Privileges Committee Special Report

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making a good point about the point at which what one person says impugns someone else. Does he agree that a good guide is often the harm principle? All of us in this place support completely, I think, the concept and the actuality of freedom of speech, but when that harms or is unfair to others, it has to be regarded as unacceptable in its effect. The freedom of speech to criticise the Committee to the point where that undermines the Committee, this House and, by its nature, democracy is unacceptable.

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point, although I have two contentions with it. First, on the specifics, the point I was making is that the determination of whether that constitutes harm is put in a report by the people concerned, which then comes back here for us to support, so there is very little review. Secondly, an interesting underlying issue is that we are living through a period when harm is being interpreted differently. The way that people who are much younger than me appreciate how harm is done is different. The amount they are prepared to take on themselves—rather than to say, “Well, that’s just the way the world is,” and not to see it as harm—is much less than it was in my day. That might be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is different for different generations. That is another aspect of how to assess what is harmful, and we are going through such a fluid period that it is difficult.

But the hon. Lady is right: ultimately, I think we would agree, the message today, at the core of this, is to use temperate language. When I came back to the House in 2019, one thing I noticed was how much more coarse political discourse had become in just the two-year period that I was away. It was not just because of the divisions over Brexit or social media; it was also because we were tolerating it. We have a responsibility in this House to oppose that. That is why it is good when we talk across the divide in this House and find agreement, and why that Committee, in cross-party agreement among individuals, was something that we could rely on. The lesson is about using temperate language.

I share the concerns of my colleagues about some of the recommendations. Not only are they difficult to see working in practice, but there will be chilling effects on free speech. We will have to see whether that is the case. I am not defending what was said; I just worry that someone like me, who does not know the law or “Erskine May”, will feel that there are certain things that I may not be able to say, but which perhaps in the past I was —although there are perhaps ways to give reassurances on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I start by agreeing with my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) in relation to his comments on my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), who is currently not in his place. I have to agree that he is one of the kindest, finest and fairest Members in this place, and we should be so pleased that he has served on this important Committee.

I was not going to speak today, but, at the weekend, I spoke to constituents about the weighty matters before the House today. They said to me that, as the Member for Dover and Deal, I should speak up. That is because our white cliffs stand for freedom—freedom of expression, democracy, and our fundamental British values. They said to me that they felt that this House had lost its way. They said that the very idea that a Member of Parliament could be gagged or censured for saying what they thought on a matter was the type of thing that could happen in Russia or Beijing; it is not something that they thought could ever happen here. That tells me that my constituents think that this Committee has overreached itself. The implications of such overreach can only be toxic to our democracy. That reminded me that whether or not it is my wish to speak today, it is certainly my duty to stand here and say that what is happening is wrong and unconstitutional.

[Christine Jardine]

The hon. Lady reminds me of something I learned as a very young reporter—that the Members of this place have the very rare privilege of having absolute privilege over what they say, in this place. As an older journalist, I had the honour of teaching that to younger journalists, who respect the fact that we have absolute privilege over what we say. Would she not agree that we should respect that and that it if we abuse it, that is unacceptable? That is what we are discussing here today—the fact that hon. Members have abused the absolute privilege that they have and undermined the processes of the House.

[Mrs Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention; abuse of privilege is something I will be addressing very shortly.

The Privileges Committee and the Standards Committee are Select Committees of this House. That is the constitutional position, and I was grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), the Chair of the Procedure Committee, for setting out the position of the Committee so clearly earlier. I thank her for that.

As every Member knows, the Select Committees are a political construct. They are political in their nature and they come to political decisions. Debates and votes in this Chamber are political—because that is what we do. We are politicians. That is what we are sent here to do. The job of a politician has no professional standing or qualification, neither is it a trade. It has a no entry requirement—not even maths or English GCSE—because we are the Commons. We are the most base and broad range of people, from all walks of life and all types of characters. From the very charismatic to the downright dull, all can stand, and the people decide whether or not they want us to represent them and their interests. That is what it means to be a Member of Parliament.

Make no mistake: today’s decision, like any other Select Committee report or recommendation that is brought to this House for us to decide, is political, and the vote at the end of this debate will be political too. Should the motion be pressed to a vote, we will see all of the Opposition together in the same Lobby—the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and Labour—and we should have no illusion about the politics going on here, as we have heard in the opening remarks of those on the Opposition Front Benches.

To be a politician, at its very core, is to debate, to explain, to agree or to disagree. That is what we are elected to do. We are not elected to sit in some sort of pretend court of law. As has been found throughout history, when the Commons goes down the route of censuring or expelling Members for partisan political purposes, it invariably damages Parliament itself.

I will point to a very famous example of that, the Middlesex by-election fiasco that saw the repeated expulsion of John Wilkes, against the will of the people, who kept voting him in. Let me remind the House what the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” has to say on the subject:

“Wilkes was finally expelled on inconclusive precedents and by a method undoubtedly fraught with danger to the constitution since it set aside in the name of parliamentary privilege the right of the elector to choose his representative”.

There is a concern that what is happening with the current Privileges and Standards Committees is not just overriding the right of the electorate to choose their representatives, but, chillingly, limiting what that Member can say.

It has been said on several occasions during this debate that the Privileges Committee is a properly democratically constituted Committee of the House, so let me address that. First, it is not. It is one of the very few Committees of this House whose Chair has not been selected by contested or secret ballot and whose members are not voted on by each party in the usual way, following the Wright Committee reforms. As such, I feel that this Committee has less legitimacy and democratic accountability than other Select Committees, not more.

The Committee should be reformed. It is a time for reform of how it is selected and how it operates, so that it can have the same legitimacy and democratic accountability as other Select Committees enjoy, following the Wright reforms. That reform work is incomplete and we are seeing its failings through problems of due process and otherwise.

Secondly, let me address the issue of questioning and debate. If anybody criticised the work of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, on which I sit, I would not be seeking to censure, name and shame, or even expel them from the House; I would debate them, because it is a political report and it is a matter of political debate. Open political debate is a fundamental British value and fundamental to our way of life and democracy.

Thirdly, I turn to the issue of accountability—or lack of accountability. In this place, we have two Select Committees, the Privileges and Standards Committees, as well as the internal grievance process, all of which have had raised fundamental flaws in natural justice, due process or bias. Without the ability to challenge injustices, with the reports going through on the nod, as some Members seem to prefer, these Committees could continue unchallenged and unchanged. That surely cannot be what any of us would want.

The issue of accountability is particularly important, because the work of this Committee directly affects the representation of the people. As such, it must be open to being held more accountable than other Select Committees, and not seek to be less accountable than it should be.

Finally, let me address the responsibility that each of us in this House has for our how behaviour and leadership affects other people. This issue matters more widely, because how we lead, or mislead, in this place is followed by companies and organisations across the country. Failures or perceived failures to follow natural justice or due process, acting with bias or punishing by using sweeper clauses on disrepute or reputational matters, give the green light to big businesses and other private sector employers to do likewise.

Up and down the land, people are losing their jobs, their reputations and their savings, and sometimes their families and homes, because of a lack of natural justice, due process, fairness or impartiality in their workplaces, where big businesses and organisations simply abuse their power to achieve the end that they wanted all along. They think it is okay and that they are unaccountable, and they may even think that they are following the example of this place. I say this to the House in conclusion: it is not okay and it can never be acceptable. It does not just happen within this place.

What happens in this place ripples out, so that other people in other walks of life— our constituents—may not get a fair hearing, due process or fair treatment, or may be gagged from speaking up for themselves in the face of grave injustices in their lives and workplaces. I was elected here to defend those constituents and to defend our British values, and that is how I will exercise my political and democratic vote today, to vote against this report.