Committee on Standards: Decision of the House

Debate between Jess Phillips and Alberto Costa

Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I shall start with an apology to you, Mr Speaker. As I have already mentioned to you, I have to leave the debate straight after my comments because I am due in Westminster Hall to talk about people spiking drinks, which I am sure concerns the whole House. After I have made that apology—I am aware that this might sound slightly backward—let me say that I tell my children when they apologise that “sorry” is just a word, and changing our behaviour is the way that we prove that we are sorry. I ask my children not to say sorry to me very often, although they are called on to do it quite a lot; I wish to see changed behaviour.

It is an absolute pleasure, actually, to follow the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter). He is not a Member who I have had much interaction with, but I can see that he is going to be an interesting and independent voice on the issue of standards in this House. He might not recognise some of the fanfare that we have had today, because there are normally only about 10 or 15 people in debates about how we are going to look at the code of conduct, but this one seems to have piqued considerably more interest.

There are changes that might need to be made; I do not think that the system is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. On appeals, the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) was insistent about the ICGS and how it works. I hope that Members are aware that such a system means that both parties can appeal a decision, so if that system were in place and on one occasion it went the way of a Member, that would mean that the complainant, who may very well be vexatious, could keep on appealing. A system like that of the ICGS is not necessarily a perfect one.

[Alberto Costa]

The point is that the former member of the judiciary, Sir Stephen Irwin, has created a set of appeal rules that are very clear in outlining when a complainant or an MP can appeal from the sub-panel to his own panel, and they are broadly the same grounds that we might use in judicial review, where the matter is either being dealt with improperly or unlawfully, or it is manifestly unreasonable.

[Jess Phillips]

I am delighted to hear the hon. Gentleman defending judicial review. I absolutely love a bit of judicial review. I have taken the Government to court on a number of occasions—for example, when they sort of stopped victims of domestic violence being able to move across councils. I have always welcomed a judicial review.

I very much welcome the considerable efforts that people here are now going to make, as they advocate for themselves, to advocate for the kind of people in my constituency who have no legal representation in any way, whether as domestic violence victims in the family court, or in employment tribunals. I am also interested to hear that Members really want us to have employment rights in this place. I remember when disabled Members in this building were saying that it would be against the Equality Act 2010 for them to come in during covid, and we were told that the Equality Act does not apply to us because we are not employees. It is an interesting turn of events that we have seen in the last few days.

I care deeply about the standards in this building, not because I am actually that interested in Standing Orders—I know that some hon. Gentlemen here love them, but I am not all that bothered by getting bogged down in the numbers, and this and that—but because I am interested in politics mattering to people in this country and those people feeling they can change it. If I could thank the Ministers on the Treasury Bench for anything, it would be that this week the people in our country felt they could change something that they did not like, when the Government had to undo their deeply unpopular decision.

The more that we degrade this place—for some of us, that is considerably more dangerous than it is for others. For some of us, it every day screams in our faces that democracy has been undermined. It is dangerous if we do not get the standards in this place right and if we do not do it together collegiately, through the proper process, which has, up until last week, largely been my experience. It is a shame that on this occasion, that was not the case.

I have to go and talk about other things in another part of the House, but I will finish by mentioning one more issue. On the point about there being one rule for the people outside this building and different rules for the people inside this building, it has been phenomenal for me this week to see the different contracts that organisations such as Randox have been given without a tender process. I speak as somebody who has spent hours and hours of my time working in charities, filling in tender process after tender process for amounts of money like £25,000 for a children’s sexual exploitation service that would last for a whole year. I had to include information on what sort of locks were going to be on the doors in the office and how we would lock the filing cabinets.

Hour by hour is accounted for. I have worked on Home Office contracts where the staffing hour is literally given out in 15-minute blocks, and I am monitored on that and it is accounted for—and I find that what I needed was hundreds of thousands of pounds to pay somebody in here to make that a little bit simpler. We can blame covid all we like, but I sat and filled in the Government paperwork for grants for organisations that were offering refuge accommodation during the covid-19 pandemic, and there were pages and pages where they had to reply to multiple different organisations and Departments. I helped lots of charities to do it and I did not charge anyone a single bean.

I will finish by saying that there is one rule for the people in our country, and seemingly another for enormous, friendly companies who are willing to pay the people in here.