Risk-based Exclusion

David Davis Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Karen Bradley]

That was not a matter the Committee considered, but my right hon. Friend makes a very good point. We need to think of this as a process and not an event, because things can change and develop. Today we are deciding whether to introduce into our Standing Orders a process for exclusion, but in future we may well decide that the measures did not go far enough and that we need another process. The Commission has taken years to look at the matter. I am glad we have got to the point where we are finally discussing it and we have the chance to vote on the proposals, but it is a process, not an event.

[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

If we decide to exclude at the point of charge, did my right hon. Friend’s Committee consider whether, instead of this entire procedure, a simple application by the House authorities to a magistrates court for conditions of bail would be more appropriate? That would cover not just this place, but any risk anywhere.

[Dame Karen Bradley]

We did not consider that point, but we did look at the interaction with the judicial process and concerns about the possibility that a clever barrister might use the fact that a risk-based assessment had been made as some form of defence around fair trial. I am not saying that would necessarily ever happen, but we considered that point and set it out in correspondence to Mr Speaker and the Leader of the House.

[Dame Karen Bradley]

My right hon. Friend’s point relates to the proxy vote. The measures allow for a proxy vote, as I will come to in a moment.

Members of the Committee expressed different views but, on balance, we decided, as set out in our correspondence, that charge is the right point for exclusion; we should not have proxy votes, as I will come to; and we were concerned about the make-up of the panel. The other place has decided that charge is the right point, but it does not have the panel, which was an area we considered. We were also concerned about interaction with ICGS. They are two different processes: ICGS does not involve the police, but the police could be looking at the same complaint. We were concerned about putting people off going to ICGS, where anonymity is crucial, if, at the same time, there was some sort of risk-based exclusion, because a point in the judicial process had been reached and the Member was excluded under the risk-based assessment.

As many right hon. and hon. Members have said, the exclusion would not cover the constituency. If anybody is a risk to the public in that way, then we should not stand by and allow them to continue to carry out constituency surgeries, or visit schools, nurseries, places where there are vulnerable people or people’s homes. If somebody is a risk, they should not be able to carry out their constituency work in the same way. The proposals before us do not cover that.

It is worth explaining why the Committee was nervous about the idea of giving a proxy vote to somebody who had been excluded on this basis. Members of the Committee see proxy votes as a privilege. The House has agreed that a proxy vote can be given to those on baby leave and those with long-term sickness, but a Member cannot be given a proxy vote for bereavement, a sick child or any other reason why they may not be able to attend this place. However, the proposals give a proxy vote to someone who has been excluded on the basis that they pose a risk by being in this building. That did not sit comfortably with many members of the Committee, so the Committee decided it would not support the proxy vote.

[Sir David Davis]

I apologise for intervening a second time, but I want to come back to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Sir Liam Fox). He said, quite rightly, that constituents would be penalised by Members being excluded but one risk of providing a proxy vote is that it persuades people they are not being penalised. In practice, as we have seen with the post office scandal, being here and representing people is the important thing that is being stopped by these proposals.

[Dame Karen Bradley]

My right hon. Friend is right that excluding a representative’s voice from these Benches is a severe punishment for constituents.

I will make a final point in my role as chair of the British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. BGIPU has agreed it will follow whatever is decided by this place on travel, so outbound delegations will not feature anybody who has been excluded on the basis of a decision taken by the panel. We will ensure that decision is upheld. I believe the other various parliamentary groups are looking at the same thing.

I realise you have indulged me, Madam Deputy Speaker, with the time I have taken. To conclude, on balance, I support what the Leader of the House has put forward and I will be voting in favour of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman: any exclusion must be a decision of the whole House. That is our most ancient constitutional right. The idea that it can be stopped by three people—even, Madam Deputy Speaker, one as distinguished as the Chairman of Ways and Means—is not in the spirit of our constitution.

[Sir David Davis]

Is the substance of what my right hon. Friend says that if we enacted this procedure, it would be subject to challenge in the courts?

[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am saying that it would be ineffective because a right hon. or hon. Member would simply maintain the right to turn up. There would be no power to arrest that person when turning up, therefore what would we do next, and what would we do if a person so outraged by the allegation said, “Well, I’m going to call a by-election, stand for Parliament and be returned”?

A general election is coming in the next few months. What would we do if a Member subject to this procedure were reselected by his constituency association and returned? By ancient principle, a Member who is returned cannot then be barred for something that happened in the last Parliament. Are we going to start saying, “The people of constituency X have duly voted in somebody who we suspended in the last Session, and who we are going to re-suspend”? Just before the last general election, Keith Vaz was subject to a report that was not entirely in his favour. Everyone recognised that that suspension could not carry over a general election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is strange to agree so much with the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg). I think that he is a bit shocked that I agree with him as well—I see that he nods.

Let me return to two central things. First, this is about Parliament being like every other workplace in the country. Of course there are ways in which we are exceptional—we often emphasise those too much, perhaps—but what was fascinating when we debated the original proposals from the Commission in the Standards Committee was that the lay members all said that in every line of work they were in, this would be standard practice. It would happen in various different ways in different organisations, but certainly in every part of the public sector and in any major employer in the land, this process, in some shape or form, would be absolutely standard. We are simply trying to ensure that this workplace, like any other in the land, is safe not just from external threats but from behaviours that could put staff, members of the public and colleagues at risk.

Secondly, the proposal is about assessing the seriousness of the risk in any given set of circumstances—which heaven knows could vary enormously from the case of one person to another—and then taking proportionate and only proportionate measures to mitigate that risk, as any responsible employer and workplace surely should, and as any other workplace would be required to do, in law written by us. It is about the assessment of risk and proportionate measures to deal with the risk; it is not, in my mind—and I think that it is a terrible shame that it has been billed as such—about exclusion. Exclusion should be, as it is in nearly every other business, the very last point to go to. It would be at the extreme end, when an assessment had been made that the risk was relatively extreme.

Many other things could be done that fall far short of exclusion. For instance, one of the oddities about this building and all the buildings on the parliamentary estate is that we often work, as an MP, with a single member of staff, or two members of staff, behind a big oak door. Somebody might want to make a risk assessment if a Member were, I would say, arrested for a sexual or violent crime relating to a member of staff. They might want to make an assessment that that Member should no longer be in that kind of office and that their office should be one shared with other members of staff, other Members of Parliament or in a more visible space. That might be the perfectly proportionate decision to take, and that could be done entirely without the public knowing and entirely as a neutral act.

This is a really important point: the court of public opinion has no formal rules of evidence, operates entirely to its own agenda, and—in my experience—rarely delivers justice or anything that we would think approximates justice. That is why, notwithstanding the point made about how rumour spreads around here, it is so important that any measure taken should be done confidentially. I think that in nearly every case it would be taken with the agreement of the Member concerned. It should also be considered an entirely neutral process. My worry about the obsession with exclusion as the endpoint of what we are looking at is that it starts to look like a punishment rather than a neutral act.

That is why, in nearly every case, if the assessment of the panel were that there was a significant risk that could be mitigated only through a suggestion of exclusion, the Member would be well advised to follow that advice voluntarily. I think they would in nearly any set of circumstances. However, I agree with the right hon. Member for North East Somerset that, in the end, it must be a matter for the House if there is to be forced exclusion; otherwise, there is a danger that we bring the whole process into disrepute and it will not last for more than five minutes.

[Sir David Davis]

The hon. Gentleman is making some interesting points. I have two concerns about the process. The first is about abiding by our long-standing rule of innocent until proven guilty. The second is that the people being penalised by this measure are our constituents, not us. Does he imagine guidelines for the panel that take those two things on board in the way he just described?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

It is perfectly possible to do that. I can imagine many different circumstances where somebody was arrested for a violent or sexual offence and the panel decided that they would not go down the route of exclusion. The Member would still be able to be present and take part in debates; it is just that certain other factors would be considered, such as saying, “You can’t go on foreign travel on behalf of the House, you can’t go on travel in the UK paid for by the House, you can’t participate in IPU delegations, you can’t use the bars, and we’re going to rearrange your offices.” All of those things could happen entirely without disrupting the Member’s ability to represent their constituents to the fullest possible degree. As I say, this is always about assessing the risk in the specific set of circumstances and mitigating those risks only in a proportionate way. In most cases, my suspicion is that exclusion would be disproportionate and therefore not necessary. That is why it is unfortunate that the motion has been couched in this way.