Jacob Rees-Mogg
Main Page: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)Department Debates - View all Jacob Rees-Mogg's debates with the Leader of the House
(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I accept and believe that it is important that we have some means of protecting people in this House. This is something that we have been trying to do, and the introduction of the ICGS has helped in that process, making people confident that there is a route through which they can complain and where they can have their best interests assured and safeguarded.
The problem with this motion is that it is simply unconstitutional. If we want to go down this route, we need to legislate for it. From time immemorial—actually since 1340—unmolested access to this House has been the right of every Member and that is for a very good reason. These privileges are not for us as individuals, but they are, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Sir Liam Fox) said, because of the 80,000 people whom we represent.
The ability to take away that right of attendance has always been held exclusively by the whole House. There is one exception I can think of to this and that is in 1648 with Pride’s purge—[Interruption.] We have some chuntering from the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) as we so often do. Yes, the Speaker may name somebody and ask them to withdraw, but any suspension requires a motion—a divisible motion. We have expelled Members historically. We have suspended Members and continue to do so. That involves a vote of the whole House. If we expel a Member, that Member has the right then to stand for Parliament and be sent straight back again. That is a fundamental right not of us, but of the people who sent us here.
The John Wilkes case is famous. The House disliked an individual Member and expelled him, but he stood and he succeeded and he was returned. Politically, that is of great importance. In this instance, we are suggesting that a small committee will have the power to deny constituents representation. That is not within the power of this House, unless it acts as a whole. A small committee cannot deprive Members of the right of attendance. It is a right, as I have said, that goes back to 1340. The only way to override such ancient rights—this is the whole basis of our system of common law—is by legislation, not by motion.
Mr Carmichael
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is of course right about the constitutionality of this, but we all know that, in practical terms in recent times, things have been done differently and that people have been excluded by agreement however obtained from the Whips. Surely what we have here is something that would be more transparent and would apply with equal measure to everyone?
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg
The right hon. Gentleman says that a Member agreeing not to come in is the same as banning a Member from coming in. That is clearly not true.
It would not take very long to turn this motion into legislation, and that would be the proper constitutional way of doing this.
The proposal is, to my mind, entirely ineffective. We know that the powers of arrest of the Serjeant at Arms are pretty much phantasmagorical. I am sorry to embarrass the great Serjeant, who is sitting in his place. He is a most distinguished figure, but the idea that he could turn up and arrest somebody for failing to appear at a Select Committee is pretty much theatre rather than an effective threat. Our ancient powers of imprisoning are no longer there, so what happens when this person, excluded by a small cabal, decides to turn up? What are we going to do? We will have a vote of the whole House to expel him—the proper process in the first place.
Sir Chris Bryant
Notwithstanding the right hon. Gentleman’s previous remark, I mostly agree with what he says. There is a problem here. When the Standards Committee reported on this, we made the point that exclusion is the very last thing that should be considered. In most cases, a Member in this kind of situation would choose to accept the decision voluntarily. However, we also said that if a Member chose not to, the House should vote on whether the Member should be excluded. Would the right hon. Gentleman be happy with that process?
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.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I have immense respect for my right hon. Friend’s knowledge of constitutional matters. As an excellent former Leader of the House, why does he think that the Government have introduced an unconstitutional measure, rather than apply the due court process by having the House of Commons make the decision?
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg
It is because we have become confused about the limits of exclusive cognisance. The House has exclusive cognisance about its own affairs, but acting as the whole House. Look at the case of the exclusion of Bradlaugh. That was an action of the whole House. What did we do when Bobby Sands was elected to Parliament? We changed the law so that people subject to a criminal sentence could not stand for Parliament. We did not try to set up some approvals committee that would decide who could put their name forward; we followed a proper constitutional process. To answer my hon. Friend, I am astonished that our learned Clerks, who must have advised on this, have allowed such an extraordinary power grab by Standing Orders to undermine a fundamental of our constitution.
I know that when Members of Parliament talk about privilege it sounds as if they are talking about themselves, but it is about our constituents’ right to be represented. They are not represented only by votes. Indeed, most of the time they are least represented by votes, which go the way of the Government majority, with one vote more or less not making a hap’orth of difference. They are marginally represented by written questions, but not much. I have given answers to written questions; sometimes they seem to be as unilluminating as possible. I always tried to improve the illumination where I could. The real representation is in this very room. It is not even in Westminster Hall or in Committee; it is in this great cockpit of debate. A cabal taking away that right is against the constitution.
I will make a couple of little points about the proposal. I do not have a strong view on whether the term should be “arrested” or “charged”, as long as the process is proper and constitutional. I think that it would be perfectly fair even if it was automatic, if it were done by a proper constitutional process. That is not really the issue, but I think that what is proposed is deeply unfair. I will point to two things.
First, the panel will not be given the name of the Member being risk assessed. Dare I say, tell that to the marines. We know in this place that it is inconceivable that a panel of two Deputy Speakers and a panjandrum would not know the name; we would all have been told it by the Lobby correspondents. That is how I find out everything that goes on here, usually from The Mail on Sunday, which has a hotline to what is going on. Those on the committee would know very soon, so that seems to me to be phoney, and not recognising reality.
Secondly, the report states that
“Members must not lobby the Panel…We carefully considered whether a Member subject to risk assessment should have the right to make representations”.
If someone is being risk assessed, how can they maintain that they are low risk if they are not allowed to represent themselves? I think it is extraordinarily unfair that they will be tried in absentia by a cabal, undermining the rights of their constituents. If we want to do this, let us find time for legislation, and let us do it properly.
Sir Philip Davies
I will not, because others want to speak and I do not want to take their time.
I will raise two other points. My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) is absolutely right about the fact that when this motion was originally tabled, it was about arrest, and the Government have just changed the wording to “charged” but kept the rest of it in place, which is completely unsatisfactory. Personally, for the reason that I have given, I would get rid of the panel altogether, because I suspect that the outcome would be the same on every single thing, whether arrest or charge, to be perfectly honest. I am not entirely sure what the point of the panel is. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that when the matter relates to a charge, the panel is completely unnecessary, and we should get rid of it.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg
I think the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) is more constitutional—although still far from perfect—because whether to exclude under certain circumstances is a decision for the House, rather than a decision for the House to delegate. His amendment to this rather bad motion is at least an improvement.
Sir Philip Davies
There is no better endorsement than that, as far as I am concerned, so that will do for me and, I am sure, for my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley.
The Order Paper indicates that amendment (c) is expected to be pressed to a Division, and I hope that it is. It was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), who cannot be here because of all the parliamentary business that he is engaged in today, but I have signed it, Madam Deputy Speaker, and would be prepared to move it. It comes back to the point—one that my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands made—about this motion being sort of cobbled together with a different original purpose.
Amendment (c) is about removing proxy voting from somebody who is subject to a charge. I do not think that there is any justification at all for somebody who has been charged with a serious sexual or violent offence to be given a proxy vote, when people with far better reasons for being absent from the House are not given that privilege. It would be an outrage, in my opinion, if they were treated more favourably than other Members who had just as good a reason for not being here. I very much hope that the Leader of the House will accept the amendment, which I think reflects the mood of the House. Proxy voting is a step too far, and it is a consequence of not amending the motion when the decision was made to change the wording from arrest to charge.
I would like to say a lot more—I said last week that this debate was not long enough, given the seriousness of the issue, and I maintain that view—but I want to allow others to speak. I completely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset when he says that this is an unsatisfactory process, and if he were to vote against the whole motion, I would have a lot of sympathy with him, but I hope that colleagues accept that “charged” strikes the right balance by being fair to everybody—including our constituents, who are the most important people for this House to think about—and in terms of safeguarding the people who work here. I also hope that Members will accept amendment (c), tabled by hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and me, to scrap proxy voting in that situation. That would at least make the motion better than it would otherwise be.
Jess Phillips
The trouble is that that is what is currently happening. The hon. Gentleman, or anybody else who does not want there to be a two-year wait between arrest and charge, might like to join me in all my advocacy. When I worked in this field before I was in this building, it was not two years between arrest and charge, so maybe the Leader of the House could reflect on her party’s own record in that regard. Of course it should not take that long. I think it was the hon. Member for Amber Valley who said, “If it was quick”—well, we all want to see that for everybody involved, but there is this idea that we are superior beings who should not have to be concerned about safeguarding laws that are totally standard practice across the whole of the country. Do you know who gets excluded now? It is the person who got raped. We say, “This magical being has to be able to stay because in 1348, blah, blah, blah.” What about the person who got raped who works here?
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg
My point was that this should be done properly. The hon. Lady makes a compelling case for arrest, but only if it is done in a proper and constitutional manner.
Jess Phillips
Like, I say, I am often right on these things. I am going to err to the right hon. Gentleman’s judgment on that point. What I am saying—I do not mean to besmirch him—is that we seem to act like we are superior beings. The people who currently get excluded are often young women—I have dealt with cases where it was young men—who never work in politics again. The woman I spoke to first thing this morning has never set foot in this building again. She has given up politics—we have extinguished that light. We gave it up, we excluded her, and we allowed the person she alleges did that to her to walk around in this place. Everybody who votes against arrest would be willing to allow that person to walk around, possibly being a danger to somebody else, for another two years.
Penny Mordaunt
I will come to the hon. Gentleman, but let me crack through the other points.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) gave some examples that slightly misunderstood what the scheme is doing. We are not talking about a Member being expelled from the House, or losing their place as a Member of the House, but being excluded from the estate for a limited period. It is for Parliament, in accordance with the principle of exclusive cognisance, to organise its own affairs. It is orderly therefore for this House to consider the proposals in the way that it is. He invites us to consider a scenario where a Member of Parliament resigned as an MP and then stood for re-election and asked whether this process would still apply to them. If they were still under charge, yes, it would.
Penny Mordaunt
I will come to my right hon. Friend once I have been through the points that have already been raised.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) for his attention and for giving the House the option to vote on his amendment. When the Commission was looking at this matter, we looked at potential scenarios—not at charge, but at arrest—where someone might be arrested for a violent offence, but it would not be deemed appropriate to exclude them from the estate. One example we looked at was someone who was a victim of domestic abuse. That is where that particular line comes from.
The hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), who has great experience in this area, and the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and others talked about a raft of issues related to arrest. One issue that did arise when people were looking at this matter is an obvious question: if bail conditions have not been applied to an individual, is it right for a panel to impose its own? The panel could face a small number of situations where bail conditions and restrictions had not been placed on an individual, but the panel felt that further restrictions would need to be looked at with regard to the estate.
The hon. Member for North East Fife raises an important point about charge versus arrest. I will offer the arguments forwarded for consistency on charge for the sake of thoroughness of debate. A criminal investigation is commenced where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence has been committed. A person can be subject to a criminal investigation right through to the point of charging without having been arrested. The police will only arrest if it is necessary to do so, but they do so in a whole variety of cases. The argument put forward against the amendment is that it would create a distinction between on the one hand an MP who has been arrested because the police considered it a necessary procedural step—it should be kept in mind that arrest does not indicate that the allegation is more serious or credible—and on the other, an MP who has been investigated for an offence at the same level of seriousness, but where the arrest was deemed unnecessary.
I will come to the point that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) raised, although I am afraid she will find some of my answers depressing, and I ask her to brace for that. The first is that—my fellow Commissioners will back me up that I have raised this—the House of Commons Commission, which is asked to bring forward motions of this nature, is not fully sighted on all the problems. Commission members do not have a 360° view of all the issues on the estate. Clearly, cases are going on that are in complete confidence. There is a problem in asking the Commission to do work of this nature—the people who are doing that are best sighted on the whole of the problem.
The hon. Lady and others raised the charge that we consider ourselves in this place to be somehow different from other members of the population—and our staff. I think that is wrong, in part because of arguments that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) made, which I agree with, and because Members of Parliament can be victims in this situation, too. Historically, women MPs have been victims. It is not helpful to say that there is a divide between how Members of Parliament see themselves and others—I do not think that is true.
Even more concerning for the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, and myself is that some of the most serious cases that we are aware of—and that I find most disturbing and worrying from a safeguarding point of view—would not be covered by any of the proposals, including at arrest. This is not a comprehensive solution to the problem, though it is a step towards part of the answer.
Penny Mordaunt
No, it is not, with all due respect to the hon. Member. The Commission originally proposed arrest. We brought that to the Floor of the House. There were concerns before it arrived, and therefore we decided to have a debate, not a vote on it. Three key issues were raised in that debate, and charge versus arrest was one of them. All three issues have been dealt with by the Commission. The House has the chance tonight to vote on proxy voting, the panel, arrest versus charge and the scheme itself. It is for the House to decide that. It is a sorry situation that the hon. Gentleman would paint this to be something it is not. It shows a distinct lack of situational awareness.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg
On exclusive cognisance, as was established in the Bradlaugh case, this House has the right to determine its own procedures, but it has never had the right to delegate the exclusion of a Member to a panel. That has always been the responsibility of the whole House, otherwise we have a right dating back to 1340 of unmolested attendance. Exclusive cognisance cannot override our ancient rights in that way. We can, of course, expel individual Members. That is the flaw in this proposal.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his helpful point. In addition to what I said earlier, the Commission’s choice was between retaining the confidentiality of the situation—the advice that it received on not jeopardising an investigation in an ongoing case was very compelling—and ignoring that and bringing this to the Floor of the House. The Commission decided that the former was the better course of action.