Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, but I must say the difference between this party and the Government party is that we are trying to do something about this. We have the proposals to do something about it. When we were in Government, as I will come on to in my remarks, we did a great deal to try to reform the House of Lords, and we made a lot of progress. On corruption and sleaze, we in the Opposition are the ones trying to change the system for the better.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

While we are talking about corruption and sleaze, and Ministers and standards, does my hon. Friend, like me, find it rather strange that the Prime Minister is in charge of the ministerial code and gets to decide whether somebody has broken it?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Yes; I am glad that my hon. Friend brought that up, because the Opposition have a problem with that. We have a problem with the fact that it is up to the Prime Minister to decide whether or not the ministerial code is investigated. That is a problem. As I said yesterday, the Government rejected the report put forward by the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Committee on Standards—a report that followed a very thorough investigation, undertaken entirely properly, with due consideration for the circumstances of the former Member for North Shropshire. That was wrong.

The Government then tried to overthrow the entire standards system, ripping up a 30-year consensus on how we enforce standards in this place, just to prevent sanctions on an “egregious case”—not my words, but those of the entire Committee on Standards—of paid lobbying. That was wrong. Cabinet Ministers then suggested that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards should resign. That was wrong. They tried to set up a sham committee with a named chair, notably on the Government side, and a majority of members from the Government side, to rig the standards procedure. That was wrong.

Okay, the Government are now belatedly trying to right those wrongs. The commissioner finally got an apology from the Business Secretary on Monday for his shameful comments.