understand.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I will come on to the Panel of Chairs a little later.

I rather enjoyed that point of order, because I think the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) is complaining that he has a copy of the relevant document that he wanted.

APPGs are great, but we have too many. There is a great deal of duplication, and I suspect we are all guilty. Many of us end up creating another new APPG on another new medical condition that is somewhat similar to other APPGs, and so on. Colleagues are often a bit naughty in trying to make every APPG publication look remarkably like a Select Committee report, knowing perfectly well that, when it is referred to on the “Today” programme or on ITV, the APPG will be referred to almost identically as a “Committee of MPs,” which is unfortunate because we should rigorously protect the authority of Select Committees and official communications of the whole House.

As I said earlier, I sometimes feel that APPGs are the soft underbelly of the way we do parliamentary lobbying. One Member, who I am not naming—I do not even know who it is—is an officer of 88 all-party parliamentary groups, and I do not think they could possibly do due diligence on all 88 groups.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I was not here at the start of the debate. I tuned in and have been following it on the television. I heard the speech from the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and I found that there was more to this than I had previously realised. I make all the due apologies, but I think it is better to make a late intervention than no intervention.

The point the Chairman of the Committee makes about the quasi-Select Committee reports has some substance, but he has to remember that not everybody or every party in this House has an automatic right to be a member of a Select Committee. That privilege is given to the three largest parties only. The Liberal Democrats, the Democratic Unionists, the Green party and others do not have that opportunity to be part of the Select Committee structure. For that reason, our voice being heard through APPGs is very important.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point, which I fully take on board. However, ever since APPGs were first created, the House has repeatedly wanted to ensure a clear distinction between reports produced by a group of MPs and ones produced officially by the House. That is an important distinction.

Not every grouping of MPs needs to become an APPG. I have chaired an APPG on acquired brain injury, and it was often difficult to get it going, because all the Conservatives on it kept on being made Ministers—they then got sacked and then they were made Ministers again. One of them, the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), may be about to become Defence Secretary—I have co-operated with him on this subject for a very long time—and another is the Northern Ireland Secretary. Keeping APPGs going is sometimes problematic, because the people who are most interested sometimes get other jobs that mean that they cannot take part. But there is no reason why someone cannot continue the work without being in an APPG.

I am not sure whether the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham was irritated when he kept getting text messages from APPGs saying, “Can you come to Room R for two minutes at 2 o’clock because otherwise we will not be quorate for our AGM.” That is an inappropriate way of doing our business. If we cannot get five genuinely interested people along to an AGM, it probably should not be an APPG, especially if it has some external financial interest. The danger is that nobody is exercising proper due diligence over the finances.

For some of us, APPGs have become a bit of a tyranny. The hon. Gentleman says that he is chair of nine, and he is also an assiduous member of a Select Committee and he is regularly in the Chamber. It would benefit us all if there were fewer all-party groups and, as I say, there is reputational risk here. The Committee expressly asked me to say that it expects that the rules we are introducing will lead to fewer all-party groups. That is the express intention of what we are doing.

Let me be clear about what we are doing. As has been mentioned, we propose that APPGs will be able to have only four officers. The intention is to make sure that every one of those officers takes a proper interest in the running of the APPG. Rather than having 10 vice-chairs, four treasurers and all the rest of it, we propose that there be four officers, who are charged with making sure that the group is run properly. We also propose that all APPGs must have an up-to-date list of 20 supporters—registered members. Thirdly, we propose that a Member can be an officer of only six all-party groups, as has been mentioned. Again, part of the reason is that we want these people to be able to exercise due diligence over the running of the group. I am not questioning the hon. Gentleman here; I belong to nearly all the all-party groups that he chairs and he has admirably driven forward issues, including on the British Museum—that was an all-party group that I founded. I admire all that work, but we do want to make sure that we do not imperil the reputation of the House.

[Tim Loughton]

It was David Heathcoat-Amory who set up the British Museum group, but that is neither here nor there. On most of the all-party groups where I am chair, I am actually co-chair, so it is not a question of the chair having to do all the work. Does he take my point that limiting the number of officers to four means that there will not be such a wide spread of parties to make it a genuine all-party parliamentary group? Those four people will now be key and will have greater control, accountability and scrutiny over the activities of that group.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

No, I do not buy that, I am afraid, because what we are trying to say is there are officers and there are registered members. All the registered members should express an interest in the running of the group, and that will demonstrate the cross-party nature of the body.

We recognise that there are many APPGs where there is no financial interest at all. There is no money or external secretariat; it is simply done out of the goodness of the office of the individual Member. We have left most of the rules for APPGs with no financial interest unchanged in all other regards, and the quorum will remain five people.

However, we are introducing a quorum of eight for APPGs where there is a financial interest, and we are saying that the chair for an AGM or extraordinary general meeting of those APPGs will be provided by Mr Speaker, as was requested by Mr Speaker and the Lord Speaker. They want a clear, independent body to be able to administrate whether there has been a proper annual general meeting and that all the rules have been abided by.

I know that Mr Speaker has had some conversations with the Panel of Chairs. It may be necessary to have a couple more members of the Panel of Chairs. We are fully cognisant of the fact that it will take time for all groups to have their AGMs and extraordinary general meetings to be able to comply with the rules, which is why we are making transitional arrangements, although we want the main body of the rules to apply from 16 October, as the motion says.

It might help if I read out the transitional arrangements, because they are important for everybody. They are at the beginning of the document referred to by the hon. Member for Christchurch, and they were in the resolution of the Committee yesterday.

“(1) The rules prohibiting foreign governments from providing or funding (whether directly or indirectly) a secretariat come into force with immediate effect on 16 October 2023.

(2) APPGs need to comply with any other new rules from their first AGM following the new rules coming into force, or 31 March 2024, whichever is the earlier; except that the additional rules applying to APPGs that meet the £1,500 funding threshold will apply only from 31 March 2024.

(3) APPGs will be able to hold EGMs virtually or by correspondence during a transition period (to meet the requirement for 4 officers and no more; and to ensure that those officers are officers of no more than 5 other APPGs) ending on 31 March 2024.

(4) An audit of compliance will be carried out in April 2024. Any APPG that has not complied with the Rules by 31 March 2024”—

which happens to be Easter Sunday—

“will be deregistered.”

I hope it is helpful that I have read that out, because we want to make it as clear as we possibly can.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

When was what the hon. Gentleman has just read out agreed? How is it available to us now?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

It was agreed yesterday at the Standards Committee. We only knew today that this debate was going to be happening today; we thought it was going to be later in the year. It is available on the front page of the document referred to earlier, “The Guide to the Rules on All-Party Parliamentary Groups”, which is available from the Vote Office. It was agreed yesterday, under the authority granted to the Standards Committee.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I have “The Guide to the Rules”—I am one of the ones who managed to get a copy. I don’t see it—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

It is on page 2.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Transitional arrangements? I have read through every other page, starting with page 3—I did not read page 2. I do not believe any other Member of this Chamber, except for the other members of the Standards Committee, has read that. To take a decision on the arrangements this evening, given the impact it will have on every all-party group, is not necessary, wise or advisable.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I think that was a speech. Perhaps the hon. Member will be able to catch your eye later, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am conscious that I have spoken for quite a long time and I had not intended to do so.

[Tim Loughton]

rose—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I am very happy to give way to the hon. Member.

[Tim Loughton]

Those sort of details are helpful. I understand how the transition arrangements impact the all-party groups themselves. However, to take my situation, I will have to give up the next AGMs coming up to get down to a quota of six, and they may not be the AGMs that I want to give up, but I will have to do so. That means that I have a problem, does it not?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

The thing is that I have a problem, too. We have been working on this and consulting the House repeatedly for three years now. We have been repeatedly told by Members that we have to come up with a new set of rules. The new rules that we have produced—all the individual elements that have been referred to so far—were available months ago. The Government responded to them, and we published the Government’s response to them several weeks ago, and we have the debate today. I am not convinced that, if we were to delay the decision today, we would come up with better rules, or a new version of the debate, in September.

[Deidre Brock]

rose—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, and then I will not give way anymore, because I am keen to leave the stage.

[Deidre Brock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I wish to start by correcting the record. Although I am not a stand-alone chair of an all-party group, I am a co-chair. I was reminded by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and the Father of the House of the BBC all-party parliamentary group. On the requirement for the four officers to be held jointly and severally liable for compliance with the additional rules for the groups, who will they turn to for advice and guidance should they require it?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

At present, they would turn to either Philippa Wainwright, who is the registrar of the APPGs, or to James Davis. If they really wanted to, they could also turn to either Eve Samson, who is the Clerk of the Journals, or Daniel Greenberg, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. All of these arrangements have been agreed between the Clerks and the two registrars. Everyone stands ready to provide people with advice. I know Mr Speaker stands ready to provide chairs for AGMs or extraordinary general meetings when we get back in September. One thing that we have exceptionally allowed is that people will be able to do extraordinary general meetings virtually—online—which will make it much easier for people to comply.

I will try to stop now. I know that there is some frustration in the House and I fully understand that. As I have said repeatedly to the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House and Mr Speaker, I am not sure that there is an easy consensus to be found on proceeding.

[Mr Carmichael]

rose—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I am not giving way again. I am really sorry, but I have been trying to leave the stage for some time.

This is the next scandal coming down the line. I know that the vast majority of Members want to address the matter. We cannot possibly do so if we remain with 762 all-party parliamentary groups. That is more than there are Members of this House. It is almost as many Members as there are in the other place. If a group cannot get five people to an AGM, it probably is not really an APPG and should not have the imprimatur that the APPG title guarantees it. I urge the House to support these measures today. Actually, the authority is vested in the Committee; it does not need to be agreed to by the House, but we thought that it was best for the House to be able to take a view as well.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Father of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

We have heard that the Committee could, so to speak, impose the proposals even if the House rejects them. I think that we probably should vote on them, just to ensure that Members who are paying attention have the chance to express their view. I will vote against them on the basis that they should be reviewed.

I am happy to co-operate with the commissioner, the hon. Member for Rhondda, the Committee, the Clerks, the Lord Speaker and the Commons Speaker to help to make the improvements that people desire and that are necessary. Some implications of the proposals are not improvements; they are retrogressive.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I am trying to be helpful to the House. The rules on APPGs are the prerogative of the Committee. That was already a decision of the House, but we did not want to proceed without the House taking a view. I hear quite a lot of discomfort about several elements of the proposals. I think that it will look terrible if we decide to pull them this afternoon—it will look as if the House does not want to take action, and that will be seen badly. What might be right is that we reassess the issue of transitional arrangements if people want to make representations to us, which the Committee could hear at its first meeting in September. One option is obviously that none of the proposals applies until the next Parliament. The Committee was hesitant about that—I am sorry that this is a long intervention, but I am trying to be helpful—only because it might look as if this Parliament was not prepared to put its house in order; it just wanted a future set of people to do it.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

That is potentially helpful. I am grateful, and the House will be as well. If the transitional arrangements concentrated on foreign Governments, or significant commercial beneficiaries, effectively supporting groups, that would be understood. It is the other parts that I do not understand. I say that as someone who was asked to chair the Austria all-party parliamentary group when Angus Robertson became leader of the SNP group at Westminster and felt that he could not do it. I stood in and did it, and I remain the chair of that group. In co-operation with the Austrian embassy, which provides no money and no resources, we welcome Austrians here. I guess that alternative arrangements for some functions of that kind could be made quite easily within the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

I am chair of the BBC all-party parliamentary group because one of our colleagues became the interim Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. To keep the all-party group going, given the importance of being able to hear from the BBC and liaise with it on controversial and non-controversial issues, I thought that it was important to stand in.

I am, I think, the chair or co-chair of 12 groups. I am the person the hon. Member for Rhondda referred to as being an officer of more than 80 groups. I could quite cheerfully take him and the House through each of the groups and why I am a member of them. [Hon. Members: “No!”] I will not go through them all, but I will give some illustrative examples.

I am the parliamentary warden of St Margaret’s Church on Parliament Square. I saw the lights on one evening and went into a service, which was the 12-step addiction service. All kinds of people with addictions, whether alcohol, gambling, sex, stealing or whatever else, were giving their witness. That gave me an interest in 12-step recovery programmes and, when a Member of the House of Lords asked whether I would help to set up an all-party group, I agreed. That is one of the groups of which I am a co-chair and registered contact, and I think it is worthwhile. The idea that we would necessarily get four members together at the same time or have 20 people registering as members is unlikely, but the work done by that group is important to all kinds of people inside the House, both Members and staff, and outside it.

I was once asked by Tristan Garel-Jones, a humanist, whether I, a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee who had been a trustee of Christian Aid and chairman of the Church of England Children’s Society, would be prepared to get a humanist group going. I said I would; I said that I was not a humanist, but it seemed to me that it was a line of thought that deserved some kind of parliamentary opportunity. The group has since grown and I am no longer a member of it.

I could go through the various other groups, but there are two that I am keenest on. The first is the group on leasehold and commonhold reform, where for more than 10 years, working first with Jim Fitzpatrick and now with the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), and with the help of the campaigning charity Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, we have fought to look after the interests of 6 million residential leaseholders. Even in the last couple of days we have had success with the Financial Conduct Authority on trying to ensure that those people are not ripped off on insurance, commissions and the like. That group can get large numbers of Members interested, but not get them all together at the same time.

The same applies to the group on park homes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has been in charge of for a long time with Sonia McColl, one of the campaigners. To show the kind of interests that we were up against, when her mobile home was being moved from one place to another, it was stolen.

I have some incredible things going on. If I were brought down to six chairmanships, I would not be able to do half the good that I do, and I do not always know which group will become important. When one of my hon. Friends became a Minister, he asked if I would take on, with the Astronomer Royal, the group on dark skies. We are co-leaders of the world in astronomy, and it is important to have parliamentary interest, so that Members of the Lords and Commons who are interested can come to meetings and we can liaise with outside groups.

I think very few of the groups I am involved in—although there are some—would not do worse if I were not interested. I say this to the Government, to those on the Front Benches and to the SNP: it is not necessary for this motion to pass. We have been told it does not matter to Parliament, because the Committee itself can set the rules, but it is possible to get through to the beginning of the next Parliament with suitable transition arrangements that are variations of what is on page 2 of the guide to rules.

--- Later in debate ---

[Johnny Mercer]

I will be very brief. It has been a fascinating debate and there are strongly held views on all sides. The Committee has been tasked with looking at how we tackle this problem, and I think everyone agrees there is an issue with APPGs. I urge colleagues not to divide today—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Again, I will try to be helpful. If we vote down the motion today, it will mean that we cannot even take action on telling APPGs that they cannot take money from foreign Governments and I think that that would be a terrible mistake. If we carry the motion today, I undertake, having listened to all the contributions, that, at the next meeting of the Committee in September, we will make such adjustments as we think suitable—we are entitled to do so under the rules—to meet some of the issues that Members have raised. I would be grateful if Members could write to me with specific suggestions that they think might help, but we might also revisit the idea of when the transitional period will end.

[Johnny Mercer]

I strongly urge Members to take that course of action. Voting down the motion would be extremely self-defeating.

[Johnny Mercer]

I am sure the Chair of the Committee has heard that remark—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I have taken my hearing aid out, but I did hear what the Father of the House said.