Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
Yeovil is on the Dorset border, so there are some people in Dorset for whom Yeovil would be extremely convenient. Yeovil is a town in Somerset, and therefore it is beautiful, glorious, and magnificent. I would have thought it would be a joy for anybody to go to Yeovil. But my hon. Friend makes a serious point, and after this statement I will of course take it up with the vaccines Minister. GPs are getting more involved and being paid £15 for every vaccine they are able to inject. That may be part of the process, but people need to be able to get to a vaccine centre that is reasonably close to them.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
May we have a debate on what happens to British nationals when they are stuck overseas, for instance when there are changes to the rules on quarantine? There are 42 Welsh rugby players stuck in South Africa at the moment, including one of my constituents. They are in a double bind. Some of them have now had covid, so they might have to do 10 days’ quarantine in South Africa and then, on top of that, another 10 days’ quarantine in the UK. There is obviously a significant cost to that; more importantly, there is a cost to their mental health, too. Is there more we can do to help them to get home?
Mr Rees-Mogg
If there are specific constituency cases, the hon. Gentleman should raise those in the normal manner. If he needs the assistance of my office in doing that, I am always willing to help hon. and right hon. Members. The issue could have been raised in the broad debate on introducing the regulations, which took place when we took away the half day from the SNP. So there was a chance to debate it, but certainly we would be very keen to help with individual constituency cases.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
And the prize for patience and perseverance—
Madam Deputy Speaker
I am not telling you what the prize is. The prize goes to Angus Brendan MacNeil.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question. Yes, of course, he is the wedding feast at Cana, and the fine wine has been saved for last. I now understand the reason he wrote to me about being missed. His point is an important one and I will take it up with the Secretary of State for Transport. We obviously want to have efficient transport across the whole of the United Kingdom, and we particularly need the hon. Gentleman to be able to come here because he does so assiduously and dutifully, and, I think, he wins the prize for finest heckler in the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
There seems to be some dissent on that matter.
Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The thing is that during covid we have started to develop really bad habits. As I understand it, the measures have not yet been laid—they are not available for any of us to see and will not be available until later today. They will start to apply at 4 o’clock tomorrow morning and we will then legislate for that retrospectively tomorrow afternoon. This is not the right way to do legislation. Every single statutory instrument Committee in which I have been involved in recent months has been on retrospective legislation that has already come into force. This is not the way the House should progress, surely to God.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I had hoped that the hon. Gentleman’s quite long question was going to go on slightly longer, because I understand that the regulations will be laid by 5 o’clock. Had he gone on for another three minutes they would by then have been laid—
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman, who is currently getting a little bit grumpy, is ignoring the fact that these matters are genuinely urgent. Of course it is right that laws should not come in retrospectively in the normal course of events, but our statutes provide for statutory instruments to be brought in and debated subsequently for a very good purpose, which is that sometimes things need to be done with dispatch. The Opposition, who would have kept us in lockdown forever, should remember their dither and delay when they ask questions about the speed with which we introduce things.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are responsible and accountable to our voters. This is why the Chairman of the Standards Committee will be leading his distinguished Committee in looking into this and I hope will make recommendations to the House.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Leader of the House for giving way, and this is very naughty of me because I have only just walked in from the Liaison Committee; I am breaking all the standards of the House. The only point I want to make is that I think it would be very difficult for the commissioner to start investigating whether an MP was devoting enough of their time to their constituents. Of course, all our constituents want us to throw ourselves heart and soul into our work, and I think we all do. Many of us work many more hours than a normal working week—60, 70, 80 hours. But I am just very hesitant about going down this route of timesheets or something. She already gets thousands of requests every year saying that an MP has not replied to an email, he or she has voted the wrong way, or whatever. I just urge him, and I will urge my Committee very strongly, to think very carefully about this.
Mr Rees-Mogg
May I thank the hon. Gentleman, the parliamentary leader of Plaid Cymru, the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), and the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar for their good temper and sense in this debate and for trying to bring a genuinely cross-party approach?
As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has pointed out, these issues are complex. They are not open to easy solutions; they need deliberation. How people lead their lives depends very much on them as individuals, and trying to work out how an MP fulfils his or her duties is not something that can easily be put down in a time and motion study. That is why we are hoping that his Committee will be able to consider it and then bring forward recommendations that, with support on a cross-party basis, may prove acceptable to the House as a whole.
If I may continue, we endorse the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s recommendation that MPs should be banned from accepting any paid work to provide services as a parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant. It is, of course, the case that amending the code of conduct for MPs is a matter for Parliament, rather than for the Government—indeed, strictly speaking it is a matter for this House, the Commons, because of our exclusive cognisance of our own affairs. However, Her Majesty’s Government believe that those two recommendations form the basis of a viable approach that could command the confidence of both parliamentarians and the public, and would therefore like to see them adopted.
Coming to the final part of my remarks—this is the point at which normally, somebody says, “Hear, hear”—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!] Thank you. I know that some hon. Members like nothing more in debate than to start delving down the procedural rabbit holes of the merits or otherwise of Standing Orders and the like. I am not immune to that temptation myself, but I do not think it would be useful in this instance. It is an established convention—this is one problem with the Opposition motion—that the Government are able to transact their business in the House of Commons, and the House itself has long recognised that principle in Standing Order No. 14, which provides that Government business takes precedence.
To give this motion from the Standards Committee immediate precedence would be both impractical and unnecessary. Her Majesty’s Government support the amendment to
“bring forward recommendations to update the code of conduct for MPs by 31 January 2022”,
which sets a clear timeframe for progress on the issues discussed today. The Government therefore support a more practical amendment that acknowledges the concerns we have all been hearing in recent days, and positively proposes that the proportionate measures devised by the Committee on Standards in Public Life should be taken forward on a cross-party basis. That would include the work being done by this House’s Committee on Standards, in accordance with the timeframe suggested by Opposition Members. We have listened, and we have very much taken into account what they have proposed. It is important to note that on this matter, as on the other issues before us today relating to the code of conduct, the Government recognise that any changes are a matter for the House, and are looking ahead to the next steps being taken in a way that seeks consensus and respects the views of all sides of the House.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner). I think I agree with most of what he said.
I rise to speak in this debate because I recognise that we need to change. I have thought for a long while that we need to change, and in some ways it is welcome that the events of the past fortnight have brought the need upon us. I broadly support the recommendations in the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life from three years ago. It is probably a cause for regret that we are dealing with them now, rather than at that time.
However, I urge the House to be careful that we get this right. The public expect us to change these rules with due consideration, to ensure that rules are put in place that are fair, consistent and enforceable and do not just leave crazy loopholes. I am slightly nervous about the wording in the Labour motion about banning
“any paid work to provide services as a Parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant”.
Does that mean that somebody could change their job to being a political strategist, adviser or consultant, or a local government strategist, adviser or consultant, and somehow get around that? I think we all know what we are trying to ban, which is Members earning money by selling access to this place or selling the access that this place provides, but we should be careful to make sure we get the wording right.
Chris Bryant
The House of Lords already has a similar provision in its code of conduct. One thing the Committee on Standards might suggest—I do not want to prejudge, as I see the other members of the Committee staring at me in a grim-faced way—is that Members must have a contract specifying certain things that they can and cannot do, which would be fairly simple. Owen Paterson never had a contract.
Nigel Mills
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If Members are taking jobs, they should have clearly defined roles and responsibilities that can be cleared or scrutinised.
We should be careful when we draw up the new rules that they are clear, consistent and enforceable so that we do not end up with Members sneaking around them because we were in a rush and a panic to try to calm a political storm or to keep it going. We should not rush into new rules that we come to regret when they do not work.
Where I agree with the Opposition motion is that we need to keep up the momentum. Although I absolutely trust the Leader of the House and the Government that we will not have further delays and backsliding, I am not convinced after the past two weeks that I can convince my constituents that I cannot vote for the motion because it forces a timetable. I will vote for the Opposition motion tonight.
I agree that we need to restrict second jobs, but I would be nervous about trying to work out a good list and a bad list of second jobs, as that becomes very hard. For example, my wife works as a pharmacist. That sounds like a health professional, but she works for a large supermarket chain. Do we allow pharmacists to work in the NHS but not in large supermarket chains because one is public sector and the other is private sector?
It becomes difficult to know what is a professional job which we would all accept a new MP coming here for a short career should keep up in practice and qualifications so that they have a chance of a job afterwards. We would not want to put off people with such qualifications from coming here at all for fear they would be locked out of their old career.
We could end up with a rather long list of good jobs that Members are allowed to do. It would be hard for such a list to be consistent, and it would be hard to apply. Such a list would inevitably have gaps that some Members fall through, so we would have to change the list all the time.
I would not go down the line of an absolute ban, and the Government’s amendment is right that we should have some sort of restriction or indication about what constitutes a Member not prioritising their role as an MP. I would be cautious about having no guidance or rules and leaving it to a commissioner to decide retrospectively whether what a Member did is within the rules.
We need a process in which we agree on the guidance, such as on whether there should be a maximum amount that Members can earn. I have some sympathy with the comment that a man cannot have two paymasters. If a Member has a lifestyle that depends on an outside income far greater than their MP’s income, there will always be a perception, or a risk, that they have to please that paymaster and that at some point there will be a vote, a debate or an issue where they are conflicted between doing what they think is right and keeping the income they desperately need. I would think carefully about an income cap at some proportion of an MP’s salary.
That does not solve my constituents’ anger that Members are spending too much time on non-parliamentary work. It is the loss of time in Parliament and in the constituency that is the problem, not just how much a Member earns. Perhaps there should be a cap on hours.
As the Committee on Standards in Public Life report said, those two things are quite hard to define. They are controversial and we might end up creating different problems, but if the House truly wants to make it clear that MPs are MPs first and foremost, and that what we do outside may have some benefits, may be fair to our future careers and may bring out some information, but it should clearly be secondary to our parliamentary role, we should ask the Committee on Standards, or whatever body we think best, to come up with a definition of how much Members can earn and how long they can spend earning it. That would be the right way forward.
Committee on Standards
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is three weeks since the Standards Committee produced our report on the conduct of Owen Paterson. It detailed a catalogue of bad behaviour. The evidence was stark and compelling. He repeatedly engaged in paid lobbying. He peddled influence for his paying clients. He repeatedly used his parliamentary office to run a commercial enterprise. Every single MP I have spoken to who has read the report tells me he was guilty, yet here we are. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.
I confess I am still mystified why the Prime Minister decided to move heaven and earth to prevent Owen Paterson from being sanctioned. Today’s motion, however, is in precisely the words that I gave the Leader of the House last Monday, as I think he will confirm, and it is necessary, I am afraid, for two reasons. First, the motion carried on Wednesday 3 November set up an alternative standards Committee, to be chaired by the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale). I am told that the Prime Minister told Conservative Members at the time that this had been “squared off” with the Opposition. That was not true. Since not even the right hon. Member for Maldon wants to sit on the Committee, we probably ought to get rid of it.
Secondly, the motion of 3 November parked the question of whether Mr Paterson was guilty, which suggests that the House is uncertain what it thinks about paid lobbying. I hope that that is not the case, and I hope, if we have a unanimous decision this afternoon without a Division, that will prove to be the case. In effect, without this motion, both the Committee and the report are in limbo. I am not an expert on the theology of the Catholic Church, but I understand that the Catholic Church now believes that limbo does not exist, so we really ought to put these two issues beyond doubt.
I wish this could have been otherwise. Mr Paterson and his family must have been through hell over the past year since Rose Paterson took her own life. It is a matter of deep regret to me that the parliamentary shenanigans of the past three weeks can only have added to that misery. This House has done Mr Paterson and his family no favours. We should be ashamed of what has happened here.
Sadly, Mr Paterson’s was not the only catalogue of bad behaviour. As countless Conservative MPs have said to me—incidentally, I praise a lot of the new Conservative MPs, who have shown far greater insight over the past three weeks than some of their more long-standing colleagues—the way the Government and the Prime Minister have handled this matter has been shameful and has brought the House into disrepute. It was just wrong to delay the original motion, wrong to change the rules at the last minute of a disciplinary process for a named individual, wrong to whip Members on a standards report, wrong to call for the commissioner to resign, wrong to refuse to table this motion last week, wrong to try to get away with just taking this motion last night without debate—just plain wrong, wrong, wrong, and the Government know it.
I will respond to one point from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope). The real aggravating point was not anything he has mentioned, but the fact that Mr Paterson endlessly and repeatedly said he would do the same again tomorrow. That was bound to keep on bringing the House into further disrepute, and of course we had to bear that in mind as an aggravating factor.
I hope it will be helpful if I say a few words about appeals. We on the Committee have been grappling with this for some time, and I expect we will be able to say more when we report formally to the House before Christmas. We are in the process of appointing a senior judicial figure to help us to think through all these issues, as I told the House last week.
It is wrong, however, to say, as several hon. Members have, that there is no appeal process now. There is. A Member can appeal the commissioner’s decision that there has been a breach of the rules. The Committee on Standards hears that appeal, with seven independent lay members and seven Members of this House. Unlike most appeal bodies, we are remarkably generous. We do not specify grounds for appeal; we effectively allow not just an appeal, but a general rehashing of all the arguments. We can also hear an appeal in writing and in person, unlike most courts, and often a Member chooses to do both, as Mr Paterson did. We honestly give every single Member a fair hearing. We do not always agree with the commissioner.
There are, however, some blurred lines here. We could tighten up the grounds for appeal, but I warn colleagues that that might not go down too well. We could constitute ourselves as two panels, as the independent expert panel does: one to hear the original decision and determine a sanction, another to hear an appeal. We could engage an outside figure to hear that final appeal, or we could ask the independent expert panel to do that. But that is not as simple as some might suggest. The corollary might be that the House would then have to take the sanction motion without debate or amendment, as it is required to do in sexual harassment cases.
I am, however, extremely reluctant to move from an inquisitorial system to an adversarial one, and I urge the House to oppose that. That would require everyone to be legally represented, which would benefit wealthy MPs over poorer MPs—unless legal aid is provided for MPs, when it is not now available in many other places. It would dramatically increase the cost of the proceedings and significantly extend the process. It would be disproportionate. It would not be any fairer to the Member or the complainant.
Some final points: The Daily Telegraph today reported a Government source as dismissing the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the adviser on the Ministerial Code as “bureaucrats” who should be ignored. I am glad that the Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) has apologised for calling for the commissioner to resign, though I suspect he was not freelancing at the time, but leadership in this field means backing the independent system, not seeking to undermine it.
As sure as eggs is eggs, there will be more cases before the commissioner and the Committee in the next few months, and I hope nobody will seek to undermine either of them. I pay tribute to both Kathryn Stone, the commissioner, and all of her team, who have worked tirelessly over these few weeks, despite some extreme bullying. That same source in The Daily Telegraph also said:
“Backroom talks between the parties over an MP appeals process have already begun”.
That is, I am afraid, completely untrue. There have been no approaches to the Opposition parties, to me as Chair of the Committee on Standards or to the Committee itself. It is untrue, and I hope that briefing will stop.
I hear talk of all sorts of proposals for how we should change the system, and I urge hon. Members to calm down a little. The past three weeks have been shameful for this House. We need a return to due process. The Committee will produce a report very soon, certainly before Christmas and hopefully even before Advent. All we have to do at Advent is wait a little.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That, notwithstanding the practice of this House relating to questions already decided in the same Session, this House:
(1) rescinds the resolution and order of 3 November 2021 relating to the Third Report of the Committee on Standards (HC 797) and the appointment of a new select committee;
(2) approves the Third Report of the Committee on Standards (HC 797); and
(3) notes that Mr Owen Paterson is no longer a Member of this House.
Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
May I just reiterate what I said at the beginning of these proceedings? While there is a very strong feeling on both sides of the House that there is a need for an appeals process, there is equally a strong feeling that this should not be based on a single case or applied retrospectively. I fear last night’s debate conflated the individual case with the general concern. This link needs to be broken. I hope that answers my hon. Friend’s question.
As regards the vexed question of whipping, as I understand it, all Whips are attendance Whips. My hon. Friend is well known for his independence of mind, and I am sure his constituents are aware of that, but to vandalise some Member’s property or office because of the way that Member voted seems to me to be potentially a breach of privilege, and it may be something that needs to be looked into with considerable care. As you warned us yesterday, Mr Speaker, we always need to discuss these things in a temperate and sensible manner.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The problem is, we are in a quagmire now. I fully support the comments that have just been made by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and I am sorry for everything that has happened to his office; I think that has happened to quite a lot of MPs over the last few years. I think the message for all of us is that we need to be very careful when we are talking about standards issues, as I have tried to be.
The Leader of the House is quite right that we should never be changing the rules at the last minute for a named individual. There is a potential solution to that, which is that the Standards Committee, on a cross-party basis, could produce another report next Tuesday, which the Government could then put to the House next week to deal with the case of the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson). I think the Committee would say exactly the same thing, but it would be a means of separating that case out from the issue of the whether we should change the system.
On changing the system, as the Leader of the House knows, because he has given evidence to our Committee, we are already reviewing that. There are decent points to be made about things that could be improved in the system. They are not easy things to resolve, but my Committee will do its best, on a cross-party basis and with independent members—a valuable addition to the process and an important part of establishing the trust of the public—to take that forward.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for confirming that there are concerns about the system. I think there is a general concern about the investigator and the adjudicator being the same person. It has been suggested to me on a number of occasions that that should be looked at. I am grateful for his suggestion that we should use moderate language, although it has to be remembered that he was the one comparing what happened yesterday to Russia when he was on the wireless this morning, so I hope he will use moderate language not only when he is in this House. As I say, it is important that this is looked at on a cross-party basis, because we need to have robust standards in which Members have confidence.
Committee on Standards
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
I am sure that the Committee we are setting up will want to consider the appearance of witnesses and whether that ought to be a fundamental right of people accused of serious cases—
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
If it is all right, I just want to respond directly to the point that has just been made. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
I would like to hear what the hon. Gentleman has got to say before we make a judgment.
Mr Speaker
Let me help. It is not going to be direct; I think it is direct to the point that was made to you, Leader of the House. I think we can dance around on the head of a pin, but that is not going to be helpful in a very important debate today.
Chris Bryant
I just wanted to make a simple point, which is that we reviewed and read all the witness statements. Nobody asked to make an oral witness statement to us. It is perfectly normal in most workplaces in this country, as a retired High Court judge confirmed to me yesterday, for witness statements to be read and considered, and not necessarily for witnesses to be questioned or cross-examined. We did a perfectly normal, fair hearing for the right hon. Member for North Shropshire. We considered all the witness statements and we published them.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The point is that there was this facility to set up an investigatory panel, which was not used. It would have been able to see all the witnesses that my right hon. Friend wanted.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The right hon. Gentleman is a very distinguished and fair-minded Member of this House. It is fundamentally important that the whistleblowing exemption is an exemption and not a loophole that can be exploited for all purposes. Paid advocacy demeans the House and is not something that Members should be involved in. On the other hand, if people have come across a serious wrong in the course of something they have been paid for, I think most fair-minded Members would think it only right and proper that they should tell Ministers about it. There must be a clear dividing line, which I hope the Select Committee would be able to establish. That is at the heart of the disagreement between my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire and the Committee on Standards, and that matter needs to be clearer.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think the hon. Gentleman is going to speak at the end, so it may be best if he does that.
Hon. Members
Chris Bryant
I think he got the easier job.
I have not done any radio or television interviews on this matter because, as Chair of the Committee, I am a servant of the House. I thank the Commissioner and the Committee. In particular, I wish the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans) well, because he is very ill at the moment. I hope that he will be back with us soon. It is inappropriate for people to comment on absences from the Committee when they do not understand why members might be absent.
I am painfully conscious that the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) lost his wife in tragic circumstances in June 2020. I wish to express my sincere condolences to him. I have known suicide in my family, as he knows, and I have performed many funerals for suicides. I know the grief, the anguish, and often the guilt that is associated. The last year must have been very distressing for him, and the Committee took those circumstances fully into account when considering his conduct.
I will address the charges, the process, the sanction and the amendment. The charges are very serious. The Member repeatedly, over a sustained period, lobbied officials and Ministers on behalf of his paying clients, Randox and Lynn’s Country Foods, from whom he was receiving more than £9,000 a month, as he still is. He pursued their commercial interests. When they could not get meetings with officials and Ministers, he used his privileged position as a Member of Parliament to secure them. Providing privileged access is a valuable service.
The Member promoted what he called “Randox’s superior technology”. He wanted the Government to use Randox’s calibration system. He repeatedly used his taxpayer-funded parliamentary office for commercial meetings. That is paid lobbying. In some shape or form, it has been banned since 1695 and expressly so since cash for questions, which brought this House into terrible disrepute in the 1990s. One Conservative Member described it to me as a “catalogue of bad behaviour”. I have yet to meet a Conservative MP who has not said to me, “He clearly broke the rules.” I think that includes the Leader of the House.
The Member says that he was raising serious wrongs, but he did not say so at the time. If they were truly serious, one might have expected him to write articles or do media interviews, as he was perfectly entitled to do. He did not. He did the one thing that he was banned from doing: lobby Ministers time and again in a way that conferred a direct benefit on his paying clients. That is expressly forbidden. It is a corrupt practice.
On the process, the Member has had a fair hearing. We had legal advice from Speaker’s Counsel throughout. As one former High Court judge said to me yesterday,
“the procedure is consistent with natural justice and similar or identical to workplaces up and down the country.”
We on the Committee spent many hours reviewing the evidence in this case without fear or favour. The Member had prior notice of the charges and the evidence against him at every stage. He had his legal advisers with him. The Committee invited him to make his appeal against the commissioner’s findings in writing and in person, and I hope he would confirm that we gave him every opportunity to make his case to us and that the session was conducted respectfully and fairly. I think he is nodding.
The Member has said that his witnesses should have been interviewed. Natural justice requires that witnesses be heard, but that does not necessarily mean that they must be heard orally or cross-examined. We did what many courts and tribunals do every day of the week: we reviewed all the witness statements, took them into consideration and published them in full.
The Member claims that the commissioner had made up her mind before she sent her memorandum. That is completely to misunderstand the process. As the commissioner has done in every other case, she started an investigation and invited the Member to meet her and/or to submit evidence. Once she had completed her investigation and, by definition, found on a preliminary basis that there had been a breach of the rules, she submitted a memorandum to him for his comments, and then to the Committee. That is when we heard his appeal, in writing and in person.
I turn to the sanction. As the Committee says in the report:
“Each of Mr Paterson’s several instances of paid advocacy would merit a suspension of several days, but the fact that he has repeatedly failed to perceive his conflict of interest and used his privileged position as a Member of Parliament to secure benefits for two companies for whom he was a paid consultant, is even more concerning. He has brought the House into disrepute.”
A Conservative colleague whom I respect a great deal said to me on Monday that justice should always be tempered by mercy. I agree. But justice also demands no special favours.
These are the precedents that we considered: Patrick Mercer was suspended for six months; the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for 30 days; Jonathan Sayeed for 14 days; and George Galloway for 18 days. When Geoffrey Robinson failed to provide proper responses to the commissioner and Committee, he was suspended for a month. This case is just as serious because it involved at least 14 instances. It was a pattern of behaviour, and the Member has said time and again over the last week that he would do the same again tomorrow. If the House were therefore to vote down or water down the sanction, or to carry the amendment, it would be endorsing his action. We would be dismantling the rule on paid advocacy, which has been around in some shape or form since 1695. I am afraid that the public would think of us as the Parliament that licensed cash for questions.
Let me turn to the amendment. I have worked with the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) on many things; I think she is very wrong today. It is the very definition of injustice that one should change the rules or the process at the very last moment, and to do so for a named individual. That is what the amendment does. Retrospective legislation to favour or damage an individual because they are a friend or a foe is immoral and the polar opposite of the rule of law. That is why, as the Leader of the House knows, I spoke and voted with Conservative Members when we were considering a retrospective motion to subject the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) to a recall petition. The amendment should fail on that basis alone—it is the opposite of due process.
The amendment purports to set up an appeal process, but an appellate body must be independent and every single member of the body will be parti pris, by definition. They will have been whipped and taken a view today. They will almost certainly have voted. The proposed Chair, by agreeing to have his name put forward, is already not independent. I point out gently to the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire that it was her motion as Leader of the House on 7 January 2019 that set up the Standards Committee in its present form. At that time, she said that
“a greater element of independence was required, and that having seven lay members and seven parliamentary Members on the Standards Committee…provides the right balance—having the memory and the corporate understanding of being in this place, while at the same time ensuring that we can benefit from the experience and knowledge of independent lay members.”—[Official Report, 7 January 2019; Vol. 652, c. 128.]
The body she proposes today will have no independent members—no independence.
Chris Bryant
I will not take an intervention, if the right hon. Member does not mind. She must know that this is a retrograde step. She also said—I say this strongly to all hon. Members who have said many things about the parliamentary commissioner—that
“ensuring that the PCS can operate independently…is vital and will better enable justice for those seeking recourse.”—[Official Report, 7 January 2019; Vol. 652, c. 127.]
The amendment will drive a coach and horses through our standards system. We will have two rival Select Committees on standards at the same time, charged with the same piece of business. As many hon. Members may know, the Standards Committee is engaged in a review of the code of conduct, which we are required to do in every Parliament, and that will include review of the operation of the system. I am absolutely certain that there are things that we could do better. I am determined to make sure that we will do things better to ensure natural justice.
Chris Bryant
I will not, if the hon. Member does not mind. I want to conclude my remarks; I am sorry. He has already caught Mr Speaker’s eye.
We are close to agreeing a report on how we can improve the system. I would also say that the suggested process will keep this running for yet more months. I agree with the Leader of the House: I hate investigations that take a long time, but I will point this out gently. The commissioner was, I think, right to suspend her investigation on the right hon. Member for North Shropshire after his wife’s death. It was only once his lawyers said it was okay to restart that she initiated it again. All the delays in the process have been down to his seeking further extensions of deadlines, and we have always sought to meet those. I think it is inappropriate to keep it going any further.
I also draw a distinction between an appeal on the facts, which we have heard, and an appeal on the sanction. It may be right that there should be an appeal process on the sanction. That is not the process that we have adopted with any other Member thus far, and that is why I think it is wrong to confuse changing the process with the case in hand. It is, as I said earlier, by definition wrong to change the process at the very last moment.
The Committee also says in the report:
“A Member is entitled to contest, even vigorously contest, the Commissioner’s interpretation of the rules and her findings. We do not mark down any Member for doing so.”
The aggravating factor in this case was a lack of insight into a conflict of interest, not a lack of acceptance of breach. I will say this to the Member: this could have been very different if you had come to us and said, “I am sorry. I was trying to do the right thing, but I got it wrong. I want the House to uphold the highest standards, and I accept the reprimand and the sanction. I hope my constituents will deal kindly with me.” The danger is that, if the amendment is carried, his name will become a byword for bad behaviour.
Let me end with this. I hope all Members know that I care passionately about Parliament. The vast majority of Members are here to do good. We make significant sacrifices, as our partners know. We make a big difference, often on campaigns that have no party issue in them—indeed, I hope the House will support my Acquired Brain Injury Bill on 3 December. [Interruption.] I think that was unanimous, Mr Speaker. But if the public believe that we are marking our own homework, our reputation, individually and collectively, will be tarnished. Independence is essential to protect us. A Conservative MP said to me yesterday:
“There have been times when I have been ashamed of being a Member of this House, I don’t want to go back to that.”
Of course, as Chairman of the Committee, I remain a servant of the House, but I also have to look at the public. They want the House to uphold the highest possible standards. Nobody can be above the rules. It is the public who should judge this, and I fear they will find us all wanting if the amendment is carried today. I warn colleagues, with all my heart: do not do something today that we will rue in the future.
Mr Speaker
Just to let people know, I am not going to continue the debate. We have been through the debate, but I think that this might be a point of clarification, and I am happy to accept it in that light.
Chris Bryant
It is a very simple one, Mr Speaker. I do not want to delay the House. Some people have asked whether the Standards Committee continues to exist. It does, and we will be meeting on Tuesday morning. I will still be its Chair.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not believe that any hon. Member is truly honourable if they serve on this new Committee. Therefore I want my constituents to know that no Member of Parliament serves on this corrupt Committee in my name.
Independent Expert Panel Recommendations for Sanctions and the Recall of MPs Act 2015
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I agree with much that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has said, but I am a little more sceptical about whether the changed attitude towards the House and its Members will remain for much longer than another 24 hours. I have been here before, and if we look at some of the online comments some of us have received over the last 72 hours, we see that they have been even more aggressively nasty than the ones last week.
I thank Sir Stephen Irwin, who I think has done a magnificent job ever since he started with the independent expert panel, and all the other members of the panel. However, it is also worth remembering that the person who works most closely with them is the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. I think we should pay tribute to the magnificent work that she has done in this field as well. These are often complex, difficult and highly emotionally charged cases to deal with, and coming to a secure idea of what has actually happened in some instances is not simple.
One danger with adopting the policy that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire suggested, in an environment where each parliamentary office has a Member of Parliament and perhaps three or four members of staff, is that it might reveal the name of the complainant, which breaches confidentiality. That needs to be addressed carefully.
When the 2015 Act was introduced, it was absolutely clear that the House intended the process to apply to all the cases that might possibly be brought, because they could then be brought only to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, hence the way in which the legislation was drafted. Any case of bullying or sexual harassment that might have come to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, if we proposed a sanction of 14 or more days or 10 sitting days, would have invoked the recall petition process. When we created the independent expert panel, as the Leader of the House was absolutely right to say, many of the trade unions were opposed to the idea of making that process apply. I have always thought that they were wrong, for the very simple reason that we have ended up looking as if we take offences about registration of interests, paid advocacy and things like that more seriously than bullying and sexual harassment.
Bullying and sexual harassment cases could not possibly lead to somebody leaving the House through the recall petition process as it is presently constituted. However, the independent expert panel could, if it wanted to, recommend the expulsion of a Member. I do not know what the case would have to be to lead to that—that is a matter for it—but I will come on to that later in relation to the amendment from my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House. I just think it is wrong that we should have what seems to be a higher bar for sexual harassment and bullying cases than for other cases that come before the Committee.
As Sir Stephen has said and as the Leader of the House intimated, it would be better to correct that by legislation, and I have had this conversation with the right hon. Gentleman. Leaders of the House always say that there is never any time to do anything by legislation and that it is absolutely impossible, until suddenly they find that it is absolutely possible, it is absolutely necessary and it must all be done in one day. That is the kind of thing that happens to Leaders of the House: somebody who lives on a street a little bit further up Whitehall somehow manages to tug the ear of Leaders of the House, and they find time that they never had before.
The slight danger of doing it this way is that something has to go from the independent expert panel to the Committee on Standards. I know that the Committee shall produce a report and it must be equal to the report that has come from the independent expert panel; none the less, there is a danger that the process is a bit more cumbersome and it undermines an element of the independence of the independent expert panel. We might end up having a debate in the Standards Committee, and I think that would be entirely inappropriate. If the House cannot have a debate on it, why on earth should the Standards Committee be able to have a debate on it? I can assure the House, having discussed this with the Standards Committee, that we will not debate that. However, I am the Chair today, and who knows who might be the Chair in the future or who might be the members of the Committee in the future? So I would still prefer us, at some point, to have proper legislation to clear this up, rather than simply relying on the Standing Orders and the good will of the Committee on Standards.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman is a very effective Chair, and I think we all respect and admire the work he is doing. On the legislation versus Standing Orders issue that he raises, he is right that Sir Stephen did indeed want legislation, which I would support, but the concern was that such legislation might be subject to legal challenge, and I do not know exactly where that leaves us. I am interested in his view if we were to go down the legislative route. What would be his concerns if legal challenges were to emerge because of that?
Chris Bryant
We have not been advised of any problems with legal challenge. I still think legislation would be better. Legislation always—or nearly always—puts things completely beyond doubt, whereas Standing Orders changes do not always put things completely beyond doubt. However, it would then be a proceeding in Parliament and, as we all know, article IX of the Bill of Rights says that no proceeding in Parliament should be
“impeached or questioned in any Court”
of law or any other place.—[Interruption.] I have got it right, have I not? I think we would be able to rely on that very solidly, and that must appeal to the Leader of the House because it goes back to the 17th century. On the question of the independence of the IEP, we are very keen in the Standards Committee that we will do everything to maintain that independence, and it will not be questioned or impeached by us in any shape or form.
I note that the changes to the Standing Orders say that the Chair of the Committee can do something if the Committee has not managed
“to meet within 3 sitting days”.
I think this would happen quite often, because it is quite difficult to ensure that the Standards Committee is going to meet within three days, especially because the independent members come from some distance and we would not necessarily be able to gather them together, and we can be quorate only if we have three lay members and three members who are Members of the House.
I gently suggest to the Leader of the House that it might be nice, at some point, to have a Standing Order that says that all motions from the independent expert panel or from the Committee on Standards will be before the House within three sitting days as well, but I know what he is going to say. He will say that it is all very difficult, and that sometimes it is impossible to find time and sometimes it is possible to find time—
Chris Bryant
The Leader of the House takes my point.
On retrospectivity, I am afraid I am not going to vote for the amendment in the names of the Leader of the Opposition and shadow Leader of the House; I will be voting against it. The independent expert panel could have decided in the case we are referring to that the Member should be expelled from the House; I do not make a judgment as to whether that would be the right thing to do, but it could have done that. It knew perfectly well that these were the rules and that it was unable to allow the invoking of the Recall of MPs Act 2015. That is why it is unfair to introduce an element of retrospectivity.
It does, however, present a very difficult example for the House that somebody who has been found to have behaved so inappropriately that in any other set of circumstances it would have been invoking the Recall of MPs Act chooses to continue in the House. The Leader of the House himself has said that he thinks the hon. Member should resign, and that is my view as well. The situation is very difficult for constituents in that constituency and for other Members and staff around the House, and I wish it could be other than it is, but that does not mean we can surrender the fundamental principles we have always had.
My main point, however, is that I fully support the closing of the loophole, and I wish this had done before the IEP came to its decision on the case hon. Members have referred to. I only wish that attitudes across the House were changing more rapidly, and we still have a considerable job of work to do on that, but I am assured that many members of staff both of Members and of the House feel reassured by the independence of the IEP process, and I would encourage anybody who ever feels that they have been bullied or have been subject to sexual harassment in their line of work here to present themselves, because they will have a fair hearing from the system.
Mr Rees-Mogg
With the leave of the House, I will respond to the debate. I thank all those who participated in it. I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), for her support for the main motion, and I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) not just for his support for the main motion but for the considerable contribution that he has made to ensuring culture change in the Palace of Westminster.
I am in considerable agreement with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the Chairman of the Standards Committee. He made the very important point that this is not a loophole, but it was a deliberate decision that was taken because of representations that were made to exclude recall when the independent expert panel was set up. As it happens, I also agree with him that that was a mistake. The arguments against allowing for recall were essentially weak and erroneous. I think that we agreed to them because we wanted to set the panel up in a spirit of consensus and compromise, and to ensure that all the participants were happy, with the knowledge that we could go further in the future.
I turn to the speech by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). I agree with a great deal of what she says. I confess that my first reaction when I heard about this case was that the Member concerned should not remain a Member of this House, and I said that I thought he should resign. However, I listened very carefully to what the chairman of the IEP said and very carefully, actually, to the basic principle of justice that nobody has a punishment inflicted upon him that was not available at the time the offence was committed. That principle does not apply just to this House; it applies throughout our court and legal system, and it has, really, from the earliest times. I think that is an important principle of justice.
What the hon. Lady said in her impassioned plea is so right in so many ways. Actually, when the recall Bill came through, I was of the view that we could always trust our constituents under the widest possible circumstances of recall. I have never felt that we should shy away from what our constituents want. I was very much in support of what my noble Friend Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park was trying to do. However, Parliament decided otherwise. Parliament decided to introduce a recall Act subject to strict criteria, including going through a Committee of this House, and those criteria were deliberately not used to extend the Act to the independent expert panel.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I will not, actually, on this occasion; I want to complete my thought.
I think so many of us were so desperately depressed when, after all that this House had tried, after the efforts that we made to improve the standards of behaviour, to achieve culture change and to ensure that people working in this palace felt safe and secure and respected, somebody so recently elected, who went on the course about treating people properly—somebody who did all of that and got every message from the Whips, every message from the Government, every message from this House—had broken the rules within a few months. But that was the system that there was; that system provided for a penalty that was imposed; that penalty was imposed by an independent body, and that is justice. One may then change it for the future. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley knows how much I respect her—that is not the normal waffle of politics; I hold her genuinely in the highest regard, and I admire her campaigning spirit—but I am afraid that on this occasion, justice must trump anger.
Chris Bryant
The Leader of the House knows that I will vote with him on this matter, but for me the biggest problem is that the Member concerned has shown absolutely no insight into his conduct. That was a point that the independent expert panel made, and it has been absolutely self-evident at every single moment since. That really does pose a problem for all of us. I know that many Members on his own side have said to him, “It would be better for you and for the House if you were to step down.” I very rarely say this, but as a former priest, I would say this to him as well. I think it would be in his own best interests, for him to be able to move on in his own life, if he were to step aside, and that is what I would prefer.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I do not think that it is really for me to respond to what the hon. Gentleman has said, but it will be in Hansard tomorrow.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
I have had the privilege of visiting my right hon. Friend’s constituency, whose fine produce is absolutely remarkable. I think that he introduced me to the largest pumpkin grower in England—by which I mean that he grows the most pumpkins, not the biggest pumpkins.
Mr Rees-Mogg
He is not the fattest pumpkin grower either, no.
On 20 July, the Government announced a further package of measures to help industry to tackle the issues caused by the HGV driver shortage. Those measures include support for the recruitment and retention of drivers, such as proposals to streamline the process to obtain a licence, offering financial assistance for training, and backing industry-led initiatives to improve the working conditions for driving. I have also noticed reports that wages for HGV drivers are going up. This is, as so often, a market solution.
Mr Rees-Mogg
This is an important matter, and it is quite wrong for developers to sell substandard homes. Developers must meet their responsibilities to resolve issues quickly and treat home buyers fairly when things go wrong. They must also meet planning conditions agreed with the local authority. The Building Safety Bill includes provision for the new homes ombudsman scheme to provide strong and effective redress for new build home buyers and to hold poor developers to account.
Furthermore, our future planning reforms will inject real competition and quality into our construction market, with new builders entering the market to challenge incumbents, and we hope that a wave of self-built houses and a focus on beauty and quality will follow. Members will have the opportunity to raise these issues as the legislation makes its way through the House.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Is it not great to be back properly, with all of us here?
One of the saddest stories I heard this week was about Sarah Harding, the Girls Aloud singer who died of cancer—partly, her family said, because she chose not to go to the doctor early enough due to covid. The cancer was not detected soon enough.
My concern about getting over the massive backlog is that lots of people are already choosing to go private. Even people of very meagre means are spending £3,000 or £5,000 on new hips and knees, which seems massively unfair. Should we not be buying up all the capacity in the private sector, at cost, so that people are dealt with on the basis of need rather than their financial position?
Secondly, there is a real problem with staffing. We have a shortage of pathologists and histopathologists—the people who check whether something is a bad cancer—and a shortage of radiologists and radiographers. Can we have a debate on how we get staff numbers, not just more managers on £270,000, into the NHS as fast as possible?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I find myself in a great deal of agreement with the hon. Gentleman that it is so important that people go to their doctor if they have any suspicions. He has been an example of that and I know has recovered. It was to the great relief of the House that he had the sense to be checked out early. If there is any message one could ever give to anybody who listens to these sessions it would be to go to see their doctor if they have a concern, and I remind GPs that they are meant to be offering face-to-face appointments again. The money is being provided to deal with the backlog. I think I said earlier that it would deal with 9 million cases, but, yes, shortages of staff are an issue and it is of fundamental importance that the money goes to where it is needed in the NHS: supporting paying for the staff who will be carrying things out rather than paying very large bureaucratic salaries, which does not seem to be the best application of funds.
Committee on Standards
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
May I say that the panel was very ably chaired by Rima Makarem? She herself, as a lay member of the House of Commons Commission, is a clear instance of how much lay members can bring to the way we do our business. It was also clerked very ably by Dr Robin James, the Clerk of our Committee.
Mehmuda has extensive experience. It is good that she has worked in so many different organisations as a committee member, non-executive director and so on. I was particularly impressed that she has been dealing with vets—somehow that seemed particularly appropriate for dealing with Members of Parliament. I was a member of the interview panel. What was really striking was that she showed a really strong sense of fairness, an ability to judge nuance and a capacity to work within a committee on sensitive issues. She did not seem to want to be the chair, either, which I rather liked. She also had a robust understanding of regulation. I am very confident that she will be a magnificent member of the Committee.
I have been the Chair of the Committee for the best part of a year, and the only regret I have is that since 18 May last year we have not had our full complement. For several months we were two down on the lay members, and we have been one down for more than a year. We need not rehearse all those arguments now, but I just hope that when we are replacing the new members, as we will have to do in the future, we can perhaps start this process a bit earlier so that there is no gap. We have an awful lot of work to do, and I very much look forward to welcoming Mehmuda at tomorrow morning’s meeting.
Question put and agreed to.
Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)
I beg to move,
That Marta Phillips, Dr Simon Thurley and Simon Wright be appointed as external members of the Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body under Part 1, Schedule 1 to the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019.
The House will be relieved that I do not intend to detain it long. The 90 minutes available for this debate may be more than is necessary, but it may help if I explain that I am bringing this motion forward on behalf of the Sponsor Body. Schedule 1 of the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019 states that the Sponsor Body must consist of between two and four external members, excluding the chairman. The current external board members were appointed on 1 July 2018, when the Sponsor Body was still in shadow form. Their appointments were confirmed by the House on 24 March 2020, as the body became a statutory organisation. Under the Act, a member must be appointed for a fixed term of not more than three years, although they can be reappointed. Their terms will therefore expire no later than 31 June 2021.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am not going to delay people for long either. I just wonder: we are doing all this appointing of people to the Sponsor Body, but are they ever going to mix a bucket of cement?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think it unlikely that Marta Phillips, Dr Simon Thurley and Simon Wright will mix buckets of cement on the estate of the Palace of Westminster. I am glad to say that work is going on. I have reported already to the House that the fire safety work has taken place and been tested across the estate, and I think that eight miles of pipe have gone in. Preliminary works are under way to make the preparations: Derby Gate is almost completed, and there will be a move of MPs into Richmond House. Many things are happening that will allow the restoration and renewal to take place, so I hope that that gives some reassurance to the hon. Gentleman. It is important that we keep up the pace to get to the full restoration and renewal. As for the individual members of the Sponsor Body mixing cement, that may be something they did in the earlier stages of their careers, but I do not think they will be doing it tomorrow.
A recruitment process for external board members has been undertaken by the Sponsor Body in recent months, and the interview panel included the chairman of the Sponsor Board, a parliamentary member of the Sponsor Board and an independent panel member. Following the recruitment process, the Sponsor Body has reappointed three of the four current external board members. I am grateful to all the external members of the Sponsor Board for their work so far. Today’s motion will approve the reappointment of Marta Phillips, Dr Simon Thurley and Simon Wright, and I therefore commend this motion to the House.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
As custodians of this beautiful place, we face serious duties for which almost all of us here are supremely unqualified. The Sponsor Body and the Delivery Authority were therefore established in order to bring in the skills and qualities and, above all, the knowledge and experience that we so obviously lack to the essential process of restoration and renewal, untroubled by any political considerations that we may have and aided by the relevant qualities. I understand that the new members to be appointed will bring such qualities. We have to give this magnificent building the love and care that it needs, and in order to do that, we need the right people in the right place at the right time.
Chris Bryant
It is good that Simon Thurley is there, but would not my hon. Friend be surprised if such an eminent historian as Mr Thurley were to support a proposal that the parliamentary archives should be hived off to Kew, probably never to return here again? Is it not important that the parliamentary archives should remain here in Parliament and in Westminster?
Thangam Debbonaire
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because it gives me an opportunity to agree with him most wholeheartedly. There are many other things on which we all have personal preferences that we would like to pronounce on. I, for one, would like to see the restoration of the cloisters to the parliamentary Labour party as soon as possible. For that, we need stonemasons and stonemasonry apprenticeships. If some of those could be allocated to some of my constituents in Bristol West, I would be most happy. I also recommend, to colleagues who have not had the pleasure, receiving a briefing from the parliamentary Sponsor Body engagement staff. I had a wonderful briefing today on the matter of voids. I will never again look at the grills under the Chamber in the same way, Madam Deputy Speaker, knowing what I do now and what it looks like underneath.
The Sponsor Body, of course, does know of what they speak. I am looking forward to seeing them get on with buckets, stonemasonry and whatever else they may need to do in order that we may preserve, enhance and give this building the love it needs to restore it to the fullest possible health and effectivity.