Standards: Code of Conduct and Guide to the Rules

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Monday 12th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) knows that I agree with nearly everything that she has said, and in particular what she said about the Commission. Indeed, further to the point that was made earlier by my fellow member of the Committee, the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), I think we on the Standards Committee would like to look more at the independent complaints and grievance scheme. We were conscious that when she set it up, part of the rationale was that MPs should not get their sticky fingers on this area of the work, so I feel as if I have been charged by her to carry on looking at this area of work. She and I have had quite a few conversations about this and, as she knows, I have some concerns of my own. It is important that we get this absolutely right.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

We need to remember that the ICGS came into being because Members of Parliament were not trusted to adjudicate on these matters. If the Committee is going to look at this, will the hon. Gentleman join me in making an undertaking that in no respect are we going to interfere with the process or the adjudication of cases, but that we are possibly going to look at the governance of the process and the governance of the scheme as a whole?

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely; I completely concur with every single word that the hon. Gentleman has said, not only just now but in his speech earlier. He and the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire have made the point that we are in the business not only of setting up rules but of trying to change the culture. That is normally a more difficult process, and I will come on to that.

If I might irritate the House briefly, a constituent has asked me to remind everyone that we pronounce “Rhondda” as “Rhontha”, with the “dd” sounding like a “th”. I apologise to everybody.

Advent is, as we know, a penitential season, and it was the 35th anniversary of my ordination as a priest last week, so let me start with my traditional confession that I am no better than any other Member in the House, with not just feet of clay but ankles, calves and thighs. I have to say that, as I look round the Chamber every day, I see colleagues of different stripes and from different parties who have made considerable contributions, often way beyond the call of duty, to our national life. Politics really is an honourable profession, but it is also true that the public want us to do better.

I am painfully aware that 18 Members of this House have been suspended or have withdrawn for a day or more during this Parliament. That is quite a significant number. That may in part be because we are getting our act together, and that things that were formerly swept under the Pugin carpet are now dealt with not secretly and behind closed doors but through a proper process. I am also conscious that on top of that we have 15 Members in the independent group who have been suspended from their political parties, and justice sometimes comes through these processes very slowly. That is not fair to complainants, and it is not fair to the Members either. I want to make sure that Members are entitled to fairness. That is why I want us to have a set of rules that is clear, simple and unambiguous, and it genuinely worries me, as I know it does the whole Committee, that we now have 12 separate bodies that regulate Members of Parliament, and that we are now even considering creating a 13th. Whether that is right, I hate to think. I am sightly conscious, however, that other countries have it even worse. The House ethics manual in the United States of America consists of 456 pages, so I think we have been remarkably concise.

I am grateful to the Committee, and especially to its lay members: Mehmuda Mian, Tammy Banks, Rita Dexter, Michael Maguire, Paul Thorogood and Victoria Smith, plus the former members who played a part in getting us to this point, Arun Midha and Jane Burgess. This has been a long, iterative process, and the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin)—who I sort of think of as the deputy Chair of the Committee—is absolutely right to suggest that the lay members often bring an insight, as we bring an insight to them, that results in a creative mix that is in the interests of the whole House.

Let me deal briefly with a few important changes that we are making as a result of today’s motion, because it is important that Members understand them. First, we are completely banning MPs from providing paid parliamentary advice, including providing or agreeing to provide services as a parliamentary adviser, consultant or strategist. I believe that that always was, effectively, selling the title of MP on the open market.

Secondly, we are requiring a Member who takes on an outside role to obtain a written contract or a written statement of particulars detailing their duties. The contract, or a separate letter of undertaking, must specify that the Member’s duties will not include lobbying Ministers, MPs or public officials on behalf of the employer, or providing paid parliamentary advice, and that the employer may not ask them to do so. I think that is a very good defence for a Member who takes on outside earnings.

Thirdly, we are significantly tightening the rules on conflicts of interest resulting from outside interests by extending, from six months to 12 months, the period during which an MP cannot engage in lobbying on a matter in which they have a financial interest.

Fourthly, we are closing the “serious wrong” loophole that Owen Paterson sought to exploit. From now on, if a Member wants to claim this exemption when approaching a Minister or official, they must show that any benefit to their client is merely incidental to the resolution of the wrong or injustice. They must state at the outset that they are providing evidence of a serious wrong, and they may not make repeated approaches, otherwise it just becomes a loophole through which they can drive a coach and horses. I am glad the Government now agree with us on that.

We are also ending the false distinction between a Member initiating and participating in a proceeding and an approach to a Minister or official where they have an outside financial interest. It is not enough simply to register and declare an outside interest. It is surely axiomatic that a Member who is in receipt of outside reward or consideration should not seek to confer a benefit through parliamentary or political means on the person or organisation providing that outside reward or consideration. That is paid advocacy and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) said, it has been banned in some shape or form since 1695.

I now turn to the matters on which the Government disagree with the Committee. First, like the other members of the Committee, I simply do not understand the Government’s argument on the Nolan principles. They have got it wrong, and it is not in the interests of the House or of individual Members to stick with the Government’s position. Acting on the advice of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which originated the Nolan principles, the Standards Committee drafted and consulted on more detailed descriptions of the individual words—selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership—as they apply specifically to Members of Parliament. Lord Evans, the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, told us:

“We strongly support the idea that although the seven principles remain central and important for standards issues right across the public realm, they need to be interpreted for particular institutions and organisations.”

That is why, for instance, the police have gone down precisely this route and produced their own set of descriptions.

More importantly, the Nolan principles need fleshing out in a parliamentary situation. What does “selflessness” mean in the context of Parliament? I would argue that a Member cannot be entirely selfless, unless they renounce any form of payment, unless they travel to London every single day from their constituency, wherever it is in the land, and unless they eschew any ambition whatsoever. But if they have no ambition, would they want to come to Parliament in the first place?

We have written descriptions to help explain not only to us but to our constituents and to members of the public, who might be the people complaining about our behaviour, precisely how those principles apply to how we do our business. Put simply, I think the Standards Committee’s version is more helpful to MPs and the public than the Government’s version.

Secondly, I think ministerial declarations are a no-brainer. I understand the arguments, but I do not think they particularly wash with the public. I start from three basic principles. First, Ministers in the House of Commons owe their position to their membership of the House, and they are answerable to the House. Secondly, all MPs should be treated equally under the rules. And thirdly, the public have a right to know, as close to real time as possible, of any financial interests that might reasonably be thought to influence an MP’s speeches, actions, decisions or votes. As Ministers actually make decisions, whereas most of us in the Chamber just talk about other people’s decisions, transparency is even more important for them, not less important.

Following those principles, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West said, the 1993 Select Committee on Members’ Interests—at around the time of cash for questions—concluded that

“Ministers are and should be subject to the House’s rules for the registration of financial interests in exactly the same way and to the same extent as all other Members of the House.”

That was the House rule under the Major Government. On the back of that, the new ministerial code in 1997, under Major and then under Blair, said that Ministers should register hospitality received in their capacity as a Minister in the House if it was

“on a scale or from a source which might reasonably be thought likely to influence Ministerial action.”

The 2007 ministerial code provided that ministers should register hospitality both with their permanent secretary and the House.

It was only in 2015—really quite late in the day—without any announcement, discussion or debate in the House, or any comment in a Select Committee report, that the rule was changed to grant Ministers in the code of conduct of this House an exemption from registering anything that they considered they had received in a ministerial capacity. The theory is, as the Leader of the House helpfully explained, that in exchange for that exemption, Ministers register through their Department any gifts, hospitality and travel that they have received in their ministerial capacity. That is published somewhere between three and nine months later, but without the value, which is a key point. That means that a member of the public cannot judge whether the hospitality was on a scale that might reasonably be thought likely to influence ministerial decisions.

The Committee, Transparency International, the Institute for Government, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, the 1922 committee, the Labour Front Bench, the Scottish National party Front Bench, a substantial number of Ministers and I think that the system is manifestly unfair for the ordinary Back-Bench MP. They declare it all within 28 days and can be investigated and sanctioned if they fail to declare it correctly. However, the Minister’s declaration, without details, appears months later and cannot be investigated. It is not uncommon for a group of MPs—some of whom are Ministers and some are not—to go to the same event, which might cost more than £300. The Back-Bench MPs all declare it and the Daily Mail writes a story about it, but the Minister’s attendance is recorded nine months later and nobody notices. That seems somewhat unfair to me.

Incidentally, in answer to a point that the Leader of the House made, the Committee has said that the Government could set a lower threshold for further ministerial registrations if they wanted to—lower than £300 threshold in the House of Commons. However, it is worth pointing out that, though the ministerial threshold at the moment is said to be £140, since the Government do not publish the value of what is received, we have no idea whether that threshold is being met. I have been to events with Ministers that I have registered, but which the Minister has never subsequently registered anywhere.

I am not convinced that the system is working. I have a great deal of time for the Leader of the House. I love ministerial promises, especially when they come before Christmas and they talk about spring, but previous Leaders of the House have said to me that this would be sorted out by spring—a different spring. That spring has now sprung, and now we are into the winter. It seems extraordinary that Government Ministers will not be able to work out for themselves—not the Department —whether they have been to an event or received hospitality worth more than £300, and to register it in two minutes by sending a quick email to the registrar of interests in the House. I simply do not understand the logistical argument from the Leader of the House.

I urge colleagues to support my amendment, first, because the public expect full transparency and openness, and wonder what Ministers are trying to hide. Secondly, Ministers, in effect, now choose whether to register with the House or the Department. That does not make any sense at all. Thirdly, even if the Leader gets her way, the information will not all be in one place.

Fourthly, nobody presently or in future, so far as I can see, is expected to regulate or monitor the ministerial declarations. Fifthly, there are bizarre anomalies such as the previous Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), and the previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), going to a Bond premiere, supposedly in their ministerial capacity because, as another Minister explained, James Bond exercises Executive functions. That argument simply undermines the whole system. I am not making that up, incidentally.

My next point is that this is the bare minimum that the public expect of us. I have had many emails, texts and helpful pieces of advice on Twitter saying that we should not be taking any hospitality or gifts whatsoever. If a person was working in local government or in most of the private sector today, they would have to declare everything. I do worry that sometimes our belief in our own exceptionalism, and Ministers’ belief in their own exceptionalism, grows with every extra day that we are an MP or a Minister.

Ministers have a habit of becoming ex-Ministers, but under the present rules, their registered interests do not come with them to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. So if we stick with the Government’s proposals, they could easily and inadvertently fall foul of the new paid lobbying rules, which now apply for 12 months after the interest is accrued. They might have accrued the interest when a Minister, but then end up not being a Minister any more and wanting to lobby Ministers. They would be precluded from doing that, but then they would not have registered the interest with the House. That is yet another reason why it is simpler—far, far simpler—to return to the system that we had from 1997 to 2015, instituted by both Conservative and Labour Governments on the back of the cash for questions crisis, of treating all MPs equally.

Points of Order

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

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

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Could you clarify that it is changes in Government policy that are required to be announced to the House of Commons first? That does not muzzle the Government from making any statement about any matter, however serious, if there is no change of policy. I have read the Prime Minister’s statement, and I see no change of policy.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Prime Minister actually used the word “militarily” for the first time. I think that is a very significant change of policy.

Committee on Standards: Members’ Code of Conduct Review

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I will be as brief as I possibly can. First, I would like to thank the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), for the manner in which he chairs the Committee, for the way he presented the report, and for his diligence and the work he puts in to this Committee. It is a very arduous Committee, and it has a very heavy workload.

[Chris Bryant]

It was not meant to be.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

It is meant to be light duties, and I thought I could combine it with other things, but I have given up other things to stay on this Committee, because I think the work we are now doing on the revision of the code is so important.

I could touch on some of the points the hon. Gentleman made. I think he is right about the key being the transparency of conflicts of interests. We should not be denigrating people in this House who have outside interests. Some of them are unavoidable and some of them are by choice, but I firmly believe that this House is enriched by having people who stay on in Parliament, particularly later in their career, while involved with other interests. Being a senior barrister, for example, may take a Member away for weeks on end on very important cases, but having such people in this House means that we have such resources at our disposal much more readily than if these people felt they were squeezed out and were not welcome here. So I agree with him about the time point, and I agree with him about respectfulness.

I actually joined this Committee because I wanted to be involved in the revision of the code. This is ongoing work, and it has been going on for a very long time—since the previous commissioner first started work on the revision of the code. It is meant to happen every three years, but it has been delayed and delayed. So the report we are discussing actually incorporates the results of a great number of hours of work and thought.

The sad thing is that, if we just look at the Chamber today, we see there are a couple of handfuls of hon. Members here who are engaged with this debate. It has always been the biggest problem, in my view, that people only start engaging with the code when they are accused of something, they are worried about being accused of something or they are trying to steer clear of falling foul of the rules. There is not nearly enough discussion, reflection and understanding of why the code exists, of the principles and values behind the code, or indeed of how we should learn to talk about how we aspire to those principles.

I have always believed that the adjudication process is wanting. The compromise between handing the whole thing over to some independent judicial panel and leaving things as they are is to have an appeal akin to the independent expert panel that we have for the ICGS, but even that would have to be advised by a Member especially appointed for the purpose in serious and contested cases, to advise on how Parliament works and on the moral hazards of being a Member of Parliament.

I was mocked last week for suggesting that Members of Parliament need to learn more about this, but every profession in the world has training programmes to educate lawyers, doctors and other professional people on the moral hazards they will encounter in their career and how they should think about them. The General Medical Council website has a section on how to be a good doctor, and it sets out the principles. They are taught these things.

The problem we have in this House is that, culturally, we consider ourselves to be Members of a sovereign Parliament and to be beyond regulation and beyond question. Article 9 states that everything else is subsidiary to us. If anybody dares question us, well, we are elected, nobody dares gainsay us, and it is up to our voters. I am afraid no other profession in the country operates on that basis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful to all those who contributed to the debate and look forward to seeing the Government’s written submission when it comes. Of course, I hope the Leader of the House will come to give evidence to the Committee as well. We are interested in hearing from slightly more Members than were able to attend this afternoon, although I understand that lots of Members have constituency responsibilities and need to get to their constituencies, some of which, like mine, are even further away than Somerset.

It seems to me that we need to work through a few issues, one of which is whether we have specific descriptors for the Nolan principles. The Committee on Standards in Public Life—which, of course, originally came up with the Nolan principles—has advocated that, reviewed our version and was supportive of it. We also need to look at the question of respect, or respectfulness, and how that plays out. I have listened to lots of Members on that.

There may be a knotty problem that we still need to resolve in respect of whether Ministers should be treated differently. I remember the Leader of the House coming to our Committee and saying that he did not really believe that the separation of powers was an important principle, but I noticed that today he said it is—we sometimes choose our arguments according to the day of the week. My important principle is that all MPs should be treated fairly and equally under the rules. It would be for the benefit of most Ministers if all Members were treated exactly the same and had to declare everything in the same way.

It would be in the interests of the public if the House was able to make our current register much more readable and accessible. It is strange that we have to go to TheyWorkForYou to find out the history of our register of interests. We cannot go through the parliamentary system without looking at 20 different documents. If someone wants to look at ministerial registers, they have to look, every year, at 122 online documents. I just do not think that, in the end, that does us any favours as a House.

I repeat the point that I made earlier about the issue of telling the truth and lying. The Leader of the House used precisely the right word: it is a knotty one. Like many of the issues we on the Committee face, these issues are not susceptible to very simple answers. I get very cross and abandon my piety when people try to present—[Interruption.] Yes, I have often abandoned my piety; that is a good point. I get cross when people try to pretend that some of these issues are clear cut; they are not.

Finally, the House has heard from three other Committee members, and we work hard on all these issues, but the lay members bring to the Committee a fascinating outside look. Many of them are from professional backgrounds of which we know nothing and that makes for a much more effective Committee, so I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), who set it up in that way.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Committee on Standards’ Review of the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is there a means by which you could draw to the attention of the SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), that Mr Speaker made a statement in which he explained

“there are means by which accusations of lying may be brought before the House”?—[Official Report, 2 February 2022; Vol. 708, c. 266.]

I do not think the SNP spokesman has read that statement or understood it.

Code of Conduct: Consultation

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I do not want to be too pious about it, but the House has a set of rules and seeks to enforce them, first, because all Members aspire to a set of values and principles, and because the public have a right to expect that all Members abide by the highest possible standards in public life. The Committee on Standards has been reviewing these rules for some time. It started doing so in both the 2015 and 2017 Parliaments, but the general elections cut short that work. We have continued to work on it during this Parliament and have had the benefit of some members who have been on the Committee much longer than I have, including some of the lay members, in putting together the report that we compiled last week.

Our report has recommendations that fall into two main sections: suggested changes to the substance of the rules; and questions about the process whereby the rules are enforced and adjudicated. On the substance, we are recommending the following: first, an outright ban on any Member acting as a paid parliamentary adviser, consultant or strategist, which was a recommendation of the 2018 Committee on Standards in Public Life report on Members’ outside interests; secondly, the introduction of a new requirement that a Member must have a written contract for any outside work that makes it explicit that their duties cannot include lobbying Ministers, Members or public officials, or providing advice about how to lobby or influence Parliament, and that their employer will give them an undertaking not to ask them to do so; and thirdly, clarification of the criteria for the “serious wrong” exemption in the lobbying rules, to make clearer the risks of conflicts of interest and to put an end to this being used as a loophole.

Next, we propose a doubling of the six-month limit on reward or consideration restrictions in the lobbying rules to 12 months. Members will still be able to release themselves immediately from the restrictions by repaying any sums received in the relevant period if they wish to do so. In order to encourage Members to seek expert advice before acting, the Committee proposes a new “safe harbour” provision whereby Members cannot be found in breach of the rules if they sought and followed the advice of the House of Commons Registrar. This ensures that Members who seek advice from the Registrar or the House officials and follow the rules accordingly cannot accidentally find themselves in breach of the code of conduct.

We want to end the exemption whereby Ministers are not required to register with the Commons Registrar gifts and hospitality they receive in their ministerial capacity, so that other outside interests of all Members’, whether they are a Minister or not, can be found in a single place. We want to improve the transparency and searchability of the Commons Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and we have written to the House of Commons Commission to try to get it to speed up that process. We also want to add a new rule to the code of conduct prohibiting a Member from subjecting anyone to unreasonable and excessive personal attack in any medium.

In relation to the process of enforcing the rules and adjudicating cases, we have heard the complaints that there is no formal process of appeal at present. We were actually considering this for some time before the Owen Paterson case. We dispute that there is no process of appeal at the moment. Owen Paterson appealed the decision of the Commissioner for Standards to our Committee, and we took his evidence orally and in writing. Indeed, the Prime Minister also appealed the commissioner’s finding in a previous case, and we found in his favour and disagreed with the commissioner.

We have regularly received legal advice that our processes are article 6 compliant, but we accept that there are some blurred lines here. It might be better, for instance, to have a formal appeal process with established grounds of appeal, which might be more legalistic. It might be better if that process were akin to the existing structures for appeals under the independent expert panel that hears independent complaints and grievance scheme cases on sexual harassment and bullying. For that reason, we are engaging a senior judicial figure to advise us on improvements that could be made to provide greater clarity and to ensure that we are following best practice in embodying due process and guaranteeing a fair hearing to all Members and to complainants. We want to explore the pros and cons in detail before making any changes.

This report is not our final word on the subject. We are consulting on our recommendations and urge Members to send us their thoughts. It would be very helpful if there were a debate on the proposals early in the new year, because we may have got things wrong and we are happy to listen to Members. The closing date for written submissions is 20 January. There are some issues that we are considering separately, including the rules on Members’ use of parliamentary stationery, offices and facilities. I get the feeling from quite a lot of Members that it would be helpful if we provided new updated advice and recommendations in that field. We will be holding evidence sessions at the end of January and hope to produce a new draft code of conduct and guide to the rules for approval by the House by Easter. I am sure that the Government would then want to make time available for us to consider that.

Above all, we believe it right that the House should consider these matters in the round rather than piecemeal. The Government and the Opposition have both said that they believe it right that changes should proceed on a cross-party basis. We agree and believe that the best way of doing that is through the formal processes of the Committee.

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

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his statement, for his calm chairmanship of the Committee through a particularly difficult period, and for the consensual way that he chairs the Committee. Does he agree that it is really now time for some calm deliberation? Although this was a unanimously agreed report, by no means are all the proposals in it unanimously supported by all the members of the Committee. They are proposals for consultation, and he is right to invite evidence. Will he join me in drawing attention to the very useful summary of issues that is on the Committee’s website? Perhaps we should circulate that as a link to all Members.

Does the hon. Gentleman recall that we set out to try to simplify the code of conduct? Does he think we are succeeding in simplifying? Or, by adding more, are we perhaps being drawn dangerously into a zero-sum game, where rules beget rules and more rules beget more rules in an effort to try to clarify, and in fact making it more complicated? I particularly draw attention to section 8 of the report, on “Training, advice and promotion”. That is nothing to do with the enforcement of the code but is about promoting understanding of the purpose of the code and how we can more easily comply with the spirit of the code and avoid falling foul of the rules. What does he think we should do next to pursue that part of our thinking?

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful for the work that the hon. Gentleman has done on the Committee. It is right that we take our time to get this right, rather than rush at it like a bull at a gate, because there could be all sorts of unintended consequences, including from some of the recommendations we have come up with. We are very happy to listen. We will be circulating the consultation document to all Members, which I hope will prompt lots more Members to take part in the consultation. The worst thing of all would be that we change the rules and then everyone says next September, “Oh, I did not know we were doing that.” We want to ensure that people can understand them.

On simplification, our rules are quite complex, and Members are caught by lots of different sets of rules, as we lay out in the report, including those of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the Electoral Commission. I am aware that sometimes Members are advised on the use of stationery by a House official, because it is a House responsibility, but that may not be the eventual decision of the commissioner. That is unfair to a Member, so that is why we are introducing the safe harbour provision, which would mean that if someone has taken advice and followed the advice, then fair do’s; they cannot be found guilty of breaching the rules. However, I spent last weekend reading the House of Representatives code of conduct. It is 467 pages long. I think we have done well that ours is not quite as long as theirs.

House Standards System: Confidentiality and Sanctions

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

In all honesty, I have yet to meet a Member of this House who has not entered Parliament and politics out of completely honourable intentions. All of us want to change the world, make it a better place, improve the lot of our constituents, represent the communities in our patch and try to sort out individual issues for people as well as we can, and to tackle the injustices that beset humanity. Of course, that does not mean that we do not disagree all the time—that is a standard part of business—but nor does it mean, I think, that any one of us denigrates the honour with which other people hold their political opinions. Nor is it to say that we are not fallible—I see you smile, Mr Deputy Speaker; you are probably thinking, “Well, you certainly aren’t, Mr Bryant.” I hope people do not think I am being overly pious or returning to my former profession as a vicar when I suggest that we are all—including you, sir—flawed. Even the most statuesque of us has feet of clay—indeed, I have so many faults that I sometimes think that the only vaguely decent thing about me is that I know my failings rather well—which is why the House has a code of conduct, a behaviour code and a set of rules that apply to us all, which are constantly evolving.

On behalf of the Committee on Standards, let me say that in our current work on the review of the code of conduct, we are keen to make sure that we have a set of rules that is readily understandable by Members and by the public, and that upholds the Nolan principles, which are vital to restoring to public confidence in the way we do our business, and that we get the balance right between the fundamental principles and the specific rules, so that people are not endlessly being tripped up by what I can only call bureaucratic minutiae but getting away with much greater misdemeanours. We need to get that balance right—to make sure that there is justice for the individual Member and for the complainant, and that we do so as fairly as possible. It is from those fundamental principles, the Nolan principles, that all our attitudes and our behaviours should be drawn. The Leader of the House rightly referred to the desire, shared by everybody I believe, to change the culture in the whole parliamentary community, so that Parliament is always a place of respect and dignity, where people are able to do their job with honour.

Let me explain what the Committee wanted to achieve through our reports, which have led to the motions on the Order Paper. I thank the Leader of the House for the collaborative way in which he has approached this. I hope he does not mind when I say that it has taken a long time to get the motions on the Order Paper today. I think all of us would have preferred this to have happened sooner. The independent expert panel would like to have had the powers in place a little sooner. I am not making a big thing out of it; it would just be good if sometimes we were able to proceed more quickly.

First, we wanted to maintain the strictest possible confidentiality in cases of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct that are being investigated by the commissioner and considered by the independent expert panel, so as to protect both the complainant and the Member. It is important to remember that in those cases there is always a specific complainant who is, potentially, a victim, and that person has as many rights in the process—nor more rights, but as many rights—as the individual Member who is complained about.

I want to confirm for the Leader of the House that it is perfectly possible and right that, if an individual Member wishes to seek advice from another Member or, for that matter, legal counsel, of course they are entitled to do so. In some cases, that would be their Whip. Whips sometimes have a terrible reputation, but in my experience, they are largely there for the better management of the House—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!] I am suddenly popular; it will not last—and often for the welfare and care of individual Members of the House, especially when they are going through difficult times.

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

I am a member of the hon. Gentleman’s Committee, and I work with him. An issue that has arisen in discussion with Members is that the confidentiality arrangements seem to preclude Members from discussing with or seeking the help of their Whip to advise them on the complaint that has been made about them. It seems to be the understanding of many hon. and right hon. Members that they cannot even tell their Whip or seek help and support from their Whip in dealing with a complaint against them. Could he explain what he thinks the position is on that?

[Chris Bryant]

It is precisely as the Leader of the House adumbrated—namely, the independent expert panel has made clear that Members can seek advice from another Member if that is what they wish to do. It is on a confidential basis. Of course they should not do it so as to game the system or to lobby individual members of the Committee, because that is expressly a breach of the code of conduct, but Members are perfectly entitled, and it makes absolute sense, to go to their Whip to talk about the matter if they wish to do so. I urge colleagues not to use this as a means of lobbying the whole House to get support, because that undermines the whole system.

We wanted also to end the anomaly whereby the commissioner can neither confirm nor deny that she is investigating a particular case, even when the Member concerned has announced that he or she has referred themselves to the commissioner. That obviously brings the whole system into a degree of disrepute. I know that some colleagues were anxious about this clause, but in the vast majority of cases, this will mean that the commissioner will be able to confirm that she is not investigating a Member. Far too many hares have started running in the press without anybody being able to clarify the situation—neither the commissioner nor the Member—and that is an injustice to everybody.

Thirdly, we wanted to ensure that when something has gone wrong, the independent expert panel and the Standards Committee have more options in terms of sanctions than just a slap on the wrist or decapitation, which is basically what it has felt like for far too long. There are more effective means of enabling people to change their habits—perhaps the habits of a lifetime—or the way that they work, their attitudes or their behaviour in a way that aligns with the code of conduct and the rules. That is precisely what the suite of options that we have laid out in our reports do for both ICGS cases, for the independent expert panel to use, and for non-ICGS cases, for the Standards Committee to use. The Leader of the House is right to say that anything that affects the core functions of an MP would only be decided on by the House in the end. The final vote, as it were, would be for the House.

We wanted also to be absolutely clear with Members and the public what we consider to be mitigating or aggravating factors in considering a particular case when the commissioner has brought a report to us. This seems to us a simple matter of natural justice. It is exactly the same as the courts, which have mitigating and aggravating factors when sentencing. For instance, perhaps it is obvious that a Member who committed the same breach of the rules on more than one occasion or who did so after already having been admonished by the House for a similar breach—a recidivist—would face a tougher sanction from the Committee the next time round, but we thought it important to make this clear.

Perhaps it is also obvious that a Member who made a completely inadvertent error, apologised and swiftly made recompense would be able to rely on the commissioner and the Committee to treat such a breach as on the less serious end of the spectrum. Likewise, perhaps it is obvious that a Member who refused to answer an inquiry from the commissioner or the registrar, who deliberately dragged matters out, who was rude and abusive during the process or who refused to co-operate with an investigation or inquiry would face a more serious sanction from the Committee. My honest advice to colleagues—I think every member of the Committee would say this, and it is advice I would give anyone in life—is that a heartfelt apology goes a very long way towards putting things right. I think the House and the public respect that when people are able to do it. I also urge colleagues, if they ever want advice, to go to the registrar or the commissioner because they are there to help.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I have had conversations with colleagues about the role of the commissioner, and that point needs to be underlined. A number of colleagues are wary of approaching the commissioner for advice or questioning what is going on, because they worry that this eminent person will be somehow in judgment over them or hold something over them. How should the Committee begin to break down the barriers between the commissioner and right hon. and hon. Members? That barrier obviously exists in a number of instances.

[Chris Bryant]

As the hon. and be-knighted Member knows—I mean that he is a knight of the realm—when we have produced our report on the code of conduct we will consult widely in the House and elsewhere. I hope that as many Members as possible will take part in that consultation process. My impression is that the rules are now far too complicated. There are bits and pieces here, there, and everywhere. It seems extraordinary that we have two pages of stationery rules in the 21st century. I think we make it too complicated for Members to do their work, and I hope Members will take part in that next process. Part of that will undoubtedly be getting to know the commissioner and the registrar better.

I will not refer to the amendment that was not selected, but I will refer to the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). Whenever I see her speak, I am reminded of the fact that I lived in Northamptonshire when I was a youth officer for the diocese of Peterborough, and I used to drive up the M1. Just as people arrive in her constituency a great big sign on the motorway says, “Welcome to Northamptonshire.” Two seconds later a sign says, “Keep your Distance.” It was there long before covid. She is right to say that there is an issue for constituents who might suddenly be left high and dry. There is also an issue for constituents when there is a change of MP, because all the casework disappears into a black hole, and has to by law. I wonder, however, whether that is a matter regarding privileges rather than standards. The Privileges Committee cannot take up issues without being expressly asked to do so by the House. If the House wanted to do that, I am sure we would rise to the challenge, and that may be the right course to take.

I do not have much more to say, but I assure the House of two things. First, the Committee takes its job extremely seriously. We seek to be as fair-minded as we can be. We set politics and partisanship aside the moment we enter the meetings, and we strive to have a system that is simple to understand and navigate. Over 20 years as an MP I have seen that the court of public opinion can be capricious, and often delivers great injustices to Members. We strive to ensure that nobody can say that of the Committee. Sir Stephen Irwin has already made absolutely clear that the independent expert panel has exactly the same determination. Having met Sir Stephen—our Committee wanted to work closely with him—I am confident that the panel will do a sterling job.

Secondly, the Officers of the House are there to help Members, not to hinder them. I know that colleagues sometimes get a bit anxious if they have to meet the Commissioner for Standards, as they think there is going to be some kind of dressing down, but that is very far from the truth. Both the Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Stone, and the Registrar of Members’ Interests, Heather Wood, are ruthlessly impartial, and they constantly provide advice to individual Members on an entirely confidential basis. They do this every day of the week. Large numbers of Members go to see them and seek their advice, and I would urge colleagues to do so. Sometimes when we have been here a long time, we assume that we know the rules, but sometimes the rules change a little bit in the time that we have been here. It really is worthwhile, just occasionally, to pop along to see either Kathryn or Heather to get advice. Indeed, I am keen that we should end up with a system where, if a Member has sought advice from the Registrar or the Commissioner and adopted it, that would be a safe harbour for them—in other words, a system where anyone who had sought and adopted their advice would not get into trouble for it. That is not the situation at present, but that is where we would like to get to.

I would like to thank the members of the Committee: the lay members and the Members of this House who constitute the Committee. It has been a heavy workload over this last year, and I am really glad that these motions are on the table tonight. I also thank the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House, as well as the leaders of the other political parties. I am not aware that Scottish National party Members are unhappy with the consultation that we have done with them. Finally, I would like to thank Sir Stephen Irwin and all the members of the Independent Expert Panel, who are already starting their work. After these motions have been adopted today, they will be able to do so more fully and with a greater sense of the direction of travel that we all want to go in.

Public Health

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I have to say that, although there are many points of merit in what the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has just raised, he has left the House and the public with the impression that he is happy for these restrictions to go through, he just will not vote for them. As for the idea that that is the kind of atmosphere the public want or that they will be encouraged to comply and co-operate when there is disagreement between the main parties on these fundamental issues that cannot be resolved in a sensible way, I think the public will be disappointed with that.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Well, there might be a different interpretation of the events just passed, might there not, which is that a lot of us are very concerned that the Prime Minister does not give the full story to the House and to the nation. The truth is that we are almost certainly going to see another lockdown in January—a full lockdown across the whole of the United Kingdom. [Interruption.] I hear the Prime Minister say, “It is not what we want.” Nobody wants any of this—of course we do not—but we have to be honest and straightforward with the British people, and these measures today are not sufficient to the day.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I did not hear my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister make the promise that the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that he made. I think my right hon. Friend is being perfectly honest with the House on this. I think it is very difficult, and I will come to that point, but I want to concentrate on what we agree about.

We all agree that we want to keep the R rate below 1, while minimising the restrictions on people’s lives and limiting the economic damage. If the R rate rises above 1, it becomes much too difficult to predict or control. It has a multiplier effect, even if the R rate remains constant. It is perfectly legitimate for colleagues on the Conservative Benches to press the Government for more clarity about why the Government believe the NHS is at risk of being overwhelmed. Data for much of the country does not suggest that at the moment, but it is not uncommon for hospitals to become overrun during the winter months, even without the addition of covid. It is also reasonable for Government to anticipate that the rising rate of covid infections would lead to exactly that in some areas, or much worse, unless we can keep R around or below 1; and that is all that these measures can be expected to achieve.

It is right to press the Government for more analysis of the economic impact of these measures, but maybe the Government were wrong to raise the expectation that they could provide that degree of certainty where so much uncertainty exists. Equally, it must be agreed that it is impossible to predict the economic consequences of a rapid spread of the virus. I understand the frustration of representing a low-virus constituency included in a tier 2 area, and the need to provide the right support to business that is being badly hit, but such frustrations are not about alternatives to the fundamentals of this policy, which I believe the Opposition are trying to avoid.

The real question—it is also a legitimate question—is will the tiers be enough. I hope that tier 2 will keep Essex below the R of 1, but there is doubt: tier 2 did not work before. We must look upon this period as a further period of transition to when vaccines begin to become available. We should look ahead at the challenges that the vaccine programmes will present, and give thought to how reassurance is provided that the vaccine that each person is invited to accept is right for that person. In the meantime, the challenge is to ensure that we can move down the tiers, and not just into tier 1, but to remain in tier 1, even if it takes time for the vaccines to become effective and to be rolled out at scale. That will depend on how we all behave, the example that we set, and what we do to encourage confidence and co-operation with test and trace operations.

There is much to ask the Government that time does not allow today—about how to improve trace and isolate operations, particularly at local level, and about how the community volunteer hubs could help support people who should isolate. That is vital work now.

The last thing I want is to vote for these restrictions today, but until there are better alternatives we have no alternative, and should support them. I am sorry that Her Majesty’s Opposition are trying to avoid that truth. The Government have also the opportunity to learn by continuing to listen, and to gain public confidence from that.

Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 18th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Statistics are obviously absolutely vital if this country is to develop good policy on a whole range of different subjects, not least medicine. However, statistics are sometimes used by scurrilous politicians trying to purvey a particular version of events that is a long way away from the official version of the UK Statistics Authority, and we have seen recent instances in which it has told off Ministers and others. Did the Committee consider any means of punishing offenders who have tried to muddy the waters with false facts?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

It is difficult to envisage how that could be done without conflicting with the right of free speech. After the referendum, there was a discussion about whether there should be some regulation of what official campaigns actually say, for example, but that is difficult to do in the rough and tumble of politics, elections and referendums. Calling people out in public and being ready to do so is an important power that UKSA has through the Office for Statistics Regulation, but the Committee thinks that it could do that much more readily and proactively. Indeed, I have been personally critical of it for not doing so; it sometimes seems rather capricious in the targets it selects. This all suggests that the OSR should be a separate body with a far greater sense of its own purpose, rather than being part of the organisation that also produces all the statistics.

Business of the House

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

“Ignored” is the operative word that the right hon. Lady uses. Obviously, it is and should always be the practice of Governments to respect the will of the House as expressed in a motion. However, as Mr Speaker himself has confirmed, a motion is merely an expression of opinion, and it is up to the Government to decide how to respond to that opinion. This underlines how, in our system, a Government propose and Parliament disposes. Parliament does not take over the Government’s role, which is what is being proposed in this process.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

But the historical precedent is that when a Government lose their major policy—whether it is a financial policy, or in this case their most significant policy—they resign. They do not hang about for a vote of no confidence; they automatically resign. That is always been the historical precedent, and it is a bit of a surprise that they have not done it in this case.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

That takes me on to my next point, which is that it seems likely, so long as the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 endures, that minority Governments will continue to be vulnerable to this usurpation of power—or this paralysis, as the hon. Gentleman sees it—which will bring some in this House more influence while never being held accountable or responsible for what happens as a consequence of any decisions made in that way.

The risk is that this process of disapplying Standing Orders, casting aside the processes of the House of Commons, seizing control from the Government, threatening to pass legislation against the Government’s wishes and bending the Executive to the legislature’s will is being used to remove a Government from power but not from office. It seems that the House will strike but not kill, and this new kind of instability is already having dire consequences for our voters’ rapidly diminishing confidence in our nation’s democracy.

Private Members’ Bills: Money Resolutions

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I say to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) that I hope that he and his colleagues from Scotland will continue to avail themselves of the opportunity to propose private Members’ Bills in this House for a great many centuries to come.

This debate is confined to the narrow question of money resolutions for private Members’ Bill. We are not here to debate constituency boundaries, even though you have allowed a certain amount of latitude, Mr Speaker, but I should draw the House’s attention to a report published by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in February entitled “Parliamentary Boundary Reviews: What Next?” The report stated that the Government cannot be confident that the House of Commons will support the implementation of the present boundary recommendations in the autumn, concluding that

“if it moved quickly, it would be possible for the Government to introduce new legislation to allow for a new boundary review and for it to be implemented prior to a 2022 election”—

or a 2021 election. We also concluded that any proposals

“would need to be properly debated by Parliament and a consensus reached”

but that there are

“serious problems with using the existing boundaries for a further election in 2022”

or 2021. Our sole recommendation was therefore that

“the House of Commons should be given an early opportunity to debate the options for reform and to decide whether or not to continue the current boundary review. In doing so the House would need to consider the potential risks of legislating, and establish if consensus can be reached in time for legislation to be passed before the summer. The Government should consider if the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill—

the Bill presented by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan)—

“could provide such an opportunity.”

The purpose of that recommendation was simply to draw the House’s attention to the position that we are in. The Government are in danger of leaving the House of Commons with Hobson’s choice when it comes to the timetabling of a vote on the boundary review, which will be in September or October, because it will be very late indeed—if not impossible—to legislate for an alternative boundary review. Nevertheless, it is entirely plausible that the House will vote down the 2018 boundary review.

On 17 February 2000, Oasis were at No. 1 and Tony Blair had not yet been Prime Minister for three years. If somebody born on that day was elected in 2022, they would be younger than the data used to formulate the boundary review. However, that would not be a democratic disaster. Democracy would still work and people would still vote intelligently in their constituencies, but we would be failing in our duty to provide a fair democratic system that commands the public’s confidence.

I rather lament the partisan division that has opened up over the boundary question, and we in the Conservative party must share a measure of responsibility for that. An arbitrary limit of 600 was set in order to “reduce the cost of politics”, but—let’s face it—there was something of an electoral gimmick in that proposal and it did not command confidence. The 5% variation between the size of constituencies that we included in our legislation was extremely controversial, and we have lost some of the consensus around boundary reviews that I used to see in my earlier years in the House.

I am bound to say that there is a certain amount of pots and kettles in all this, and if the Labour party is genuinely seeking a consensus, it could provide the Government with an assurance about how a new boundary review might proceed. I hope such conversations are going on. For example, to use a new boundary Bill as a Christmas tree for things that the Labour party would like to its electoral advantage would undermine confidence in that consensus, but conversations should be happening. That would be better than this rather scrappy debate, which does not serve this House’s reputation well.

[Chris Bryant]

I wholeheartedly agree with what the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has already said, not least because unless we are able to provide a consensus on such matters there will not be a lasting constitutional settlement. What does he think would happen if the boundaries were voted down in September or October, as was suggested on Second Reading of the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill, and there were to be a general election next year or in 2020? What boundaries would be used then, and what political confidence would the nation have in them?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Committee: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Monday 4th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I will not give way again. I have said everything I want to say.

My Committee is continuing its inquiry. If any right hon. or hon. Member wants to have their say, they can always submit evidence to our Committee.

[Chris Bryant]

On a point of order, Sir David. I am not sure whether you were in the Chamber earlier, but Mr Speaker made it clear when asked that the Prime Minister intended to make a statement to the House tomorrow about the negotiations and discussions she has been having with the DUP and Europe.

I gather that Downing Street is notifying the press, not this House, that there will be no such statement tomorrow and that the Prime Minister does not intend to make a statement. Is there any way you can make sure that Mr Speaker is aware of this and, for that matter, that Downing Street is fully aware that if we are taking back control—I thought that was the whole point—this House should be kept fully and appropriately informed of the negotiations at every stage?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

That brings me to my next point. This debate is rerunning many of the arguments during the referendum campaign. The remain case was premised on the idea that it is a horrible, cruel world out there, that we cannot survive outside the EU, that it will be completely disastrous and that unless the EU give us permission and lots of help and support and agree to a whole lot of stuff we would like, we will be on our own in the cold. You know what? It is not true. Most countries are not in the EU and they are fine. This debate sometimes loses sight of that.

I wish to speak in favour of clause 1 standing part of the Bill. I agree so much with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). This is the most important Bill since we joined—more important, in fact, because after 45 years of membership it is so much more significant than it was. The principle of democracy is that Parliament legislates and Ministers obey and implement the law. The problem with the EU is that it turned our Ministers into legislators. They go to Brussels, sit in council, legislate and then bring back fait accompli legislation that is then imposed on this House. The 1972 Act is the greatest Henry VIII clause that has ever existed, and there is something a bit inconsistent —I understand why they are saying it—in complaining about Parliament not being treated properly, given that the whole principle of our membership of the EU requires the removal of the House’s right to make the laws of this country.

[Chris Bryant]

I note that the hon. Gentleman just said that it was wholly inappropriate for Ministers to go to Brussels and bring back a fait accompli. In relation to the EU negotiations, would it not be wholly inappropriate, therefore, for Ministers to go to Brussels, bring back a fait accompli and not give Parliament a proper opportunity to say, “You know what? You’ve got this wrong. You’ve got to renegotiate.”?

[Mr Jenkin]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The House should have the right to accept or reject the deal, and it will—it will have the right to reject or accept the withdrawal agreement and implementation Bill; but that will not change the decision to leave the EU. That decision has been taken.

I turn to the date of our exit. The referendum said leave. We were all told that we had to use article 50. Article 50 says on the tin that it takes two years maximum. The date is already fixed. There is no choice about the date. The date has to be in the Bill, otherwise we will weaken our negotiating position.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In addition, there are some specific concerns. For example, it is possible that, as a result of the boundary changes, we would end up with no single constituency in Wales with a Welsh-speaking majority. That is not of particular concern to my constituents in the Rhondda, but it is of concern to the British Parliament that that voice could be lost.

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

One of the reasons for my losing faith in the old system of public inquiries is that, for all the arguments that the Conservative party presented for a fairer distribution of constituencies, we finished up with a manifestly unfair distribution. We need a speedier system, which can use fresher and more up-to-date data to deliver a fairer distribution of constituencies. That should happen.

[Chris Bryant]

It might be that the Conservative party lost because it did not advance good arguments, which goes back to my earlier point.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Again, I am grateful to the Attorney-General, as I agree with him; my reading of the Greens and M.T. case is wholly consistent with his in relation to judicial oversight. That was one of the questions that we raised in the debate in January, and I received responses from the Minister who took part in that debate only at 8.31 pm yesterday.

I reiterate that the Government have made various statements over the past few months. The Lord Chancellor made one yesterday on the radio, the relevant Minister made one in the House of Lords and the Minister who responded to the Adjournment debate in Westminster Hall made one then. Those statements have not been consistent with each other, but they have adverted to legal advice. It is the tradition of this House that when one relies on evidence, that evidence is published.

So what is the Government’s policy? What is the absolute minimum that they believe the UK has to deliver to meet its treaty obligations?

[Mr Jenkin]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not mind if I do not give way, because others want to speak and I ought to be drawing my comments to a close.

Would it be sufficient for the Government to present proposals—[Interruption.] I would be grateful if the Attorney-General would listen, just briefly. Would it be sufficient for the Government to present proposals—introduce legislation—but for Parliament not to agree them? Would that, in some sense, satisfy the Court? What do the Government believe will happen if the House supports the motion this afternoon? How have the Government arrived at the compensation figure? Previously it has been said that £160 million-worth of compensation will be entailed, but I gather that last night the media were briefed that the compensation figure will be £143 million. I understand that that has been arrived at on the basis not of the Attorney-General’s legal advice, but of advice given to the Government by others. Will that be published? Can he explain how the compensation would be enforced, given that all applications for compensation to the county court should surely be struck out by dint of section 6(2) of the Human Rights Act 1998, which reinforces parliamentary sovereignty? Indeed, is there not a claim in the High Court today from the Treasury solicitor to that effect?

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on his amendment and the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) on his amendment, which I shall address in a few moments. I should, of course, have called them “new clauses”; Mr Speaker corrected the hon. Member for Stone on that earlier. However, I think that the hon. Member for North East Somerset rather misled the House. He did not do so in any dishonourable way, but he suggested that he was not here in 1911. I do not believe that any Member of this House believes that he was not here then or, for that matter, in 1832 and 1641. If it was not exactly him, on each of those occasions it was certainly his predecessor who made almost identical speeches. So I congratulate him on his consistency, which has lasted not only for the length of a Lib Dem manifesto, but through the centuries, and I am sure he will be here for many generations to come.

[Mr Jenkin]

The hon. Gentleman rightly points out that someone just like my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset was doubtless here in 1911, just as there was probably someone just like the hon. Gentleman and someone just like me. This House represents a continuity in this great kingdom of ours. He adverts to it with regard to only one Member, but it applies to all of us.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not sure that that is right because, for example, there were no women in this House or in the other House for many centuries. So changes have taken place, and change is just as important as continuity—that was going to be my argument.

The hon. Member for North East Somerset praised the House of Lords and the job of work it is doing at the moment down the other end of the building, where I hope his father will be stoutly defending not the Government but the cause of freedom and democracy—I am sure he will be. I wish to sound a slight note of caution to the hon. Gentleman. I have long supported an elected second Chamber, but over the past few years the Second Chamber has become far more partisan, because a higher proportion of its Members now take a party Whip. That applies in all parts of that House. [Interruption.] The Minister says from a sedentary position that Labour Members do, but what I said is true of all political parties in the House of Lords. I hope that there will be an elected second Chamber, and if there is the relationship between the Chambers will have to be written down in statute. Otherwise, either there will be permanent gridlock or, even more dangerously, we will face the problem of the Government having absolutely no check on them because they will enjoy a majority in this House and down the other end of the building. I can think of no other system in the world containing no such check. I say to the hon. Member for North East Somerset that although one praises the House of Lords, where Labour and Cross-Bench peers are doing a good job of scrutiny, some dangers are coming down the road.

The hon. Member for North East Somerset also relied on the Salisbury convention, whereby the Lords would not stand in the way of something adumbrated in a general election manifesto on which a Government were elected. In the previous Parliament the Liberal Democrats said that they believed that the Salisbury convention no longer held. I suspect that a convention written in a gentlemen’s club and redrafted several times during the 20th century probably will not stand the test of time and we will need something rather more secure for our constitutional settlement.

As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the Bill extends Parliament’s life beyond the five-year period that, thus far, has been allowed; clause 1 allows the Prime Minister to extend or shorten the five-year fixed term by two months, although that is reliant on motions in this House and in the second Chamber. That is one of the many reasons we have argued that the Bill will lead to fewer general elections. That is so particularly because the Bill provides for a five-year term, rather than a four-year term, as the hon. Member for Stone said, but also because of the special provision allowing for the extra extension of two months. We believe that that is a problem and that the voters of this country probably want us not to have the longest fixed-term Parliaments in the world. If we are to have fixed-term Parliaments, voters would probably prefer us to adopt the policy of the Liberal Democrats before the general election and the policy that Labour has pursued ever since the Plant commission, when we were mired deep in opposition many years ago, which is for four-year fixed-term Parliaments. Unfortunately, that is not available to us in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I was thinking of jiggery-pokery. Section 2 is being proceeded with not on the basis of consensus across the House, but on the basis solely of an agreement between the two coalition partners, so it would seem to us to make sense to make an allowance in the Bill that the section would die at the next general election. I note that the hon. Gentleman has crafted his new clause carefully so that it does not say 2015; it simply says that section 2 expires when the Parliament that was elected in 2010 comes to its end. At that point, whatever new Government had been elected could choose whether to continue with the provisions or to let them lapse. If it were a Labour Government, I am pretty confident that we would want to ensure that the provisions lapsed. However, what other parties may want to do is for others to determine.

The key point is that we would not want to have to introduce primary legislation to repeal this element of the Bill. For those reasons I am keen to support the hon. Member for Stone. I do not think his new clause quite throws the whole of the ship into the whirlpool, but I think that the throwing of a few sailors into the mouths of the demon in North East Somerset would be inappropriate, and consequently we shall support new clause 5 but not new clause 3. I very much hope that we shall be able to divide the House on this matter.

[Mr Jenkin]

As one of the few Members of the House who has actually sailed through the straits of Messina in a sailing boat and witnessed the whirlpool, and the rock from which the many heads of Scylla seized the sailors—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

That was the purpose of my referring to Lord Phillips’s recent obiter dicta, in which he implied that later Acts of Parliament can effectively repeal the parts of the 1689 Act that protect Parliament’s privileges. I do not think that that is satisfactory, and Parliament needs to think clearly about how we remain in democratic control of this country’s constitutional settlement.

Using legislative techniques, such as those suggested by my hon. Friend, is the direction in which we ought to move. Some people will say that means moving towards a written constitution, but that is to misunderstand our constitution. It is partly written and partly not written. The point is to determine who is in charge. Parliament should be in charge, with the necessary checks and balances between the two Houses. So I very much welcome the debate that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset has initiated on this topic. This debate will run and run, even though we might not be able to agree or divide on his new clause.

I put my name to new clause 5, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, partly because it provides an opportunity to remind ourselves of how bad the Bill is. I am afraid that I am appalled that it was introduced in this way. I cannot recall any Government ever introducing a Bill to manipulate the constitution for their own purposes in such a nakedly self-interested way. Clause 2 is simply a fig leaf to ameliorate the problems that arise from fixed-term Parliaments.

Let us remind ourselves of the provisions of clause 2. The two-thirds provision is obviously open to manipulation—assuming that the mechanism does not drag us into disputes with the courts—because if the Government of the day tabled a motion of no confidence in themselves, it would hardly be likely that the Opposition would oppose it, so a general election would still be available at the initiative of the Executive. In a coalition arrangement, the smaller partner might decide not to take part in such a process, meaning that the motion would be opposed and, by arrangement with the Opposition, perhaps passed by only a simple majority. Under the Bill, we are therefore creating arrangements by which a junior coalition partner may switch horses halfway through a Parliament.

I believe that the Liberal Democrats wanted a fixed-term Parliament so that they could swap coalition partners halfway through the Parliament. Lo and behold, we now read in the papers that the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Prime Minister seem to be striking up a new friendship—perhaps that heralds the switch. Of course, I am talking hypothetically—the subject is theoretical—but, constitutionally, the possibility exists. It is extraordinary that we are contemplating putting in place arrangements that could bring about a change of Government, Prime Minister and Administration without a general election, but that is what the Bill provides for. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) seems to be looking at me quizzically.

[Chris Bryant]

I am looking at the hon. Gentleman quizzically, because, under the existing arrangements, there have been many changes of Prime Minister and Administration without a general election. Although I recognise that the hon. Gentleman stood at the general election on a manifesto that said that a change of Prime Minister should be followed by a general election within six months, I note that he has not tabled an amendment that would have that effect.

[Mr Jenkin]

Privately, I can confide to the House that I always thought that that proposition was a bit daft—it seemed like ingratiation. Whenever the ruling party changes its leader, meaning that there is a change of Prime Minister, the Opposition always cough and splutter loudly, and express the view that, in all justice, there should be a general election. The newspapers usually join in the fun, because they like general elections, too, but, in reality, we all know that there is absolutely no need for an election. There is usually a degree of continuity when there is a change of party leader because the same party is in charge and it is unlikely that a lot of the predecessor’s policies would be overthrown. One or two things usually change, but generally there is continuity.

We are considering, however, the possibility of a change of Administration involving a different party. We know that the Labour party attempted to form some kind of rainbow coalition with the Liberal Democrats after the last election—[Interruption.] That was what we were told, anyway. Later in this Parliament—perhaps if the balance of power has shifted a bit towards the Opposition following by-elections—the Liberal Democrats could abandon the Conservatives in a vote of no confidence. In such circumstances, the Conservatives might be clever enough to join in that vote of no confidence to ensure that there would be a general election, but it would be far more likely that the vote would be followed by a reordering of the Executive, which might well involve the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats.

Let us suppose that the maths in the House were slightly different and the two main parties were more evenly balanced. The Liberal Democrats then could genuinely choose which partner they wanted. Through the Bill, we are creating constitutional circumstances under which the third party could change the Government at will without a general election.

[Chris Bryant]

I am slightly flummoxed by the hon. Gentleman’s charming naivety about what might have happened after the general election. The Bill does many things that are inappropriate, but I do not think it does that, and the truth of the matter is that there have been many changes of Administration over the centuries under the existing arrangements, not least in the first and second world wars. Having a fixed-term Parliament does not in itself mean what the hon. Gentleman has described will happen. It is perfectly possible that we will win a significant number of by-elections over the coming years, or that some Liberal Democrats or others may change their party affiliation, and—[Interruption.] It is possible; I said only that. The Minister should do the nice bit again. In such circumstances, the mathematics would change.

[Mr Jenkin]

Inevitably, these debates always depend on speculation about what might happen, which is the one rather unsatisfactory thing about debating the future of the constitution. I have always been regarded as a bit of a pessimist about the European Union, but I did point out to a colleague that, so far, I have been proved right, and if these arrangements remain the same indefinitely, sooner or later I will be proved right again.

The point is that the Bill—except for this new measure in clause 2—is intended to remove the safety valve that allows for an early general election. However, that clause is the worst part of the Bill. As we were told by the Clerk of the House in his memorandum, before the Bill was considered in Committee:

“The Bill brings the internal proceedings of the House into the ambit of the Courts, albeit indirectly by the route of Speaker’s certificates.”

The procedures of the House, votes of confidence, Speaker’s certificates and two-thirds majorities all become potentially justiciable, notwithstanding the Bill of Rights. For that reason, I fully support the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone.

A vain attempt to remove the courts from considering those matters is made in clause 2(3), which states:

“A certificate under this section is conclusive for all purposes.”

Unfortunately, clause 2(3) is itself justiciable by the courts, because we are putting this into statute. That part of the Bill, which attempts to ameliorate the problems that arise from having fixed-term Parliaments, creates the biggest constitutional headaches for Parliament itself by inviting the courts to intervene in those matters.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point, to which I shall return. The entire Bill could be dealt with through Standing Orders. The only reason we have a Bill is either that a Bill is favoured by those who want to move towards a written constitution—I do not remember that being in anybody’s manifesto—

[Chris Bryant]

Ours.

[Mr Jenkin]

There we are. Perhaps that is why the Opposition support the Bill. We have just had a Division in which 400 right hon. and hon. Members were in the No Lobby and only a handful of us in the Aye Lobby. That underlines the curious consensus in favour of certain principles of the Bill. I do not think either of the elected parties in the coalition was in favour of a written constitution—[Interruption.] That is two parties, but the one that won the election certainly did not—

[Chris Bryant]

To clarify, I think the Liberal Democrats were in favour of a written constitution, and we were in favour of looking at a written constitution.

[Mr Jenkin]

I do not remember that being a great issue in the general election, but we are, in effect, creating one of the standard features of a written constitution, thereby tempting the courts to start interfering in the internal workings of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The amendment, as drafted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, deals with only one aspect of the matter, and, given our limited time to scrutinise this enormously important Bill, I explicitly invite the other place to look carefully at all the aspects and the advice of the Clerk. One of its own Committees is considering the matter and might well come up with different conclusions from those of the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. The Lords sorted out the IPSA Bill, under which they kept our proceedings immune from the courts, and I very much hope that they will do the same with this Bill.

My concluding point is a general one about the Bill but is relevant to the amendment. I do not think that I can recall a major constitutional measure that was so closely associated with the survival of one Administration. We have to pinch ourselves when we think of what we are doing in reality: we are completely changing our constitutional settlement at the behest of a coalition, so that it can remain in power for five years. I do not even think that that is ethical. Parliament’s immunity is basically being screwed up, and, although a Bill can at least be repealed, once the courts have been allowed into our proceedings, we will never get them out again without a major break in the constitution such as in 1689.

All that can be forestalled if the Minister simply says, “These matters cannot be resolved today,” because they cannot be resolved on the basis of parliamentary counsel’s advice to Ministers about the drafting of Bills. We need the other place to give the highest and most independent legal advice to ensure that we do not inadvertently bring about what the Government themselves do not want to see.

[Chris Bryant]

Many thanks are due to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who has done us a great favour by pointing out some of the problems in this small aspect of the legislation. He is absolutely right to say that large parts of the Bill exist only for the preservation of a single Administration. I do not know the appropriate Latin equivalent of ad hominem legislation, but this is “ad administrationem” legislation, which is why some provisions will not stand the test of time. The best that we can do is try to ensure that the elements of real peril are tidied up.

The hon. Gentleman was right in several regards, but not in one. He talked about the IPSA Bill having been miraculously improved in the other place, but none of us really thinks that we ended up with a perfect situation or that nirvana arrived by virtue of that Bill. However, on the Bill before us—I suspect this would also apply to the other constitutional Bill that we recently scrutinised—he is right that if there were a free vote, none of the legislation would go through at all.

[Mr Jenkin]

If the Parliamentary Voting Systems and Constituencies Bill had been separate Bills, I do not think that either would have gone through.

On the IPSA Bill, at one stage there was a proposal to allow IPSA to adjudicate on and punish Members for breaching the rules. That would have driven a coach and horses through our traditional immunities under the Bill of Rights, but it was removed in the other place.

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed. As the hon. Gentleman said earlier, a privileges Act will be needed at some point, and I hope that the Government turn to such legislation. I realise that there are problems with any written or “codified”—to use the Minister’s term—constitution, because one risks making it justiciable and must then decide what will be the justice that oversees it. Will it be a supreme court or a constitutional court, such as many other countries have? That is a debate for another day, however.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

In a sense, that is an argument against the whole Bill which I understand. I know that the hon. Gentleman is not saying that this is a conspiracy, but I think that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex feels that a bit of a cosy consensus has developed around the fact that there should be a codification of fixed-term Parliaments. We agree with that codification. However, once one starts to codify one element, one has to codify rather a lot of them. That is why I have wanted to codify what counts as a motion of no confidence and what should be a motion of confidence. Perhaps we should have tried to codify it in a slightly different way so that, for instance, a motion to amend the Loyal Address could also be considered as such, as in 1924.

[Mr Jenkin]

What the hon. Gentleman is suggesting might well be sensible in one respect, but I fear that it will not prevent the courts from having a go at this. Indeed, if what constitutes a motion of confidence is codified in our Standing Orders, the courts will then be interpreting whether our Standing Orders reflect what could be regarded as such. If he wants clarity and is seeking to provide a better definition, this has to be put into the legislation. Of course, that reflects the point that we are tempting the courts to interfere in the proceedings of this House.

[Chris Bryant]

That is an interesting point. The Bill of Rights refers, I think in section 9, to the fact that proceedings in Parliament shall not be touched by any other court. The moot point then is what constitutes a proceeding in Parliament. There have been many discussions about this over the past couple of years, not least in relation to the arrest of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex is right in one sense. However, I have presumed—this is the advice that I had when I sat on the Government Benches as Deputy Leader of the House—that parliamentary privilege covers proceedings in Parliament and the whole of the Standing Orders of this House, because that how this House chooses to proceed. I think that there is greater security in the Standing Orders of the House.

Another issue is how we ensure that the Speaker is not dragged into a partisan contest, particularly at a moment of great political drama. As I said in an earlier debate, my concern is that if it is left for the Speaker to have to determine all these elements, the Speaker’s impartiality is compromised.

Another strange element of the Bill is the provision that says that before the Speaker issues his certificate, he shall consult the Deputy Speakers. That mirrors the provision in the 1911 Act whereby the Speaker, before issuing his certificate on a money Bill, has to consult two members of the Panel of Chairs. What happens if all the Deputy Speakers disagree with issuing the certificate? Why should the Speaker have to consult? One presumes that it is simply a matter of fact, although I suppose we all know that facts are rarely clearly delineated and are rather more subjective than most people would want to admit. The point is, however, that this puts the Speaker and potentially the House in peril, because people may want to contest any one of the various elements of the Speaker’s decision. One of the matters that would almost certainly arise if there were any contest as to whether the certificate was being rightly issued is what the Deputy Speakers had said. That is an unfortunate direction for us to take.

We have tabled an amendment, on which I hope to divide the Committee, on the timing of when the Speaker issues the certificate. At the moment, the Bill makes no provision whatsoever on when the Speaker’s certificate should be issued. One therefore presumes that it could be a month, two months or several months after the passage of two weeks. Let us say, for instance, that after a motion of no confidence has been carried, the Government try to reform themselves with a different concatenation of political parties and do not manage to secure a new motion of confidence, but there are still patently ongoing negotiations that are nearing their closing phase. Would it then be all right for the Speaker not to issue a certificate at that point but to wait until such time that another Government had been formed? The difficulty is that if the Speaker chose not to do so, who is to gainsay the Speaker? There is no provision in the Bill for what would happen if the Speaker has not done what the Bill requires.

For all those reasons, I believe that this element of the Bill is flawed. I also believe that certain elements should not be in statute but should be in Standing Orders in order to provide greater certainty for the House by taking them within the concept of proceedings of this House. Above all, I want to ensure that there is no uncertainty about the specific provision as to when the Speaker has to act and when the Speaker may act.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, indeed. This is just about the process and the fact that it has been the convention in every Committee stage in which I have been involved for Ministers to write to all members of the Committee, and, when the Committee is sitting on the Floor of the House, to all those who have taken part in the debate.

My point is that clause 2 has no electoral mandate. Clause 1 has some degree of mandate, in that we had proposed in our manifesto that there should be fixed-term Parliaments, and the Liberal Democrats had made a similar proposal. I do not believe that there is a mandate for a five-year fixed-term Parliament, as both political parties had previously said that they were in favour of four-year fixed-term Parliaments. Clause 2 has absolutely no mandate from the electorate. Indeed, the proposals in it run directly counter to those in the Conservative manifesto, and to what the Prime Minister said as Leader of the Opposition in relation to the reform of the power of Dissolution. He said that he would introduce legislation to ensure that, should there be a change of Prime Minister as a result of the party in power changing its leader, there would be a general election within six months, but that is not the proposal that we have before us today.

[Mr Jenkin]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

Of course I will give way to the lion of the right, as I believe he is now known.

[Mr Jenkin]

Lion, maybe. I should like to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that the parliamentary Conservative party gave no mandate to the leadership of our party for a fixed-term arrangement of any description. The parliamentary party was consulted about whether there should be a coalition, and whether there should be a commitment to a referendum on the alternative vote, but the question of a fixed-term Parliament was never mentioned. Nobody knew anything about it until it appeared in the coalition agreement.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is true not only of his party but of the Liberal Democrats, who said that they were in favour of a fixed-term Parliament although there was no reference in their election material or manifesto, or in any of the speeches made by the now Deputy Prime Minister, to any provisions for determining when an election might be held or for introducing a super-majority. When their lordships consider this legislation, it is important that they bear in mind the fact that the conventions relating to matters that are adumbrated in a general election manifesto simply do not apply in this case. There is absolutely no electoral mandate for this provision.

The aetiology of clause 2 is pretty straightforward. It comes from the coalition agreement. I know that the hon. Member for Epping Forest is keen, for her own reasons of propriety, to stick to voting for proposals that are in the coalition agreement. However, she has complete freedom in relation to today’s amendments, because these provisions are not mentioned in the agreement. It states:

“We will establish five-year fixed-term Parliaments. We will put a binding motion before the House of Commons stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, we will legislate to make provision for fixed-term Parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”

I completely agree with the articles that were then written by several Members, the most impressive of which was probably that by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and published in The Daily Telegraph. In it, he stated:

“The requirement for a 55 per cent majority to dissolve parliament, and thereby dismiss a government, dramatically reduces the ability of Parliament to hold the executive to account.”

If that was true of a 55% requirement, it is even more true of a 67% requirement. Moreover, that requirement would involve 67% of not only those who voted but of all the seats in the House, even those that were vacant at the time and also, presumably, those of the Deputy Speakers and the Speaker, who would presumably not be allowed to vote. Those seats would therefore automatically be included with those who had voted against holding an early general election.

There is absolutely no mandate for the provisions in clause 2. I believe that it will entrench the powers of the Executive, rather than releasing their grip on Parliament. An important point has been made by several hon. Members, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Home Secretary—I could list all his jobs as he has held almost every job in the Government apart from Prime Minister; perhaps that will come one day. They pointed out that the clause introduces a new super-majority, which is alien to the processes of this House. There has never been a super-majority provision. The provision is introduced by statute rather than through the Standing Orders, so again it is the Executive forcing their will on the House rather than the House taking this forward.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Bernard Jenkin

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The amendment deals with the simple issue of the role of the Electoral Commission in relation to the referendum next year. While the Bill provides that the commission should take whatever steps it thinks appropriate to promote public awareness of the referendum and how to vote in it, we believe that that should be subject to the agreement of the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. I realise that hon. Members may think that that is some strange committee with no proper function and is just a bunch of MPs who want to interfere in the process, but in fact it is laid down in the 2000 Act. It has three ex-officio members—the Deputy Prime Minister, the Speaker and the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. In addition, a Minister is appointed to the committee by the Prime Minister, in this case the Minister for Housing and Local Government, as well as five other Members—the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long), my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) and the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter). One might call that an eclectic mix, but it represents a broad swathe of opinion on the issue of the referendum as well as many other electoral matters.

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

Does the hon. Gentleman know which of those members might vote yes in the referendum and which might uphold the current system?

[Chris Bryant]

No, I have not got the faintest idea. I just know that two or even three of them are definite noes. I do not know about the others. My point is that this body is used to considering electoral matters without seeking partisan advantage and to trying to promote a level playing field for all in electoral administration.

The committee has two specific roles, only one of which is material here. The first is in relation to the appointment of commissioners, which is why earlier last week we saw the appointment of new commissioners. In addition, it has a role in analysing the five-year financial plans produced by the Electoral Commission. It is the only point at which Parliament has a say in the financial plans of the commission and one of the issues that will have to be borne in mind is how much should be spent on the information that the commission provides to voters about the referendum. The Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission is therefore an important body to keep informed. The committee also provides an opportunity for a Minister to be directly involved, albeit only as one of the six Members on the committee.

The Electoral Commission has said that it knows that a considerable amount of information will have to be provided. The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) knows that I do not share his views on the alternative vote. None the less, we share the view that the information provided should be fair, and it is important that we lay the details down in statute as far as possible to ensure that that happens. The way in which information is presented can inadvertently—and sometimes advertently—be biased. The commission said in its report on a referendum on the UK parliamentary voting system earlier this year:

“Without background information about the different voting systems, many participants in our research found the proposed question problematic.”

We might think that that is because the question is problematic, but the report continues:

“This was because they had almost no understanding of the ‘Alternative Vote’ (AV) system”—

and before the hon. Gentleman gets too excited—

“and very mixed understanding of ‘First Past the Post’ (FPTP).”

The last election in which I took part was last Thursday in Treherbert in the Rhondda where we had a council by-election. It was beautifully precise, because we had just two candidates—a Labour candidate and a Plaid Cymru one. It might appear that that would be easy for people to understand—a straight choice between A and B and one cross in the relevant box. However, there were several spoiled ballot papers because normally people get two votes in local elections in that two-member ward. Some people had voted for both candidates, presumably because they thought the by-election was like the normal elections. I am sure that hon. Members are dying to know who won the by-election. Labour seized the seat from Plaid Cymru with a swing of 10%, so Councillor Luke Bouchard is now the youngest councillor in Wales.

The important point is that voters do not fully understand the current system. They certainly do not understand the alternative vote system very well. However, in order for the Electoral Commission to provide information so that people can have a full understanding, we need a system that includes not only the commission but the weathered eye of some elected politicians, through the Speaker’s committee, which is unbiased and has no particular axe to grind.

I note that the hon. Gentleman and several others have tabled an amendment that would solve the same problem slightly differently. I suggest that the two are not mutually exclusive, although it might be a case of belt and braces. I am keen to hear what he has to say, if he succeeds in catching your eye, Mr Gale. I hope that the Government will want to involve the Speaker’s committee in this process and accept the amendment.

[Mr Jenkin]

Amendment 247 is in my name and of several colleagues, including the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell). I do not think that that represents any slight on the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant); it is just that I asked the hon. Member for Middlesbrough to table it with me.

The hon. Member for Rhondda has made the reason behind his amendment clear, and the principal purpose of our amendment is the same. The Electoral Commission has invited us to give it the enormous responsibility of sending out information, during a referendum, about the contentious matter on which voters will be asked to give an opinion. As the hon. Gentleman said, these are difficult issues to understand. Even the current voting system, to be called first past the post in the ballot question, is difficult for some voters to understand. That underlines the no campaign’s view that it should have been called the current system. As a more neutral description, that might have been better and more intelligible. These are subjective judgments, but the commission decided not to accept that suggestion. It also declined to accept our suggestion that the new system should be called the optional preferential voting system with instant run-off, which explains in more detail what it actually is. We are therefore left with some difficulty in explaining the systems.

Amendment 247 would provide that unless both the yes and the no campaigns are satisfied that the information being sent out is completely neutral, they should have the right of veto over it. That would be completely fair and equal, and would provide a safety valve, because there would be no possibility of information going out about which one campaign could cry foul.