Committee on Standards
Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Yvette Cooper(2 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am glad that I saved the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) for next, because that point was so fatuous that it is not worth answering.
Yvette Cooper
A cross-party Committee, including lay members, has already considered this issue and come to a unanimous conclusion. My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) asked the Leader of the House why the House should not just come to a conclusion on paid advocacy, which we are clear is against the rules, and the Leader of the House said that was a matter for the new Committee to consider. The old Committee, including lay members, has already considered it and come to its independent conclusion; why does the Leader of the House think the new Committee will somehow be better than the old Committee? Does he not realise that this just looks to everyone as if he simply does not like the conclusion that the old Committee came to?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Dare I say that the right hon. Lady is modelling herself on the deaf adder and, charm I never so nicely, she is not hearing what I am saying? The new Committee could come to the same conclusion, but the point at issue is that we are discussing the process, the lack of appeal and the failures in the processes as they currently exist.
Let me come to the length and continuity of investigations. Across many standards cases we have seen huge differentials among the lengths of time taken for investigations. There appears to be no consistency. For example, the case of the Chair of the Standards Committee himself, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), was completed within a week using the rectification procedure, after he had failed to declare something after two years. That is contrasted by the lengthy investigation into the case of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire, which took just over two years from the start of the inquiry to the publication of the Committee’s report.
It is equally concerning—this is an important point for those who have been speaking up for the Committee—that the current processes do not ensure continuity of attendance at the Committee, with different Members present at the Standards Committee’s three formal meetings on the report. By the final meeting, only 50% of the membership had attended all three meetings, and four of the 11 members who attended that meeting had not attended the meeting in which the evidence of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire was heard. Although we all understand the pressures on Select Committee members, that seems to be in sharp contrast to the expectations in a judicial process such as jury service, when people are meant to be there to listen to the evidence, and a good reason to look again at our processes.