Standards and Privileges

Jim Dowd Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barron]

No—I shall just carry on for a few minutes, if my hon. Friend does not mind.

The commissioner’s report suggests that the public purse was overcharged by between £80 and £270 per month, even in comparison with assured shorthold tenancies. Property advisers considered that the rent in the right hon. Gentleman’s lodging agreement was between £209 and £370 a month higher than the market price.

The right hon. Gentleman and his supporters say that he acted to preserve his privacy. Extensive press briefings suggested that the breach would be somehow less blameworthy if that were the case, but the commissioner expressed his sympathy for the right hon. Gentleman, and the Committee recognised his motivation. However, there were other ways to preserve privacy. He could have refrained from claiming. Alternatively, he could have designated his main home properly, which would have meant that there would be no need to conceal receipts that might have identified his landlord.

The right hon. Gentleman instead took the decision to preserve his privacy by concocting a rent agreement and, wherever possible, claiming below the receipts threshold. He told the commissioner:

“After the receipts threshold changed I reduced my claims below the threshold.”

Ultimately, as the report says, this case is about the fundamental principles of the code of conduct, which says, and has always said:

“Members shall base their conduct on a consideration of the public interest, avoid conflict between personal interest and the public interest and resolve any conflict between the two, at once…in favour of the public interest.”

As the Committee said:

“We consider the rental agreements submitted between 2003 and 2008 were misleading and designed to conceal the nature of the relationship. They prevented any examination of the arrangements that in fact pertained over the entire period.”

That is why this case is worse than many others in which the commissioner has found there has been a breach of the rules of the additional costs allowance. In many of those cases, the Members concerned had consulted the department of finance and administration, and in some cases both the department and independent valuers, so there was no intention to deceive. In one case, the Member’s circumstances changed, so that arrangements that were expected to be temporary lasted longer than expected.

In contrast, the case before us involved a deliberate attempt to conceal the Member’s real living arrangements that continued for many years. It is clear that he recognised the potential conflict between the public interest and his private interest. By omitting to seek advice, however, he made himself the sole judge of whether that conflict was properly resolved. It was inappropriate for him to be judge and jury in his own case. As the commissioner commented, it can never be acceptable to submit misleading documents to those charged with overseeing public finances. As this case shows, the right hon. Member’s desire for secrecy led him to act in a way that was not compatible with the standards expected of an MP. Whatever the motive, I do not think that is acceptable.

Now I will address the concerns of those who think that we have been too lenient. Since the Committee reported, my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) has asked the police to investigate. There is a protocol between the police, the commissioner and the Committee providing for liaison between the commissioner and the police, if either of them has concerns. The police will not comment on individual investigations, and the commissioner is also understandably reluctant to comment on such matters, even to the Committee. However, the fact that the commissioner has reported to us suggests the Member’s behaviour is unlikely to have been criminal.

I have already explained why we felt this case was more serious than others, but there were mitigating factors. As we stated in the report:

“Not only has Mr Laws already resigned from the Cabinet, his behaviour since May 2010 has been exemplary. He quickly referred himself to the Commissioner, has already repaid allowances from July 2006 in full, and has cooperated fully with the Commissioner’s investigation. This behaviour has influenced our recommendation.”

[Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

The Committee said that the right hon. Member’s behaviour had been exemplary since the matter became public knowledge, and the commissioner himself, in paragraph 324 of his report, stated that it was to his

“considerable and personal credit that, when his living arrangements came to public attention”

he referred himself. Did the Committee calculate what he might have done had it not come to public attention?

[Mr Barron]

No, it did not.

The repayment was one of the mitigating circumstances. The voluntary payments went further than the circumstances at the time required. The outstanding amount related to rent that might or might not have been over-claimed and not to expenses claims that were wholly wrongly based, as in other cases that sadly have come before the House. As in other cases where Members have over-claimed, we have clawed back the overpayment. Given the uncertainty over what a true comparator should be, we calculated the maximum overpayment, and it was only because it was within the amount that had been paid back, over and above housing claims, that we made no further recommendation.

It has been suggested that recommending that the suspension should begin after the recess is part of a plot to reduce the right hon. Member’s fine. It was not put in, as one of the Sunday papers suggested, by political partisans on the Committee. The Committee considered carefully and decided that a suspension of seven days was appropriate. It would have been arbitrary and unfair to have extended the suspension simply because a recess fell during the period. In 2007, the Committee recommended that George Galloway’s suspension should start after the summer recess for precisely the same reasons. In that case, he got himself named in the House and suspended in the last week of sitting, so he lost his salary for the entire summer recess plus the 18 days that the Committee recommended. In this case, we felt that it would have been wrong to have started the suspension today—if that is what the House agrees—because we knew that we are entering a short recess. It would have been unfair and resulted in a longer suspension than the one recommended in our report. If the motion is agreed to, approximately £1,500 of salary will be withheld as a result of the right hon. Member’s suspension. I recommend the report to the House.

[Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I will not detain the House too long. I realise that we have immensely important business to discuss later, and we should get on to it as soon as possible. However, this matter is not unimportant. Judging from the number of Members seeking to take part in the debate on the report, I fear that it would otherwise have slipped quietly into parliamentary history. We have realised over the past few years just how tainted this House’s reputation has become vis-à-vis not just the conduct of some Members, but how the way in which we deal with them is perceived.

I do not want to go into extreme detail about what the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) has done—or not. The commissioner has conducted a characteristically scrupulous and systematic investigation of the events, and the Committee and all its members have followed in the same vein. I will not seek to divide the House on the recommendation, which I am sure will be agreed. However, I fear that the way in which the case has been dealt with and the conclusion that the Committee has presented create the danger of emphasising the idea that, superficially at least, there is one rule for some Members of this House and other rules for others. Some are taken before the courts—and, indeed, imprisoned—for their conduct; some get barely a slap across the wrist; and others escape scot-free.

I accept that the speculation around this case is nothing to do with the right hon. Gentleman personally, but so much of the comment outside this place—I accept, too, that neither this House nor any Member is responsible for such comment—is about how much time he should serve not before he is brought before the courts or sent to prison, but before he is brought back into the Cabinet. That changes the aspect and the proportion of this case entirely. The report makes it plain that there has been a systematic, calculated and flagrant pattern of behaviour by the right hon. Gentleman, which, describe it as we might—deceit, deception, fraud—amounts to dishonesty. If this House is to rebuild its reputation we need not only procedures that are, to quote an oft-repeated phrase in the report, “above reproach”, but systems that are seen to treat each and every Member of this House in the same fashion. I do not think that we have that at the moment—I do not criticise the report; I am sure that we will pass it and move on—but it is for the authorities and the Committees in this House to ensure that one simple procedure applies to everybody.

As the Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron), has said, this matter is now under investigation by the police because somebody has referred it. [Interruption.] I am told that he did not say that, in which case, we need to refer it. However, it is equally true that in other cases, the police have not waited for a referral for matters to be investigated, but have taken it upon themselves to investigate whether there was any criminal or corrupt element in Members’ behaviour. Indeed, matters that for a while fell within the purview of the commissioner were passed on, because the police had commissioned investigations into whether criminality and wrongdoing had taken place. There are those who have said that Members found guilty of serious wrongdoing should resign and leave this House, triggering a by-election—so much so, indeed, that the current Deputy Prime Minister said in his first address to the Liberal party conference that he wanted to add a “Derek Conway” clause.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The right hon. Gentleman, the Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee, made a passing reference—it was not, if I remember correctly, an evaluative one—to the police. Of course the hon. Gentleman is perfectly at liberty to make clear to the House his view about the merits or demerits of the report and its recommendations. However, I urge the House to focus on the specifics of this report alone and not to engage in what might be called a Second Reading debate about the differential treatment of particular cases, and we certainly cannot get into a general discussion about whether or when the police are involved.

[Jim Dowd]

I accept that, Mr Speaker, and I will abide by your ruling. I asked for your guidance before the debate, because I fear that the niceties and technicalities of parliamentary procedure might reduce common sense to zero in this case, and that the public at large will not understand the import of events.

I accept the report, but I still think that we need a procedure that is open and that has clear stages, regardless of whether the matter in question is in the hands of the House authorities, of Members’ Committees or of officials, or of whether it has entered the domain of a public investigation. We have not got the balance right in the report not because of any failing by the Committee, but because our procedures are still ineffective. We have tried to overhaul the expenses system, which was the genesis of this case, but I do not believe that we have got our administrative arrangements right in this House. The Committee continues to do a good job, as does the commissioner, but we must concentrate on creating a system that not only treats everyone fairly and equally but that is seen to do so.