Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Debate between Chris Bryant and Nigel Mills

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner). I think I agree with most of what he said.

I rise to speak in this debate because I recognise that we need to change. I have thought for a long while that we need to change, and in some ways it is welcome that the events of the past fortnight have brought the need upon us. I broadly support the recommendations in the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life from three years ago. It is probably a cause for regret that we are dealing with them now, rather than at that time.

However, I urge the House to be careful that we get this right. The public expect us to change these rules with due consideration, to ensure that rules are put in place that are fair, consistent and enforceable and do not just leave crazy loopholes. I am slightly nervous about the wording in the Labour motion about banning

“any paid work to provide services as a Parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant”.

Does that mean that somebody could change their job to being a political strategist, adviser or consultant, or a local government strategist, adviser or consultant, and somehow get around that? I think we all know what we are trying to ban, which is Members earning money by selling access to this place or selling the access that this place provides, but we should be careful to make sure we get the wording right.

[Chris Bryant]

The House of Lords already has a similar provision in its code of conduct. One thing the Committee on Standards might suggest—I do not want to prejudge, as I see the other members of the Committee staring at me in a grim-faced way—is that Members must have a contract specifying certain things that they can and cannot do, which would be fairly simple. Owen Paterson never had a contract.

[Nigel Mills]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If Members are taking jobs, they should have clearly defined roles and responsibilities that can be cleared or scrutinised.

We should be careful when we draw up the new rules that they are clear, consistent and enforceable so that we do not end up with Members sneaking around them because we were in a rush and a panic to try to calm a political storm or to keep it going. We should not rush into new rules that we come to regret when they do not work.

Where I agree with the Opposition motion is that we need to keep up the momentum. Although I absolutely trust the Leader of the House and the Government that we will not have further delays and backsliding, I am not convinced after the past two weeks that I can convince my constituents that I cannot vote for the motion because it forces a timetable. I will vote for the Opposition motion tonight.

I agree that we need to restrict second jobs, but I would be nervous about trying to work out a good list and a bad list of second jobs, as that becomes very hard. For example, my wife works as a pharmacist. That sounds like a health professional, but she works for a large supermarket chain. Do we allow pharmacists to work in the NHS but not in large supermarket chains because one is public sector and the other is private sector?

It becomes difficult to know what is a professional job which we would all accept a new MP coming here for a short career should keep up in practice and qualifications so that they have a chance of a job afterwards. We would not want to put off people with such qualifications from coming here at all for fear they would be locked out of their old career.

We could end up with a rather long list of good jobs that Members are allowed to do. It would be hard for such a list to be consistent, and it would be hard to apply. Such a list would inevitably have gaps that some Members fall through, so we would have to change the list all the time.

I would not go down the line of an absolute ban, and the Government’s amendment is right that we should have some sort of restriction or indication about what constitutes a Member not prioritising their role as an MP. I would be cautious about having no guidance or rules and leaving it to a commissioner to decide retrospectively whether what a Member did is within the rules.

We need a process in which we agree on the guidance, such as on whether there should be a maximum amount that Members can earn. I have some sympathy with the comment that a man cannot have two paymasters. If a Member has a lifestyle that depends on an outside income far greater than their MP’s income, there will always be a perception, or a risk, that they have to please that paymaster and that at some point there will be a vote, a debate or an issue where they are conflicted between doing what they think is right and keeping the income they desperately need. I would think carefully about an income cap at some proportion of an MP’s salary.

That does not solve my constituents’ anger that Members are spending too much time on non-parliamentary work. It is the loss of time in Parliament and in the constituency that is the problem, not just how much a Member earns. Perhaps there should be a cap on hours.

As the Committee on Standards in Public Life report said, those two things are quite hard to define. They are controversial and we might end up creating different problems, but if the House truly wants to make it clear that MPs are MPs first and foremost, and that what we do outside may have some benefits, may be fair to our future careers and may bring out some information, but it should clearly be secondary to our parliamentary role, we should ask the Committee on Standards, or whatever body we think best, to come up with a definition of how much Members can earn and how long they can spend earning it. That would be the right way forward.