Standards and Privileges

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Before I turn to the three former Members who are the subject of the motion, I wish to make a few remarks about the behaviour of the people who duped them. They would no doubt argue that they have served the public interest, but they were also taking advantage of the need of retiring MPs in the run-up to a general election to provide for their future employment. They dangled the bait in front of our former colleagues and unfortunately some of them took it. If that was not entrapment, it was something close to it, and although I do not seek to excuse the conduct of those three former Members, I think the whole House will feel some sympathy for them because of the way they were deceived.

Three former Members—Sir John Butterfill, Patricia Hewitt and Adam Ingram—were cleared by the commissioner and the Committee that I chair of any breach of the rules. Whatever we may feel about the poor judgment they showed in agreeing to take part in the bogus interviews, and however ill-judged some of the remarks made in the interviews may have been, they did not break the rules and the Committee has therefore made no recommendations about them.

The remaining three former Members did break the rules, and the Committee has recommended sanctions accordingly. I will deal with each of them in turn, because although they were all part of the same deception practised by the media, their cases are different in important respects.

Stephen Byers has made a full and I would say gracious apology. He recognises that he made claims to the bogus interviewer that were untrue, and it is evident that he deeply regrets the damage he has caused not only to his reputation but to the reputation of the House. I do not dispute the genuineness of his apology, but unfortunately the seriousness of his offence means that saying sorry is not enough. That is why the Committee has recommended that Mr Byers’s entitlement to a parliamentary pass should be suspended for two years.

The Committee also found that Geoff Hoon committed a particularly serious breach of the code which, like that of Mr Byers, brought the House and its Members generally into disrepute. As those who have read the Committee’s report and the evidence will know, Mr Hoon has not accepted this conclusion.

He argued that the code of conduct should not apply because he was discussing his private life and what he might do after he had left the House. The Committee did not accept that argument. Mr Hoon was a Member of Parliament when he attended the bogus interview, and he talked in the interview about information that he had been given while he was a Member of Parliament, so the code applied.

Secondly, Mr Hoon suggested that the meaning of what he had said to the bogus interviewer had been misinterpreted. It seemed to come down to whether he had said “this” or “it”, or perhaps neither. Some of us refreshed our memory of what he said by watching a recording of the “Dispatches” programme, and he clearly said “this”. Ultimately, however, it is not so much about the exact words that he used as about the impression that he was giving. The Committee concluded that Mr Hoon was giving the clear impression that he could brief paying clients about defence policy on the basis of his inside knowledge. That is, as we said in our report, a particularly serious breach of the code, because it brings the House and its Members into disrepute. Unlike Mr Byers, Mr Hoon has neither accepted that he breached the code nor apologised. The Committee has therefore recommended that Mr Hoon’s entitlement to a parliamentary pass should be suspended for five years. Hopefully, the apology will ensue.

The Committee found that in Richard Caborn’s case there were several minor breaches of the rules in relation to his failure to declare an interest when arranging or taking part in functions in the House. They were most likely due to carelessness on Mr Caborn’s part; there is no evidence that he deliberately set out to break the rules. Mr Caborn accepts that that was the case, and he has apologised unreservedly for those breaches.

The Committee found that Mr Caborn committed a further breach when he failed to declare a financial interest in the course of a meeting with a senior NHS official at which a proposal was raised which might have benefited the members of an organisation for which he was a paid consultant. In our judgment and that of the commissioner, that breach was also due to carelessness. There is no evidence of intent on Mr Caborn’s part. The commissioner therefore described it in his memorandum to us as “less serious” than the breaches committed by Mr Byers and Mr Hoon, but that does not mean that it was not a serious breach. It was a breach both of the rules on declaration of interests and of paragraph 12 of the code of conduct, which covers all members.

The Committee took the view that, because that was a less serious breach than those committed by the other former Members, a less severe sanction was appropriate. We could have recommended just an apology, but Mr Caborn had written to us stating that he did not accept that he should have declared his interest and did not accept that he had breached the rules. As we pointed out in our report, we could have invited the House to summon Mr Caborn to the Bar to apologise in person, but if he did not accept that he had breached the rules, it was not clear what that would achieve. We therefore agreed that Mr Caborn should also lose his privileged rights of access, and, because his was a less serious case than the others, we set the tariff at six months.

Mr Caborn wrote to me on 12 December seeking a meeting with the Committee. I consulted my colleagues on the Committee, who agreed to offer him an opportunity to give oral evidence at its meeting on 14 December. We had, of course, invited Mr Caborn and the others to give oral evidence before we produced our report, but he had declined that initial invitation. We would not normally agree to a request to give evidence after the publication of a report, but in this case we felt that it was right to grant Mr Caborn’s request to have his say, because, as a former Member, he was unable to speak in today’s debate. The transcript of his evidence, and his letter to me of 12 December, are in the Vote Office, and I hope that Members have had an opportunity to read them.

I do not propose to go through Mr Caborn’s evidence in detail, but this is the nub of it. First, we are finding against him on the basis of a rule that we ourselves say is insufficiently clear and needs reviewing. Secondly, he is being treated in the same way as those who have committed particularly serious breaches of the code of conduct.

The Committee says that the rules on lobbying need to be reviewed. The 1974 resolution refers to

“transactions or communications...with Ministers or servants of the Crown”;

the guide to the rules refers to

“correspondence and meetings with Ministers and public officials”

and the code of conduct, article 12, refers to

“any activities...with Ministers, Members and officials.”

That all needs to be brought together and tidied up, but, as the Committee’s report states:

“Mr Caborn should have had greater regard to the purpose of the rule”.

The purpose of the rule is quite clear: it is to ensure that Members are transparent in their dealings with people who might be in a position to influence public policy or the spending of public money. Mr Caborn tried in his evidence to tie the rule very tightly to people who are in a position to influence legislation, but such a narrow interpretation is not one that most of us would recognise. To sum up: yes, the rules need reviewing and clarifying, but the purpose of the rules is clear and the evidence that Mr Caborn breached the rules is, in my Committee’s view, also clear.

Turning to the Committee’s recommendation, I have already explained that we felt that a sanction was appropriate. If Mr Caborn had apologised up front, that might have been enough, depending on what he said, but the fact is that, until I received a letter from him this morning, Mr Caborn did not accept that he had breached the code and had not apologised. In his letter today, Mr Caborn writes that the Committee has “given a new interpretation” of the rules and set a new precedent. I do not accept that, but in his letter he continues:

“Your Committee have come to its conclusion which I accept and in respect to the House, apologise.”

I welcome this apology, although I am disappointed that it has come so late in the day.

An apology was sought and has been given, but that still leaves the House with a decision to take on what sanction should apply. We could, as I said earlier, have recommended that Mr Caborn be summoned to the Bar of the House for a formal reprimand. That would have been humiliating for him, and I am not sure that it would have been all that great for the House. The media would have loved it, and the pictures no doubt would have been broadcast around the world, but it would have been a bit like a public flogging, and we did not think that right or appropriate, so we did not go there.

Given that Mr Caborn is a former Member, the only real option that the House is left with is to take away his pass. He told us that losing his former Member’s pass is just like being suspended from the service of the House. With respect, it is not. A serving Member who is suspended loses his or her pay and expenses for the period of suspension and is excluded from the precincts of Parliament. All that Mr Caborn will lose is his ability to enter the building without going through the visitors’ entrance and his access to certain facilities, such as the Strangers Bar. He can still come here as a member of the public. Some might say that losing those privileges for a period of just six months is a very light punishment. Well, it is intended to be light, because we recognised that Mr Caborn did not intend to breach the rules or to bring the House or its Members generally into disrepute. In that respect, his case is different from the other two.

In the view of the Committee, its recommendations in respect of those three former Members are regrettable but necessary. They are also proportionate. Once the period of suspension of the former Members’ privileged rights of access is over, and assuming an apology has been made, they will be free to re-apply for their passes. It is painful to have to take such action against former colleagues, but by agreeing to the Committee’s proposals today, the House will send an important signal that it does not tolerate breaches of its rules.