Privileges Committee Special Report

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will do what he thinks is right—I think we can all guess what that will be—when we vote. I note that the way in which this House has traditionally worked is that there are Standing Orders and there is Erskine May, but there are also unwritten assurances about how this House should behave when these issues are before it. Certainly, the Leader of the House was correct to ask, rather philosophically, at the beginning of this debate what had changed to cause the emergence of behaviour that I would not have expected to see when I first came into this House 31 years ago. I would not have expected to see people’s integrity being impugned in quite the way that it has been while they were doing duties that this House had unanimously asked them to do. But, of course, social media did not exist when I first came into this House, and neither did GB News. Before things get any more heated, we need to stop and think about the consequences of allowing the behaviour that we have seen in the past few months, as the Privileges Committee has done its report, to continue.

It is to the credit of this House that the Privileges Committee’s original report—its fifth report—was debated and carried by such a majority. That puts a line in the sand. It enables us to begin to rebuild the reputation of this House and to use the Privileges Committee to ensure that this House can police itself on the Floor in the Chamber and bring Ministers to account by insisting that they tell the truth.

The special report, again as the Leader of the House pointed out, is unprecedented, because people have never behaved this way in the past when a Privileges Committee was attempting to carry out the duty that was given to it by a motion that was passed unanimously by the House. It is important, given that similar rules apply to the Committee on Standards, that, in what I hope will be the rare occasions in the future when the Privileges Committee may have to meet to do its job and be convened, it will be allowed to do so.

As I said to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), if we cannot restore the respect that the Privileges Committee must have to do its job in future, we will have to create an outside body to do it. That would be a very profound constitutional change, with far greater implications for the freedom of people to speak in this House than simply abiding by decency, courtesy and proper rules when the Privileges Committee is meeting.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Why on earth would outside individuals want to serve on such a body, if they are to be subjected to the kinds of public abuse that we have seen in this case?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

That is the problem, and I think the special report has done us a service by bringing it to the attention of this House. It is something we have to think about as we consider the motion.

We have been living through febrile times. We have seen two Members of this House assassinated in the past few years while doing their jobs. There is a lot of anger and controversy out there, wound up and heated up by the way social media works. I think everybody in this House, especially those who have been subjected to some of those outside pressures—there will be many Members of this House who have—needs to think very carefully about how they conduct themselves and the kinds of words they use.

If there is no respect in this House for the Privileges Committee and the things that we try to do to maintain good behaviour and decency in this House, there will be even less respect outside, and that will damage our ability to ensure that our democracy works properly, because without truth there is no democracy. Although this looks like quite a small report, it is a very significant one, and it is important that Members on all sides of the House, whatever faction they are in, consider seriously the implications of not voting for the motion tonight.

I have to say that, now that a little of the heat has gone out of the situation, I would have liked to see the Members mentioned in the report have the good grace to stand up and apologise to the House for some of the language they have used, such as kangaroo courts, marsupials and comments about “calibre, malice and prejudice”. The House voted for the members of the Committee to be tasked with a very difficult job. Nobody in their right mind would want to find themselves in that position. It is not a nice way to spend parliamentary time—much less attending 30 meetings, under enormous stress and with the outside social media pressures coming in at them from all angles.

As someone who stood against the leader of my party, I can tell hon. Members that I have had some experience of how that works out. I have also had experience of how what one does in here can translate out there into threatening behaviour and difficulties—[Hon. Members: “We all have!”] Yes, and I said that earlier in my speech, if Conservative Members were listening.

Therefore, no matter how high the stakes, it is extremely important that when Members comment, they do so within the Standing Orders and the rules of this House, and that they save comments about witch-hunts, kangaroo courts, malice and the rest of it for when the Committee has reported. One unique thing about this House is that while a report is being compiled and evidence is being collected, that Committee cannot respond to what is being put to it in a 24-hour news cycle. It must wait and let its report do the talking.

I suspect that those Members who tried to blacken the names of those compiling the report, and unleash that kind of process against them, knew exactly what they were doing and knew exactly the pressure they were trying to bring to bear. It is absolutely shameful that some Members named in the report indulged in that kind of behaviour, including two ex-Cabinet Ministers, members of the Privy Council and an ex-Leader of the House—the right hon. Member for North East Somerset —who knows better, and who knows that he knows better than to behave in that way.

When I came to this House, I never thought that I would see such behaviour. It is to the great detriment of Conservative Members that we have seen such behaviour. I ask them, one last time, to have the grace to get up during the debate and apologise to the House for the way in which they behaved prior to the Privileges Committee publishing its report, and give us an assurance that they will not do it again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

The Privileges Committee has had an important duty to fulfil. I want to put on the record my thanks to it for the work it has done, and in particular to its Chair, who has been a lightning rod for criticism. I also want to mention the Conservative members of the Committee who, in addition to the public questioning of their credentials, have had to withstand some internal party pressure, which we have read about in the report. I understand how difficult it is to go against a colleague in any situation, never mind a former leader. It is to their credit that they have stood firm against that pressure. Their wider duty to the democratic process has prevailed. We should all bear in mind that whichever party is in power, if there are no consequences for misleading Parliament, we might as well all pack up and go home.

The motion, as we know, is not about that former Member; it is about undermining the Committee and its work. Given the seriousness of the allegations, which appear to be beyond doubt—they are a matter of public record—this really ought to be a watershed moment about how we conduct ourselves not just inside the Chamber but outside it as well. We are not commentators or bystanders in the political process; we are part of the glue that holds our democracy together, and when we pick away at the threads that tie our system together, we need to be careful that we do not unravel the whole thing.

[Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be saying that Members of Parliament directly elected by our constituents have fewer rights to comment on social media and outside this House than ordinary members of the public and the press.

[Justin Madders]

That is not at all what I am saying. It is clear that people have had plenty to say on this report today. We do not comment on reports of other Committees of the House until they are finalised, which is absolutely correct and proper. There are very good reasons, which we have heard today, why we should continue to do that.

The fact that we are still having this debate shows that Conservative Members do not understand why we have to show some restraint when dealing with sensitive internal matters. There is no shortage of people out there who will call us out for being motivated solely by party politics. By our very nature we are political animals, but on occasions we need to move beyond that, remember the wider public interest and show that standards in public life matter. When it comes to our duties to our constituents and to the country, we should be the leaders; we should not be following others.

Let us imagine that if every time a constituent received a parking fine or had to go to court for some reason, they decided to challenge the integrity of the court or the body issuing that fine. Nothing would ever be decided, would it? The reason that does not happen in a mature democracy is that nothing would ever work. What kind of message would we send as parliamentarians if we do not trust a body that was set up by Parliament itself to deal with such an important matter? We would give the green light to chaos.

It is not that those who have questioned the Committee’s integrity have not availed themselves of the opportunity to do something about it. We have heard plenty of times already that there was plenty of opportunity to object to its competence. Members did not do that because, deep down, they know that anyone placed on that Committee deserves the trust and the confidence of the rest of this place to do their job. Given the Conservative majority on the panel, it would have been absurd for people to have objected to its composition anyway. That is what makes the claims that it was a kangaroo court look even more desperate and damaging.

We need confidence in our colleagues that they will do their duty beyond the day-to-day hustle and bustle of party politics, because that is how politics will survive in this country. We in this place are custodians of democracy. How we act, what we say and what is deemed acceptable all matter, because they become the norm for the generations to follow. If we are not careful, the standards and behaviours that a healthy Parliament should have will be lost and, before we know it, we will be in a dark place indeed.

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

Given the hon. Member’s point about how we in this House are custodians, does he agree that a report of this nature should at least provide some evidence when it makes a statement such as

“the most disturbing examples of the co-ordinated campaign”?

As far as I can see, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support that statement. If you are custodians of the House—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman knows, as happened previously with the hon. Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson), that he must not address other Members directly. “You” means me—okay?

[Justin Madders]

There is evidence—it is in the annexes. It is pretty clear that there was a co-ordinated campaign from a Conservative organisation to lobby Committee members. If people are insisting that what is there in black and white is not what happened, we are in a very strange place indeed. We will not survive if that is how we carry on.

Our democracy is fragile and needs to be protected. It cannot be taken for granted. It has to be cherished, supported and nurtured. We are its current guardians. Sometimes, we have to accept that we have said things that we should not have said, and we have to apologise and move on. We have to accept that saying the right thing is not always easy. Sometimes, “sorry” is the hardest word to say. Sometimes, we have to accept that someone on our own side may not have met the standards that we would expect everyone to adhere to. No one should be bigger than democracy—no individual, no Government.

This place should be a force for good. It should be here to tackle injustices in all their forms. When there is an assault on the rules that govern this place—as we have seen in this report—to suit a short-term political agenda, we will all pay a much harsher price in the long term. This all about leadership. We are all required to be leaders. Our parliamentary system has relied on people behaving with honour and according to respected conventions. When a strand of political thinking does not respect the rules and does not think that constitutional road blocks are anything other than something to be driven around, the weaknesses in our current system become all too apparent. Over time, democracy will be eroded until we end up in a place where no authority is respected, no rules matter and nobody believes anything we say any more.

It will not have escaped Members’ notice that deepfake videos are becoming more commonplace. We face a huge challenge as a Parliament and a country to maintain trust in the face of that and the cesspit of social media. We need to put in the hard yards to ensure that people can believe the words that come out of our mouths—that they are ours, and true to our values and principles—and that honour still matters in this place. Attacking the institutions that uphold the veracity of what is said in here is causing an additional problem that we could do without. By God, we have enough challenges as a country without making it harder for ourselves by attacking each other over what we believe is a question of integrity.

We can do better. We can disagree without being disagreeable. Parliament should be the beacon of fair play, and an example for others both in this country and abroad of how democracy can work, how it can be a good thing and how it can change lives for the better. Despite our differences, we are not always so bound up in our own tribal disputes that we cannot agree what the truth is and, most importantly, that the truth always matters.