Bill of Rights

Debate between Helen Jones and William Cash

Thursday 17th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. This has been a very interesting debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), the other hon. Members in charge of the debate and the Backbench Business Committee on bringing it about, because it raises fundamental issues about the role of Members of Parliament and about Parliament itself. As hon. Members rightly said, the rights and privileges of Parliament exist not to provide protection for MPs merely, but to protect the rights of their constituents. In that sense, articles 9 and 13 of the Bill of Rights are complementary. We all know, and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley quoted clearly, article 9, which states that

“the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament.”

Article 13 makes it clear that one purpose of holding frequent Parliaments is to be able to redress grievances. In other words, Parliament is here not just to make laws, but to address the grievances of Members’ constituents—the two are part of the same thing.

[Mr Cash]

I do not want to take the hon. Lady into a great dialogue on this; I will simply ask her a question. Is she as confident of what she has just quoted in the light of the judgment in the Jackson case, in which several members of the Supreme Court questioned the extent to which they had ultimate authority and said that parliamentary sovereignty was being qualified? They used those words, and many more besides.

[Helen Jones]

If the hon. Gentleman allows me to proceed a little, perhaps I can touch on the issues that he raises, but I want to keep my remarks to the subject of the debate.

One reason why becoming a Member of this House confers huge privileges on us all is that it enables us to act on behalf of our constituents. To be able to do that effectively, as several hon. Members have said, Members of Parliament must have access to information. A number of cases have been raised today, and many of us have had experience of hospitals, schools sometimes and councils trying to deny hon. Members the information that they request. In my experience, that is normally fairly easy to deal with, although the cases involving the courts are much more complex. I hope to be able to come to those in a moment.

Hon. Members know that they must use the protection granted by parliamentary privilege sparingly and not for their own advantage, but use it they must if it is necessary to right a wrong or to get justice for a constituent. Since I came into the House, I have seen a number of examples of hon. Members rightly taking up issues on behalf of their constituents and using parliamentary privilege to do so, because that is the only way to get something done.

If I may speak anecdotally, I have had experience of that myself. Not long after I came into Parliament, I felt it necessary to initiate an Adjournment debate about a charity that I felt was not operating properly. I came under huge pressure from the people running that organisation, but I felt that it was necessary to do that and to use parliamentary privilege to do it, because I believed that the people who were supposed to be being looked after by that organisation, many of whom suffered severe learning difficulties and did not have friends or family to speak up on their behalf, were being done out of their rights. Many other hon. Members will have come across cases such as that. At some point or other, we have all known of constituents who have been told that they cannot or should not approach their Member of Parliament. I say gently to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley that I have known councils and public bodies tell people that, and he must have known of it, too. I have also known Liberal Democrat councillors tell my constituents that they should not come to see me.

A case can probably be made for educating people, but we certainly need a clearer definition. Indeed, the rights of Parliament need to be made clear to many who work for public bodies. In these circumstances, I normally find that a fairly stroppy letter from me—I can write very stroppy letters when I need to—usually puts the matter right. However, some of the cases that we have heard of today are much more serious.

We have to face up to the difficulties of interpreting article 9 that arise simply because of its age. Parliament has developed and changed since 1688. It would be strange if it had not. We now live in a multi-media age, which covers aspects of communication that were not known when the Bill of Rights was drafted.

Many Members would be surprised to learn the limits of parliamentary privilege. For that reason, a review of parliamentary privilege was undertaken by a Joint Committee in 1999. The Committee drew attention to the fact that although Members are not exposed to any civil or criminal liabilities in respect of what they say and do in the course of proceedings in Parliament, there is no comprehensive definition of what “proceedings in Parliament” covers. Equally, there is no proper definition of what constitutes a place “out of Parliament”. That needs to be tackled.

It is generally accepted that proceedings in Parliament are covered by the formal proceedings of the House and its Committees and any documentation directly associated with those proceedings, but there are grey areas around that, as the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) noted about the documents that he had received. The Committee said that article 9 needs clarification. It clearly does, in light of Members’ experience and given what we have heard today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

I had not quite finished my sentence, but the hon. Gentleman is right; Ponting said that it was in the public interest to communicate the information. Whether or not that defence was sound, the jury simply refused to convict him.

[Mr Cash]

This is, of course, related to the proposed parliamentary privilege Bill to which the hon. Lady has referred. The Duncan Sandys case turned on the question of proceedings in Parliament. It was clear that there was a total and deliberate breach of the Official Secrets Act and that that, in itself, was in the public interest because Whitehall, or the Defence Department at the time, was correctly alleged to have been misleading the House of Commons. There are cases, therefore, in which a breach of the criminal law and the Official Secrets Act can be justified on the grounds of parliamentary “privilege”. I mention that as a good example.

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Gentleman makes a point, but the public interest defence in all these cases is the one that is usually used.

I cannot comment on some of the individual cases that were raised today because I have no personal knowledge of them. None the less, they are serious matters that deserve to be addressed. We have all encountered people who do not want to answer MPs, or who just want to send a brush-off answer. In minor cases, I find that a nice letter from me saying that if they do not answer me, I will just table questions in Parliament and they will have to answer anyway sorts it out. However, we have heard about much more serious cases where there is a refusal to recognise the representative role of a Member of this House acting on behalf of a constituent. I will be interested to hear what the Deputy Leader of the House has to say about that.

Article 9 exists to facilitate article 13; the two are inextricably linked. There is no doubt that we need to clarify the scope of privilege and the rights of Members of this House. Concerns have already been expressed about the way in which some legislation might be eroding those privileges. Although the Government disagreed with this, the Clerk of the House raised concerns about the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill and how it could bring proceedings in Parliament into the ambit of the courts. Similar concerns were raised about the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. Moreover, there were issues about putting lay members on the Committee on Standards and Privileges and whether they would be able to vote on matters relating to privilege.

As Parliament has expanded its role, a load of issues have emerged that need to be clarified. We look forward to the publication of the draft parliamentary privilege Bill. I hope that the House will be given sufficient time to consider the matter seriously. We have to get it right not just for ourselves but for future Members of this House. It is not a party political issue but about getting the workings of the House right and about the privileges that need to be accorded to hon. Members to allow them to do their job.

I hope, too, that when the Bill finally comes before the House, we get sufficient time to examine it and, if necessary, to amend it. If we do not give proper consideration to this matter and ensure that the drafting is right and that Parliament works properly on behalf of the people we represent, we will be failing not ourselves but our constituents, and that is the important point that has been raised in this debate. I look forward to a proper examination of that draft Bill and to hearing the Deputy Leader of the House’s response.