Standards

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Let me first say to the Leader of the House that we did point out the issues about Members of the House of Lords not having constituents and that a suspension from this House meant a suspension of pensions and salaries as well. The reason we used the analogy in this case is that a Member of the other place was caught by the same sting, for want of a better expression, and we therefore thought it right and proper that we ought to look at it.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to set out why the Committee on Standards considered that Mr Mercer’s actions merited, as we have heard, the longest suspension since 1947, with only one exception, which, as Members will know, ended up in the criminal courts with a conviction.

The House is a place for policy debate, which happens formally in the Chamber and informally outside it. Members do their best to explore different points of view and to establish the underlying facts, and almost every Member works closely with external groups to do so. That is entirely legitimate. The Leader of the House mentioned the Committee’s report on all-party groups. He will see in that report, which we are pleased to be debating next week, that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), stated very clearly in her evidence that lobbying is part of the parliamentary process. Members talk to a lot of people, they listen to a lot of people, and then they make up their minds. The rules allow MPs to have external interests, but they do not permit paid advocacy. It is not acceptable to receive money in return for acting in Parliament or to use your position as an MP to get advantage, either for yourself or another person. That has been against the rules for centuries. Members who do this undermine our democracy. As this case shows, it is not possible to evade the rules simply by paying lip service to them; Members’ actions matter.

I remind the House that this case is not, like many cases that have grabbed the headlines for many years now, a legacy case from the expenses scandal of 2004 to 2009. It is not a legacy—it happened during the lifetime of this Parliament. That puts some of our feelings into perspective. I hope that Members will read and take notice of what we have said.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On legacy cases, was my right hon. Friend surprised to see the chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority quoted recently on the front page of a Sunday newspaper criticising the process, despite the existence of a memorandum of understanding on these matters between this House and IPSA?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Barron]

Yes. That relates to the preceding case the Standards Committee dealt with, which has not been debated in this House. I was very surprised indeed, because we have had a memorandum of understanding with IPSA since 2010. If it is felt that this House should take action against a Member—only this House can do that—the case will initially go to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and then to our Committee, which will produce a report and make recommendations. IPSA has never approached us on such an issue in any of the past four years. If any UK organisation knows about Members’ expenses post 2009-10, it is IPSA, so I was not particularly happy about that.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the all-party groups, so many of which have secretariats from outside this place, are the next big scandal waiting to happen, and that the only way to clean up the situation is for Members themselves to take responsibility for the groups by funding them and, if they care about the issues so much, using their own resources to make sure the process is clean? The Mercer case could be the first of many, if we are not careful.

[Kevin Barron]

The Standards Committee did not know that this would come up when we started looking at all-party groups. The right and proper time to discuss those matters will be during next Tuesday’s debate.

The Committee on Standards has been critical of media stings in the past, but the case under discussion was not one in which a Member was misrepresented or had made a single error. It was a sustained course of conduct, not an ill-advised response to a single “fishing” incident.

There has been some confusion over the respective roles of the Committee and the commissioner. The commissioner is a finder of fact. She investigates and presents her findings to the Committee, and sometimes those findings include advice on the interpretation of the rules. The Committee entirely agreed with the commissioner’s conclusion that Mr Mercer’s actions had inflicted significant reputational damage on the House and its Members. The commissioner does not have a role in recommending a penalty. It is for the Committee to decide on the recommended penalty, and MPs and lay members play a full part in that discussion.

In this case, the Committee took into account the gravity of the offence and the penalties given in similar cases in the past. In fact, there are very few similar cases, and in most of them the Members concerned were no longer in Parliament by the time the Committee’s investigations were over. There is very little we can do about ex-Members.

As our minutes show, the Committee seriously considered an even heavier penalty than the one on which we eventually agreed. It is disappointing when colleagues say that the Committee overturned the views of the independent Commissioner for Standards and suggest that there are fundamental disagreements between the Committee and the commissioner, because that is not the case. Clearly, no system is beyond improvement. Indeed, the Committee will itself hold an inquiry into how the House’s disciplinary process could be improved, and the commissioner will contribute to that process as fully as possible. However, public confidence is not helped when Members of Parliament attack the integrity of the system rather than try to understand the Committee’s work, or when they claim that the Committee has overturned the commissioner’s findings, without appreciating the complexities of individual cases.

I do not want to go into this in great detail, but on 8 April my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who sadly is not in his place, asked an urgent question and said that the Committee’s proceedings should be open

“so that people can see on what basis the Committee overturns the views of the independent Commissioner for Standards”. —[Official Report, 8 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 124.]

There are three pages in that report that clearly explain our decision in relation to that of the commissioner. I advise Members of the House to read our Committee’s proceedings before dashing to the media to grab a few headlines.

I would have more sympathy with Members’ calls for reform to increase public trust if the proposals of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, made in December 2012, to update the code of conduct and the guide to the rules had been debated in the House. We are still waiting for that to happen.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am probably interrupting the Chair of the Standards Committee to make a different point, but on public confidence, why did Mr Mercer hear about the contents of his report before it was published from journalists briefed by people who were party to the report? Is that not a breach of privilege that the right hon. Gentleman should take very seriously?

[Kevin Barron]

We are undertaking a form of inquiry into what happened and this is all I can say at the moment, but it looks as though what was in the media came out before the decision had actually been taken. We may make a further report to the House at some stage if we feel that it is necessary. However, I have no concerns about that. The integrity of the Committee stands good. We take decisions not on the basis of party politics, but on the basis of the commissioner’s memorandum, the precedents of actions we have taken in the past and what is presented to us. What happened was unhelpful, but it may have been based on pure speculation about this case. As has been said, there are other cases, one of which—in the other place—is directly related to this media sting.

Finally, if any Member has issues about a report, its coverage in the media or anything else, they can talk to me or any Committee member. We hold no party political proceedings on such matters. We are trying to get this place beyond what came to light in 2009, and it would be most helpful if all Members kept that in mind when talking about Standards Committee reports. I hope that the House will accept this report.