Standards and Privileges

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Commons Chamber

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

I will be very brief. The Committee’s report sets out the circumstances of the case clearly. The inquiry related to claims made between 2005 and 2008 under the old expenses system. I cannot be certain that this is the last of the expenses scandal, but I hope that it is.

On a personal note, I have known Denis MacShane since he was first selected to contest a by-election in Rotherham in 1994. I have worked with him as one of the three MPs in the borough since then and know he has always had the interests of his constituents, and the wider Rotherham borough, at heart. The events of the last three years will not totally overshadow my memory of the work that Denis has done in Rotherham.

The Committee, however, was united in its finding that this was the gravest case that has ever come before it. The absolute sums were not the issue; it was the manner in which they were claimed, the flagrant disregard for the rules of the House, and the failure to co-operate with the commissioner’s investigation that most concerned the Committee. We judged that to be a breach of the code of conduct. There may have been suggestions that hon. Members are above the criminal law. That is not true, and that needs to be addressed.

The commissioner’s investigations are into possible breaches of the code of conduct, not criminal matters. The procedures are fair, but the commissioner is not conducting a criminal investigation and neither is the Committee. As we said in the report:

“The decision as to whether conduct is criminal and as to whether proceedings should be brought is one for the police and the CPS.”

In 2008, the Committee, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the police agreed that criminal investigations should take precedence over the House’s disciplinary proceedings. For that reason, we agreed in 2010 that the case should be referred to the police, and the commissioner referred it. After a long investigation, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to proceed. They doubtless considered that decision very carefully. They now have our report and may consider it again. That is their decision, not ours.

If our report contains new material, the police can use it to guide their investigations. Receipts, invoices and claims are not privileged, and do not become so simply because they are reproduced in a parliamentary report. It is true that the correspondence between the commissioner and those he investigates could not be used in court proceedings without impeaching and questioning proceedings in Parliament. It is our view that that would be a breach of article 9 of the Bill of Rights. In reality, however, that correspondence is likely to be inadmissible anyway. There are strict legal safeguards about the gathering and use of evidence in criminal proceedings. The House’s disciplinary procedures are scrupulously fair, but they are disciplinary processes, not criminal investigations. It would be most unwise of the House to speculate on the criminality of an hon. Member’s conduct.

The Committee has given its judgment on breaches of the code, and the House is invited to agree. Whether or not conduct such as that described in our report is criminal, it is clear that we will not tolerate it. I welcome that, and I hope that the House agrees.

Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

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

I also support the motion to appoint Kathryn Hudson as the next Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. As Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee, I was involved in the appointment process both at interview stage and in briefing the Commission. We were extremely fortunate in having two highly able and suitable candidates, of whom Kathryn Hudson was one. I believe her career gives her the investigative skills and, perhaps even more importantly, the sense of perspective required. I am therefore delighted to put my name to the motion approving her appointment.

I also want to pay tribute to the outgoing commissioner, John Lyon. When a similar motion was moved on 15 November 2007, the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) paid tribute to the then outgoing commissioner, Sir Philip Mawer, and it was noted that

“John Lyon will inherit a standards system that is in much finer fettle than that which awaited his predecessor in February 2002.”—[Official Report, 15 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 862.]

As we all know, that improvement was not enough to stop the expenses scandal, which will shape our memories of the previous Parliament. As John Lyon noted in the introduction to his most recent annual report, it has been a “tumultuous five years”.

Over that time, John produced about 60 complaints-related memoranda for the Committee and rectified about 50 cases. The House’s reputation may have taken a battering in the press, but the commissioner’s fairness and integrity meant he never became part of that story.

John also worked hard to improve the system, both in making recommendations for a new code and in smaller changes, such as revising and consolidating information on the procedure for investigations, to make it more useful. His judgment has been very sound. There was some concern that making more information available about complaints under investigation would lead to a media feeding frenzy; in fact, doing that has stopped damaging speculation when people were known to be under investigation.

Investigations into allegations of misconduct are only part of the commissioner’s role. The Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests is part of his office, and the commissioner and the registrar consider matters relating to journalists, Members’ secretaries and research assistants, and all-party groups. They have done a great deal to raise awareness of registration requirements and to keep the way in which the rules work under review.

Over the last five years, the commissioner has had to deal with many investigations, which have been thorough and impartial. While there has been criticism of the Committee and the House for their decisions in some of the cases, I am not aware of any case where the investigation has been plausibly criticised because the commissioner was biased or missed obvious lines of inquiry.

Colleagues have sometimes complained about the length of time particular investigations take, but the commissioner’s willingness to take as long as necessary to investigate a complaint is one of the strengths of the system. Complaints are properly investigated by a truly independent figure, whose conclusions command respect.

Some complaints may well be politically motivated. That is not a reason for dismissing them, however, if they meet the conditions required for investigation. If the commissioner considers there may be grounds for a complaint, it is far better for the Member complained of, and for Parliament as a whole, to have the matter properly investigated than to have to deal with allegations of a whitewash or claims that a complaint was dismissed for political reasons.

The commissioner’s most recent annual report suggests that a corner has been turned. He stated:

“Of the 12 complaints I resolved this year, almost 60% were about conduct in previous Parliaments. All of those concerning conduct in this Parliament related to parliamentary matters such as registration, declaration and the use of stationery, none of which suggested that those Members had exploited the House for any private or personal benefit.

Nevertheless, the reputation of the House remains at risk. Trust once lost will take time and a consistent and continued record of maintaining high standards of conduct before it can be restored. That is true of any national institution. It is particularly true of the House. As the expenses crisis showed, unless apparently minor breaches of the rules of conduct are challenged and remedied, they can all too easily become endemic and inflamed and so seriously damage the reputation of the House”.

When we come here, as elected Members, we want to concentrate on what we were elected to do: serve our constituents and work in the national interest. We do not stand for election so that we can fill in forms about registration or respond to the commissioner’s letters. I acknowledge that all that can appear an irritating distraction from more urgent duties or even a diversion of effort into unnecessary bureaucracy. However, the last Parliament should have taught us that we cannot afford to get this wrong, individually or collectively. The rules in the code of conduct are not arbitrary. We agree them as Members of this House, and we should uphold them and be seen to uphold them. For the system to be effective, we need a strong, fair commissioner, whose own integrity is beyond doubt. We have been fortunate to have that in the previous commissioners, and I look forward to the new commissioner continuing that tradition.

Privilege

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Commons Chamber

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

If the House decides to refer this matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, we will ensure that all our processes are rigorously fair and impartial. It is likely that there will be widespread speculation before we are in a position to say more about the Committee’s plans, but we will not be rushing into making any hasty decisions and will consider our actions carefully, thoughtfully, and with professional advice from the appropriate sources.

At its meeting this morning, the Committee agreed that none of its members would discuss this matter outside the Committee, whether with colleagues or other third parties. I trust that Members and others will respect the Committee’s decision, and will not try to engage Committee members in discussions about this inquiry.

Code of Conduct

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move motion 5.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this we shall discuss the following: Amendment (a) to motion 5 and motion 6 on all-party groups.

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you rightly say, there are two motions on the Order Paper in my name. The first is the more important: it invites the House to approve a revised code of conduct. The House of Commons has long had resolutions covering conduct, but the idea of a code of conduct is relatively recent. It was not until 1995 that the House endorsed the principle of such a code. Since then, the code has been revised, in 2002 and in 2005. This is only the fourth version of the code since the first version was approved in 1996.

In approving the code of conduct today, the House will be setting the framework for the rules that will, I hope, last for the remainder of this Parliament and into the next. It is important to be clear about what the code is for. It is not a rule book that sets out precise instructions about what is and is not permissible in each case. As the commissioner has set out in a memorandum attached to our report, it is a document that establishes

“broad high-level principles in relation to the main areas of a Member’s conduct”

and

“provides a high-level statement of the specific rules to which Members will be held to account”.

All those who responded to the commissioner’s consultation supported this approach. Relying on detailed rules designed to meet every eventuality creates the risk that people will be encouraged to game the system. We have only to look at the creativity of tax avoidance schemes to see that. The code has a broader function: it helps us to ensure that we behave in a way that is consistent with the seven principles of public life—the Nolan principles, which are part of the code and which underpin its provisions. Where appropriate, the code is supplemented by more detailed statements of some of the rules, such as the guide to the rules, and the rules on the use of House facilities, but Members have ultimate responsibility for ensuring that they abide by the principles of the code.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has the task of reviewing the code and making recommendations to the Committee. In 2002, the Committee on Standards in Public Life recommended that this should be done once in each Parliament. Following the expenses scandal, we judged it better to defer a review of the code in the last Parliament, in order to give Members of the new Parliament an opportunity to review it in the light of experience.

The commissioner’s memorandum to the Committee sets out all the changes to the code clearly, and explains the reasoning behind each of them. Our report focuses on all the provisions that we consider most significant. Broadly speaking, the commissioner’s proposals have the effect of making the code clearer and removing some repetitions and infelicities. The most significant proposed change is in paragraph 2 of the code. The current code

“does not seek to regulate what Members do in their purely private and personal lives”,

but it does extend to their wider public lives. Our proposal is that the code will no longer apply to Members’ wider public lives. As the commissioner points out, Members’ behaviour in their wider public life will be policed by other regulatory bodies, and there will be no need for the House to intervene.

There is an important proviso to the exclusion from the code of private and personal lives or wider public life. Those areas should be excluded unless

“such conduct significantly damages the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole or of its Members generally.”

That is not an entirely new provision. Paragraph 15 of the present code stipulates that Members should

“never undertake any action which would bring the House of Commons, or its Members generally, into disrepute.”

Personal life is currently excluded from the code, but a Member’s wider public life is not. The code will extend only to conduct which

“significantly damages the reputation and integrity of the Commons as a whole or of its Members generally”.

That is a very high hurdle indeed.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the amendment, which also stands in my name would prevent the commissioner from becoming involved in issues that were entirely private, while leaving scope for the investigation of breaches in which a personal matter crossed over into a political matter?

[Mr Barron]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. I was about to move on to talk about the amendment, and we can look at that question in a moment.

The amendment is also in the name of the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), and I am sure that he will explain it later in the debate. It raises significant questions. As I understand it, the amendment would mean that matters relating to a Member’s private and personal life which damaged the reputation and integrity of the House or of Members generally would remain within the scope of the code, but that the commissioner would be precluded from investigating complaints about such matters.

That raises a number of difficult questions. How would the boundaries of private and personal lives be defined? Would a matter remain private and personal if, for example, it had led to criminal behaviour or a failure to comply with civil obligations? Does something remain purely private and personal when it has been running all over the press and the internet for six or seven days? What is an investigation? Would the commissioner be precluded from giving a Member the chance to put his or her side of the story in private, rather than before the Committee as a whole? If the commissioner were unable to investigate extreme cases involving a Member’s personal and private life, would the Committee be expected to investigate them? If so, the Member’s safeguards would be reduced, as the Committee would investigate and pronounce sentence. I would feel uncomfortable about that. We are an adjudication Committee; we do not carry out investigations. The amendment seems to suggest that we might do so, however.

I understand colleagues’ fears that complaints could flood in about private lives, and that the commissioner might have to investigate matters that were properly no one’s business but that of the Member concerned. That is not what is intended. The House should have trust in the commissioner, in the Committee and in itself. Serious cases of a fall in standards should be decided on the Floor of the House, and not by the commissioner or by the Committee.

I am confident that the commissioner will not investigate purely private matters. If some future commissioner did so, I am confident that the Committee would take a robust approach, and that any serious sanction recommended by the Committee would come to the House, which would decide whether it was merited. I ask Members to have faith that all those involved, including the House, would use common sense if these measures were ever applied. I, for one, hope that they never will be.

The new provision is intended only for extreme circumstances, described by the commissioner as those in which a Member’s conduct in certain extremely limited circumstances is so serious and so blatant that it causes significant damage to the reputation of the House. In my judgment, it would be even more damaging to the reputation of the House and to the public’s confidence in the code of conduct—which is one of its key purposes—if the House were unable to take action to express its disapproval and uphold its standards in such circumstances.

[Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give an example of something “purely private and personal” that he believes would fall within the scope as he has just defined it?

[Mr Barron]

Yes. Let us say a Member had committed fraud, not against the public purse—

[Mr Brady]

rose—

[Mr Barron]

This is a hypothetical example, but let me carry on with it. Let us say that a Member committed fraud, not against the public purse but against a family member, and it was argued that this was a purely personal matter. Let us say that this Member was sentenced in a criminal court for six months; would that not be a matter for this House?

[Mr Brady]

I am grateful—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brady]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again. He has answered my question in one sense, in that the only example he has adduced is one that is patently not “purely private and personal”, but criminal. By definition, then, it would not fall within the scope of the amendment.

[Mr Barron]

I have to say that I am not too sure about that, as I do not know the intent behind the amendment, which does not make things as clear as the change in the code does. It could be argued on a point of law that the action taken was not a matter for Parliament because it was a personal action. It might be a criminal action—

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Barron]

Wait. Under the circumstances I described, when someone was sentenced to six months in jail, according to the law and according to the current rules of this House, that individual concerned—obviously, I hope this never happens—would remain a Member because we do not have the legal provisions to get rid of him at present. That is something that we need to consider.

[Mr Cash]

We are looking at paragraph 15 of the current code of conduct and paragraph 16 of the amended code of conduct. It is curious that the wording has been changed. Paragraph 15, which is where we are at the moment and seems to me to be sensible, says:

“Members shall at all times conduct themselves in a manner which will tend to maintain and strengthen the public’s trust”—

that is good—

“and confidence in the integrity of Parliament and never undertake any action which would bring the House of Commons, or its Members generally, into disrepute.”

The key is “into disrepute”, and it is well known; everyone understands it. Now, for some reason—I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would be good enough to explain it—paragraph 16 says simply:

“Members shall never undertake any action which would cause significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole, or of its Members generally”,

but leaves out the whole question of disrepute. What is the difference and why the change?

[Mr Barron]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. First, interventions should be brief. Secondly, I can see that many Members have the code of conduct with them, so the hon. Gentleman could have simply referred to the two paragraphs and the pertinent words in them.

[Mr Barron]

I will come back to that, if I may, but I want to carry on citing what the commissioner said in the memorandum, which the Committee accepted. He continued:

“But the conduct would need to be so serious and so blatant as to make it imperative that the House be given the opportunity to consider the damage done to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole or of its Members generally.”

The code does not seek to judge the behaviour as right or wrong—only the effect it has on the reputation and standing of the House. In my view, that is a hugely important thing to defend in our democracy, particularly after the events of the last four years.

Let me deal with other issues that we need to look at. The Government are currently consulting on proposals to allow the House to decide whether or not to permit the opening of a recall petition in cases where the House considers a Member’s conduct warrants it. Does that mean purely in respect of their public life, or does it mean in their private or personal life as well? I think that we stray into these issues with the amendment, which is why I think the House would be better to stand back from it and have a look at things in the round at a later stage. Without a provision such as the one I am proposing, the House risks being either ineffectual, because the code does not allow it to deal with behaviour that everyone agrees is reprehensible, or arbitrary because it takes action even though such behaviour is not covered by the code. That seems to be the intention. The alternative is that we end up relying on legal semantics to decide whether something is still “purely personal and private”, which is absolutely not how the code should operate.

As our report says, this is a provision for extreme circumstances. It does not invite the Committee or the House to judge a Member’s purely private and personal relationships and will not be used to do so. This is not to turn the House into a moral arbiter, but to allow it to protect the integrity of Parliament. It is a judgment on the effect of a Member’s conduct on that vital objective, not a judgment on the Member’s morals.

I cannot support the amendment, but I can suggest an alternative, more appropriate, way forward. The commissioner consults the Committee on certain matters. For example, if someone is referred to the police because the commissioner is concerned about a police investigation that might have implications for the criminal law, the commissioner comes to the Committee and provides evidence to show why the referral should take place. We are then asked either to agree it or reject it. Paragraph 104 of the guide to the rules also makes it clear that the Committee expects to be consulted before accepting an investigation of a complaint against a former Member, a complaint that goes back more than seven years, or one where a member has asked the commissioner to investigate allegations without being the subject of a specific complaint. With a self-referral, the commissioner has to come before the Committee and ask our permission for this to take place. The commissioner is currently consulting on revisions to the guide to the rules.

Let me say to the House and to those who tabled the amendment that I would be happy to ask the Committee to consider adding consideration of complaints relating to a Member’s private and personal life to the category of matters for which the commissioner should not accept investigation without first consulting the Committee.

[Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman would want to point out that the commissioner has tried in the new version to separate what are aspirations for us all to behave well from things that we really should not do. If my hon. Friend were to look at page 42 of the review of the code, he would see that paragraph 15 is now different because of the separation in part 2 of certain aspirational requirements of the code from those things that we really must not do, which appear in the later parts of the code. It is largely a stylistic matter. I wondered whether the right hon. Gentleman might want to make that point.

[Mr Barron]

Well, I thank the hon. Gentleman for the speech. He is a hard-working member of the Committee, as well as a member of other Committees that look into standards in public life. He is well worth listening to.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

I apologise for not being in my place for the start of the debate; I was rather taken aback by the speed of previous proceedings. Let me try to put it this way. Building on what the right hon. Gentleman said a few moments ago, would he accept that the purpose of paragraph 16A is to create a presumption against investigation of private life unless the Committee determines in its judgment that such an investigation should take place?

[Mr Barron]

Yes, I understand that point, but I fear that the intention could be misinterpreted. I fully understand the issue that the right hon. and learned Gentleman raises, and I hope that the hon. Member for Broxbourne will tell us about the amendment in more detail. If it is withdrawn, it will be perfectly possible to return to the issue when the revised guide to the rules comes before us in the not-too-distant future. That revision to the guide will be more detailed than what appears in the current three-page code of conduct, which is out for consultation. If the Committee itself has not proposed that the commission should consult before opening an inquiry into personal and private matters, the House could insert such a provision, but I feel that the provision would be more helpful in the guidance than in a code of conduct that tends to contradict elements of it.

The other important clarification is the introduction of a new paragraph 15 making it clear that Members are personally responsible for the extent to which their use of expenses and allowances accords with the rules. Clearly there is nothing new in that. The current Members’ handbook warns Members that the facilities and services of the House are provided to assist Members in their parliamentary work and should be used appropriately.

Defining parliamentary purposes is, of course, not easy. Members’ roles are various, and we are, with very rare exceptions, elected as party candidates and uphold our parties in Parliament. That is very different from using public funding for party campaigning, or to support party organisations. Having considered the definition extremely carefully, the Committee recommends that the rules make it clear that public money should not be used to

“confer undue advantage on a political organisation”.

Most of the other changes consist of clarifications and re-ordering to make the code more coherent. One change that has attracted some comment is the proposal to remove paragraph 12 of the code, which refers to the need to be open and frank with Ministers, Members and officials. We suggest that it should be included in a new paragraph 13, which would also cover the declaration and registration of interests in the House. That would make it clear that Members should

“always be open and frank in drawing attention to any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its House or its Committees, and in any communications with Ministers, Members, public officials or public office holders.”

That is a clarification rather than a substantive change. Its roots lie in one of the more painful cases that the Committee has had to consider: the so-called Lobbygate, in which Members were drawn into discussing jobs that they might undertake after they had left the House. One of the cases arising from that involved the failure of my good friend Mr Richard Caborn to declare an interest in a meeting with the chairman of a health authority. At the time, it was argued that the rules governing declaration did not cover such cases, as the person concerned was not a Minister or a civil servant. Our judgment was that the spirit of the rules was clear: their purpose was to ensure that Members were transparent in their dealings with people who might be in a position to influence public policy or the spending of public money. However, we believed that the rules could be better expressed, and these changes achieve that.

One of the great sadnesses involved in dealing with standards cases is that we must deal with what comes before us. The Committee cannot simply refuse to look into a matter because it was a case of entrapment or a single transgression in a distinguished career, and there are a limited number of sanctions that it can recommend to the House. It is a mark of the respect and affection in which Richard Caborn is held that extremely senior people have asked the Committee to reconsider his case. We have considered the matter carefully on more than one occasion, but ultimately we decided that we had considered the rules carefully at the time of our original finding.

It may help, however, if I discuss some of the matters that were set out clearly in the original report and debate. The commissioner and the Committee agreed that the breach of the rules was inadvertent. As I said at the time, the penalty that we proposed was

“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.”

An inadvertent slip should not obscure Mr Caborn’s long record of distinguished public service, and I hope that it does not do so.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

As one of those who made representations to my right hon. Friend on behalf of my former colleague the then Member of Parliament for Sheffield, Central, I welcome the tenor and nature of his speech. Does he agree that in future, and specifically in the guidance that is to be offered, there should be absolute transparency about the operation of the Committee and about basic rules of fairness? For instance, should the guidance not make clear what is a constituency matter and what is not? Richard Caborn has rightly argued that that was a problem in the interpretation of the previous rule.

[Mr Barron]

I do not want to go into any great detail, but the changes in the code are intended to do precisely that. They are intended to clarify areas so that they are not open to interpretation—or, some would argue, misinterpretation—in years to come.

The code does not need radical revision, but it does need to evolve to meet the changing expectations and circumstances of not just the House of Commons but the public outside, and, as I have said, it needs to be as clear as possible. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the commissioner for his thorough consideration of the code and the work that he has done to produce a clearer, more coherent document, which I commend to the House. I hope that those who tabled the amendment will reconsider their position, but we will be able to revisit it. The guidance will reassure the House that no commissioner will be able to forage into areas that would be unfair on Members of Parliament, and I hope that that will be acknowledged.

I also hope that the second motion will prove entirely uncontroversial. It introduces an additional register to record the interests of those who provide secretariats for all-party groups. It will deal with an anomaly between the registration requirements for staff of all-party groups and those for Members’ staff. It will make the arrangements easier to administer, and will reduce the risk that, owing purely to inadvertence, interests will not be registered. The proposal is the result of a paper from the Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests, and the Committee is grateful to her for it. The staff of all-party groups are currently required to register only income from employment, whereas secretaries and research assistants are also required to register gifts, benefits and hospitality. The motion proposes that the registration requirements should be the same for both groups.

The motion also proposes the transferring of the requirement to register to the staff member from the Member who is the registered contact for the all-party group, who may not be closely involved in the group’s administration. That would make it easier to ensure that the registration requirements are complied with, as the relevant forms can be issued with pass applications, and it will not be necessary for an officer of the group to take such action. As Members may know, the Speakers of the two Houses have set up a bicameral working group to consider all-party groups. I am a member of it, as are others who are in the Chamber this evening. There may be more changes to come, but there is no need for us to delay this change.

I trust that the House will approve my modest proposal to streamline and tighten the registration requirements for staff of all-party groups. Indeed, I hope that it will agree to both motions. I look forward to ending any misgivings relating to one of the reports at a later stage in our proceedings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barron]

With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker, before the amendment is pressed, I ask Members to remember my offer to look at the code of conduct and ensure that any commissioner—this current one or any in the future—would have to come to the House before considering any of the issues referred to in the amendment.

The current code states in paragraph 15:

“Members shall at all times conduct themselves in a manner which will tend to maintain and strengthen the public’s trust and confidence in the integrity of Parliament and never undertake any action which would bring the House of Commons, or its Members generally, into disrepute.”

There is no mention in that paragraph of personal and private lives, or, indeed, of public lives, although they are mentioned in other parts of the code. The provision has never been enacted in such a way and I fear that if the House goes down the route of accepting that people’s personal and private lives are not covered by the code of conduct, that will be a step back. It seems to me that the House would be better advised to consider the genuine proposals that anybody wanting to look into someone’s private and personal life would have to come to the Committee to do so. This House should have confidence in its Members who sit on Committees and in the fact that we have an independent commissioner whom we appoint, whose terms and conditions we set and who is independent of us. It should have confidence in a Select Committee on Standards and Privileges that operates in a non-party political way that was unanimous in saying we should accept the paper before us. We certainly are not unanimous in accepting the amendment. The House should have confidence in itself that if the commissioner or the Committee ever did something wholly wrong, the House could reject that.

Let me finish by saying to hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) on the Front Bench, who mentioned morals, that this is not about morals. I can tell the House, as the Chairman of the Committee, that if the commissioner came to me with a report about morals I would go around the Committee first before I would discuss the memorandum before us. It is not something we should do or that would be acceptable to Parliament or the general public. However, there are circumstances and occasions on which Members have gone overboard but have not been covered by the code. I genuinely think it would be wrong for us to agree to the amendment today. We can look at the guidance and these issues more widely if need be, but what is proposed would be a backward step. If the amendment is accepted the code will be weaker than the code I have in my hand. I genuinely think we should not do that.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Mr Walker, do you intend to press this to a vote?

Committee on Standards and Committee of Privileges

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

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

I welcome this motion standing in the name of the Leader of the House; indeed, as Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee, I appended my name to it. As he said, the Committee has long called for lay members, and I personally have no doubt that having them will be of worth.

The House has accepted that principle. Indeed, in the debate back in December, I said that for a number of years I had been a lay member of the General Medical Council and that I felt that I had brought some experience to the table—albeit not experience of clinical decision making, but experience that doctors and others could consider in sitting in judgment on their fellow professionals and in assessing whether their decisions were the right ones.

In an ideal world, the Committee would have liked lay members to have had full voting rights and single, non-renewable terms to guard their independence, very much as the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has. He has five years and that is it; there is no reappointment. As a consequence, there is no way that he might be looking for any preferment for a second term, from this House or anybody within it. However, we are not in an ideal world. There are significant constitutional barriers and uncertainties about giving lay members full voting rights, and the Leader of the House has made the Government’s position on fixed terms clear. However, this motion still represents a significant step towards ensuring that the House’s disciplinary processes are fair and seen to be fair, and that we benefit from outside experience and expertise. I welcome the change to Standing Orders wholeheartedly.

As for the other matters that have been discussed—how the Committee will be split up, the timing, the membership of both Committees, and everything else—these are matters for the House. However, what we are doing is the right thing for the House to do and embodies the right principle for us to be establishing, so that people outside this place can have confidence that when we sit in judgment over our peers, people are not looking after the interests of fellow professionals—if that is indeed what we are—but passing right and proper judgment on someone who may have breached the rules.

Ministerial Statements

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who made a number of excellent points. However, it is unfortunate that, in effect, only one Opposition Back Bencher is present for the debate—two if we count the hon. Gentleman, who today is a quasi-Back Bencher.

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

There are three of us, in fact.

[Mr Knight]

I see that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) is sitting in the far corner of the Chamber. On Thursday he told me he did not think he could be present for the debate. Perhaps that was why I did not notice him, but I am delighted that he is in his place for this important debate.

As has been said, the Procedure Committee was asked to undertake an inquiry by the House, which unanimously agreed to a motion inviting the Committee to develop a protocol for the release of information by Ministers. This was the first debate scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee last year.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) has pointed out, the current position is that the ministerial code sets out the “general principle” governing the release of information by Ministers. It states:

“When Parliament is in session”—

as I said in an intervention, that is widely taken to mean when Parliament is not in recess—

“the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance in Parliament.”

The Procedure Committee published its report earlier this year. It set out three principles underpinning its recommendations: that statements were valued by Back Benchers and that Ministers should be encouraged to make them; that important Government announcements should, indeed, be made to Parliament before they are made elsewhere; and that it is a grave discourtesy to Parliament for information to be released before a statement is made.

The Procedure Committee decided without division that it was neither practical nor desirable to produce a detailed protocol, and recommended that the House agree the following resolution:

“That this House expects Ministers to make all important announcements relating to government policy to Parliament before they are made elsewhere on all occasions when Parliament is sitting, and expects information which forms all or part of such announcements not to be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament.”

The Government responded, agreeing with the Committee that a detailed protocol would not be a good idea, but rejecting the solution proposed by the Committee and instead favouring the status quo.

On enforcement, the Procedure Committee recommended that complaints should be made to the Speaker in the first instance, and that the Speaker should have the power to dismiss trivial complaints and complaints made without basis. The Speaker could rule in cases where a minor breach had occurred. One might envisage a case where the Speaker receives a complaint and deems it to be a minor breach, and decides to allow an urgent question in the light of that complaint. The Procedure Committee did not envisage the Speaker rapping knuckles in all circumstances. There may well be cases where the granting of an urgent question is deemed sufficient. We also took the view that more serious cases should be referred by the Speaker to the Standards and Privileges Committee.

In their response, the Government did not even acknowledge our recommendations relating to the role of the Speaker, but they rejected our recommendation that complaints be referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee and maintained that the current range of sanctions was “adequate”. In our earlier debate, a number of Members, in particular the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is not in his place, discussed what sort of sanctions should be available, over and above what happens now. The Procedure Committee concluded that a recommendation from a Committee of the House that a Minister do come to this House and apologise was a sufficiently serious sanction, and that no new sanctions were required. The Government’s response to that was that our Committee’s recommendations were disproportionately severe, which I find a little odd.

I have looked at the Government’s response in detail, and in my view it is highly unsatisfactory. As I have said, the Government agree with the Procedure Committee that it would not be “practical or desirable” to have a “detailed protocol” trying to cover all eventualities, but they said that they did not support the Committee’s approach that the House should agree a motion in terms very similar to the current position as outlined in the ministerial code. The Government stated:

“It is not clear…what purpose would be served”

by such a motion, in which the current position is simply restated.

The Government had clearly failed to recognise the significance, although it was explained clearly in our report, which was that the House would be taking control of the protocol away from the Government. We are not envisaging setting up double jeopardy; we are saying that it should be the House that should decide—via the process of a complaint going to the Speaker and then, if necessary, to a Committee—whether the protocol had been breached, and not an obviously partial and forgiving Prime Minister, who is currently the arbiter. In saying that, I make no criticism of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, because the natural instinct of any Prime Minister will be to want to defend his or her Ministers—after all, the Prime Minister of the day appoints all Ministers in the first place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Is Mr Kevin Barron not standing?

[Mr Barron]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Then I call Robert Syms.

Standards and Privileges

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

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

I will pick up a couple of points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has just made, but I first wish to say something about the leaks that have occurred. There have been two types of leak in connection with the report. First, from Sunday 8 May onward, there has been a steady trickle of comment on the memorandum of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to the Standards and Privileges Committee, which was, as is customary, sent to the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) for his comments as well as to Committee members and to the Attorney-General, whom Standing Orders make our adviser. My first impression was that that comment could well have been based on informed speculation, but I no longer hold that view, because on Wednesday morning the Committee’s recommendation was leaked to the media. We immediately instigated a leak inquiry, and it is not appropriate to say more at this stage, as that inquiry is now ongoing.

I will pick up two issues raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead. One is the length of time taken. He will see from reading the report that it goes far wider than the allegations that were made against the right hon. Member for Yeovil in the media last May, and I suspect that that was one reason for the time taken. However, I say to my right hon. Friend that the timing is wholly in the hands of the commissioner, who reports to the Committee and publishes a memorandum when he is ready to do so. The evidence that he takes is entirely a matter for him.

The other issue that my right hon. Friend has mentioned concerns the comparison of one case with another. I will mention in my speech the circumstances of this particular case and why we have come to the recommendations before the House. I have not commented on the matter before, because I believe it is for the House to judge, not the media or commentators. The extent of reporting of what the commissioner and the Committee would say, and what it would mean for the right hon. Member for Yeovil, has been unfortunate. It meant that the press have perhaps not looked as carefully as they might have done at what we actually said.

The Committee has been attacked from one side for being too severe and from the other for being too soft. It would be complacent to say that we got it about right, but I wish to set out what the report says and why we said it. First, I urge those who say that the Committee has been too severe—many of them are in this House or in another place—to examine what the Committee actually found and the way in which that compares with other breaches.

From 2006 onwards, the arrangements of the right hon. Member for Yeovil were simply and explicitly against the rules, because he rented from a partner. He has said that he did not regard his landlord as his partner for the purposes of the Green Book. In 2007, he gave his landlord £99,000, which was a free gift but which was put towards the purchase of a London property that the two shared. He also contributed to building work. As the report states:

“Mr Laws had made significant financial contributions to the purchase and upgrading of the property. Such commitments are unusual between landlord and tenant, or even between friends. In consequence he should have had no doubt that he and his landlord were ‘partners’ for the purposes of the Green Book.”

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend will have seen the volume of appendices to the report, which includes evidence from Mr Laws such as a rental agreement, which states at item 5:

“The Lodger will be responsible for any damages or breakages caused by him/her”.

How could the claim of £2,000 for renovation work be covered by that? There is no other reference in any of the agreements to any contribution that the lodger should make to any major renovations of the property.

[Mr Barron]

That is true. The commissioner commented on that claim in his memorandum, and it was taken into account when we came to make the recommendations that are before the House.

The right hon. Member for Yeovil was in breach before the financial contributions that I have described, by wrongly claiming that his main home was in Somerset rather than in London. It is clear that he was not the only Member who designated the wrong property. When the pattern of nights spent at two properties were changing, it would be easy to assume that the main property was the one on which a mortgage was held. If that were the main issue in the period up to 2006, it might easily have been put right, but the problem was that the right hon. Gentleman’s conduct was designed to hide his real circumstances, which formed a pattern with his later breach of the rules.

There has been a great deal of press comment on this case, much of it before the Committee reported. It has been suggested that the right hon. Gentleman saved the public money, and that that makes his conduct all right. It is certainly possible that other, proper arrangements might have been more expensive. Clearly, there could have been substantial claims against the Somerset property, but they were not made, so we cannot know precisely what would have been approved. We must judge the arrangements that were actually in place, not arrangements that might have been made. As the report says:

“Mr Laws contends that the payments were lower than they would have been had he claimed on his Somerset home, or made other permissible arrangements. In our view, it is inappropriate to judge whether the claims on property A are appropriate by reference to potential payments on another property, which is not in fact claimed for.”

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Committee has dealt with the false representation allegations—the appropriateness of the penalty, which hon. Members are here to judge, does not matter—but my submission is that it has not dealt adequately with the quantum of claim, other than by saying that the rent was above the market rent and that there were

“contributions towards building repairs and maintenance”.

The Committee and the commissioner did not go into the fact that the rent was up to 50% more than the market rent, or that sums of up to £100 a month were being charged for each of council tax, utilities, parking the car in the driveway, maintenance repairs and the purchase of capital equipment. Why has the Committee not dealt with those sums on aggregate? That is a huge amount of money for a lodger to pay to his landlord.

[Mr Barron]

My hon. Friend may wish to comment on that further, but I wish to make my comments on behalf of the Committee.

What is clear is that the rents charged to the public purse were excessive, and that charges were made for repairs that would not have been included in any normal rental arrangement. It is impossible to tell exactly how much more was charged than should have been, but that is because of the right hon. Gentleman’s desire for secrecy.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[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.

Registration of Members’ Financial Interests

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That—

(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Tenth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, on Registration of income from employment (HC 749); and

(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 30 April 2009 relating to the Registration of Members’ Financial Interests be amended, by leaving out paragraph (2) and inserting:—

“(2) That such a payment shall be registered

(a) where its value exceeds one tenth of 1 per cent. of the current

Parliamentary salary; or

(b) where the total value of payments from the same person, organisation or company in a calendar year exceeds 1 per cent. of the current Parliamentary salary.”

Hon. Members will recall that the Leader of the House is one of my predecessors as Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee. I know that he will be as pleased as I am that time has been found to take forward two sets of proposals in which he played an important part in a former life, particularly as one of them was agreed in the 2008-09 Session.

The more recent of the two reports seeks to make a simple but welcome change to the rule requiring Members to register each payment they receive for work carried out outside the House. As we note in the report, it might not have been the intention of the House when it agreed the original resolution in April 2009 to require Members to register bottles of wine or bunches of flowers, but that has been the effect. The problem is that when a Member receives a bottle of wine, a bunch of flowers or maybe even a ballpoint pen as a thank you for giving a speech or hosting an event, it might be intended as a gift, but it has the characteristics of a payment. A gift is given in its own right, without the expectation of anything in return. Where something is given in return for a service rendered, however, it is a payment, and therein lies the difficulty. As we state in our report, the Committee considered whether it might be possible to draw a line between the circumstances in which the bottle of wine or bunch of flowers is clearly a gift, and those in which it is clearly a payment. We concluded that, wherever such a line is drawn, the distinction is unlikely to be sufficiently clear and so the risk that Members would unintentionally fall foul of the rule would remain.

The Committee therefore favours a threshold, but to preserve confidence in the register we propose that it should be set at quite a low level. The level we propose is 0.1% of a Member’s salary for individual payments, which is £66, and 1% of a Member’s salary for the cumulative total of payments from the same source in the same year, which is £660, which we think is proportionate. By linking it to Members’ pay, the House will ensure that we do not have to keep resetting it.

I want to emphasise that we do not take issue with the intention behind the resolution of April 2009, which was that the public should be able to know how much MPs are paid for other employment and who pays them. We simply want to make the rules more workable and to catch only the sorts of payments that are relevant to the central purpose of the register, which is to show whether a Member has received a material benefit that might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her actions, speeches or votes.

There are, of course, other recommendations that we could have made, two of which are particularly worth mentioning. The first is the requirement to register the hours worked. I know that that requirement has not been universally popular in the House, but any proposal to amend it would require proper consideration. I will of course listen to any comments made in today’s debate and discuss them with my colleagues in the Committee. The second requirement, which is mentioned in the report, relates to the threshold that applies for gifts. The threshold is currently 1% of the salary, or £660, and was set in 2001. I think that the Committee needs to consider whether that remains the right level and I intend to invite it to do so later in the Session.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

I should declare an interest, as I speak quite a lot for colleagues, although so far I have never been given anything—I am not sure what to make of that. The right hon. Gentleman is not only Chair of the Committee, but a long-standing member of it, so he has considerable experience of these matters. On a serious point, does he not agree that if we all lose sight of common sense when it comes to declaring interests, we really will run out of road. We really must return to some form of understanding that, although codification of these matters is now deemed necessary, because of events that we all deeply regret, it does nothing for the standards of this House or for what it might think of itself if we have to codify the value of a gift given to a Member who makes a speech on behalf of a colleague.

[Mr Barron]

I will not say whether I agree or disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I have said that I will bring all points made in the debate to the Committee’s attention, and we will decide on that basis whether to look into these matters.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before the right hon. Gentleman continues, I note that he has referred to matters that are in motion 3. I make no complaint about that, but it leads me to think that, for the purposes of his speech, he is conflating the two separate motions. As I say, I make no complaint about that. No request was made that the motions be taken together, but if it is for the convenience of the House, the Chair is very happy that they be taken together. [Hon. Members: “Aye.”] I get the impression that that is the position. I am grateful. So we shall also consider the following:

That—

(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Eighth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges of Session 2008-09, on All-Party Groups (HC 920); and

(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 17 December 1985, as amended on 10 March 1989 and 29 July 1998, be further amended by leaving out paragraph 3 and inserting:—

“3. Groups whose membership:

• is open to all Members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, and

• includes at least 20 Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords), comprising: at least 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and at least 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of whom at least six must be from the main opposition party), and

• includes at least one officer who is a Member of the House of Commons be required to register the following information on the Register of All-Party Groups:

(a) The full title of the group. If persons other than Members of the Commons or Lords are allowed full membership (i.e. voting rights) the term ‘Associate Parliamentary Group’ must be included in the group’s title. If such persons are not allowed full membership the term ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group’ must be included instead. The rest of the group’s title should simply reflect the group’s subject so that the latter is obvious from its title alone.

(b) A brief summary of the group’s main purpose.

(c) The names of the group’s officers. At least one officer must be an MP; each of the other officers must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords.

(d) The names of exactly 20 qualifying Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or Lords), comprising: 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of which at least six must be from the main opposition party).

(e) The contact details of the group’s registered contact, who must be both an officer of the group and a Member of the House of Commons, and is the person ultimately responsible for the group’s compliance with the rules of the House.

(f) Any relevant gainful occupation of staff to the group who hold a parliamentary pass (relevant gainful occupation means any occupation that is advantaged by the privileged access afforded by the pass).

(g) The source and extent of any financial benefit (e.g. donations) and the source and nature of any non-financial material benefit (e.g. provision of goods or services) received by the group from a single source outside Parliament, if the value of the benefit equals or exceeds the financial threshold for registration (currently £1,500) in a calendar year. Once the group has made that initial registration, any further donation received from the same source in the same calendar year should be registered if its value exceeds £500.

(h) The website address of any organisation registered as the group’s secretariat.

(i) If a consultancy is registered as the group’s secretariat, the names and website of the consultancy plus the name of any client of theirs who is specifically paying the consultancy to act as the secretariat must also be registered. The consultancy must either publish on its website its full client list or agree to provide such a list on request, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.

(ii) If a charity or not-for-profit organisation is registered as the group’s secretariat, the former’s name and website must also be registered. The charity or not-for-profit organisation must agree to make available on request a list citing any commercial company which has donated either as a single sum or cumulatively more than £5,000 in the course of the 12 months prior to the month in which the request is made, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.

(i) The address of the group’s website, if it has its own website.

(j) The date of the group’s inaugural election of officers and of any Annual General Meeting held thereafter.

(k) Affiliation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, if the group is affiliated to either or both.”

I call Mr Kevin Barron, dealing with the two motions.

[Mr Barron]

I now turn to the report on all-party groups, published in July 2009. The proposals set out in the report are a package, most of them originally recommended by the previous Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Sir Philip Mawer, to whom I pay tribute. In summary, the proposed changes will require each group to register the website address of any organisation acting as its secretariat, where the secretarial assistance is more than £1,500 a year; in the case of a charity providing such support, require the charity to make available on request a list of commercial donors who have donated more than £5,000 to it in the previous 12 months; in the case of a consultancy providing such support, require the consultancy to publish on its website its full client list or provide such a list on request; require groups to register their website address; require groups to include on their website details of their sponsors and providers of secretarial services; and require each group to nominate an MP, who must also be an officer of the group, to act as the main point of contact for the group and also as the person who is ultimately responsible for ensuring its compliance with the rules.

In my view, those are sensible tidying-up changes that will increase public confidence in the Register of All-party Groups. The Committee’s report also proposes tightening the rules for the registration of all-party groups by aligning them with those for inclusion on the separate approved list maintained by the Commissioner’s office. This means that groups will no longer qualify for inclusion on the register unless they comply with the more extensive requirements of the approved list, such as the need to provide the names of 20 qualifying Members.

Taken as a whole, the changes should improve the scheme’s operations, providing clearer rules for those running the groups and those compiling the register, and greater transparency and ease of use for those who wish to consult the register.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am just interested in knowing the right hon. Gentleman’s general approach. Does he not realise that we had the least corrupt system of any Parliament, perhaps in the world? The more rules and regulations we bring in, the more the registry office will be snowed under. The absurd rule that it has to register every payment is, frankly, ridiculous; it cannot cope at present. The more rules we have, the more people will break them and the more corruption will be driven underground. We should have a general approach, because the public want to know broadly what we earn when that might affect our behaviour—in other words, a fairly large sum. That is where we should be—with as deregulatory an approach as possible.

[Mr Barron]

As I said earlier, I shall invite the Committee to look into those matters to see whether any changes ought to be made.

I just spoke about the Committee report of July 2009 on making all-party groups more transparent, so that we know exactly who runs those organisations and what moneys go into them. That seems to be an obvious thing for us to do. The report has been waiting for our attention since July 2009, and I hope that the House will commend both reports, so that they can go ahead and make us better at what we do. We might want to look at the issues that were raised in the two interventions, and if we do, we will ask the House and individual Members for their view. On that basis, I commend the reports to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevin Barron]

The vast majority of hon. Members who have spoken agree that these motions should go through tonight and that we should alter the arrangements.

The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) raised the issue of the limit of 0.1% of a Member’s salary. We have tried to find a seer in public life to tell us what the approximate worth of a gift should be. Some local authorities have a level as low as £25, and some have no levels at all. It seems to us that £66—some people interpret the figure as £65—is about right. We will reconsider the matter, if we feel that it is not working in future.

On all-party groups, it would clearly be a matter for the House to consider the provision, if it is a burden on some all-party groups. The aim is to find out who is behind the secretariats of all-party groups and not necessarily their motivations, which is a point that has been raised tonight. We need the situation to be transparent if a commercial organisation is effectively funding all-party groups. I am not saying that that would necessarily be wrong—I am not sure whether the House would say that that is necessarily wrong—but it is right that we know exactly who the secretariat are and how they operate.

The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) discussed duplication and overlap. I once considered setting up an all-party group on all-party groups to see how many members we could get to join. I chair all-party groups, which are an effective aid to legislation. This House should practise a wider democracy, and people with knowledge about individual issues come and talk to us on a regular basis—there is nothing wrong with that in my view. However, the situation needs to be transparent, so it is clear what has motivated them to do that and what is motivating us to make arguments on the Floor of the House.

The hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) raised the issue of pro bono advice to an all-party group rather than secretarial support. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) said from the Front Bench, we need to consider that matter, but it should not take us away from making improvements tonight.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said that any reasonable person knows the difference between a gift and remuneration, but, as Members of Parliament, we do not always deal with reasonable people. I have had 27 years in this place and on the odd occasion I have dealt with people who are not reasonable. [Interruption.] I was talking not only about people outside here, but some in here too. The Committee has said:

“A Member who chooses to treat as a gift the bottle of wine he or she receives after making a speech exposes him- or herself to an allegation that he or she has failed to register a payment received for a service provided.”

That is the reality of the situation. It might be that people have seen someone receive a bouquet of flowers, a declaration has not been made and nobody has made a complaint, but an unreasonable person might think that that is open to investigation and might write in, and that would start an investigation. We are trying to stop that happening and that is what we are going to do.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am aware that I slightly bounced the right hon. Gentleman with my question about paragraph 13(b). If he is not able to say tonight whether the reference to

“a direct interest in the work of the APG”

was taken out deliberately, could he ask someone to let me know whether it was deliberate or whether it was just one of those things?

[Mr Barron]

I will make sure that the hon. Gentleman gets that information.

The Committee also said:

“The trivial nature of some of these payments and the disproportionate effort involved in recording and then registering them has called into question the utility of the rule. The February 2010 edition of the Register contained over 100 more pages than the June 2008 edition.”

The figures were 264 pages as opposed to 157. If what we have heard is correct, it is clear that the many hon. Members who have not registered bouquets of flowers, pots of honey and so on could eventually find that they are outwith the register. Given those circumstances, we need to address this area.

[Chris Bryant]

The main change was that previously we had to register remuneration in our capacity as a Member of Parliament and we did not have to register things all the way down. We have introduced much greater transparency, which has meant that we now know about earnings of hon. Members that have nothing to do with their membership of the House.

[Mr Barron]

I accept that, although I believe that my hon. Friend said that he saw no real difference between gifts and remuneration. It seems to me that if I make a speech to a company and am given a £500 gift, it is more likely that that is remuneration, it is declarable and should be declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As I said in my opening speech, this is a grey area and we are trying to make things as clear as we can. Both these motions will help the House and I hope that the House will support them.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That—

(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Tenth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, on Registration of income from employment (HC 749);

and

(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 30 April 2009 relating to the Registration of Members’ Financial Interests be amended, by leaving out paragraph (2) and inserting:—

“(2) That such a payment shall be registered

(a) where its value exceeds one tenth of 1 per cent. of the current Parliamentary salary; or

(b) where the total value of payments from the same person, organisation or company in a calendar year exceeds 1 per cent. of the current Parliamentary salary.”

All-party groups

Resolved,

That—

(1) this House agrees with the recommendations in the Eighth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges of Session 2008-09, on All-Party Groups (HC 920); and

(2) accordingly the resolution of the House of 17 December 1985, as amended on 10 March 1989 and 29 July 1998, be further amended by leaving out paragraph 3 and inserting:—

“3. Groups whose membership:

• is open to all Members of the House of Commons and House of Lords, and

• includes at least 20 Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords), comprising: at least 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and at least 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of whom at least six must be from the main opposition party), and

• includes at least one officer who is a Member of the House of Commons be required to register the following information on the Register of All-Party Groups:

(a) The full title of the group. If persons other than Members of the Commons or Lords are allowed full membership (i.e. voting rights) the term ‘Associate Parliamentary Group’ must be included in the group’s title. If such persons are not allowed full membership the term ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group’ must be included instead. The rest of the group’s title should simply reflect the group’s subject so that the latter is obvious from its title alone.

(b) A brief summary of the group’s main purpose.

(c) The names of the group’s officers. At least one officer must be an MP; each of the other officers must be a Member of the House of Commons or House of Lords.

(d) The names of exactly 20 qualifying Members (each of whom must be a Member of the House of Commons or Lords), comprising: 10 Members who are from the same political party as the Government, and 10 who are not from the Government’s party (of which at least six must be from the main opposition party).

(e) The contact details of the group’s registered contact, who must be both an officer of the group and a Member of the House of Commons, and is the person ultimately responsible for the group’s compliance with the rules of the House.

(f) Any relevant gainful occupation of staff to the group who hold a parliamentary pass (relevant gainful occupation means any occupation that is advantaged by the privileged access afforded by the pass).

(g) The source and extent of any financial benefit (e.g. donations) and the source and nature of any non-financial material benefit (e.g. provision of goods or services) received by the group from a single source outside Parliament, if the value of the benefit equals or exceeds the financial threshold for registration (currently £1,500) in a calendar year. Once the group has made that initial registration, any further donation received from the same source in the same calendar year should be registered if its value exceeds £500.

(h) The website address of any organisation registered as the group’s secretariat.

(i) If a consultancy is registered as the group’s secretariat, the names and website of the consultancy plus the name of any client of theirs who is specifically paying the consultancy to act as the secretariat must also be registered. The consultancy must either publish on its website its full client list or agree to provide such a list on request, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.

(ii) If a charity or not-for-profit organisation is registered as the group’s secretariat, the former’s name and website must also be registered. The charity or not-for-profit organisation must agree to make available on request a list citing any commercial company which has donated either as a single sum or cumulatively more than £5,000 in the course of the 12 months prior to the month in which the request is made, otherwise it is not allowed to act as the group’s secretariat.

(i) The address of the group’s website, if it has its own website.

(j) The date of the group’s inaugural election of officers and of any Annual General Meeting held thereafter.

(k) Affiliation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, if the group is affiliated to either or both.”—(Mr Barron.)

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.

Publication of Information about Complaints against Members

Kevin Barron Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

(1) That this House approves the Sixth Report of the Standards and Privileges Committee, Session 2010-11, HC 577; and

(2) That accordingly—

a. The Commissioner may publish papers relating to complaints rectified or not upheld since the beginning of financial year 2008-09 and information about complaints received and matters under investigation since the beginning of financial year 2010-11.

b. Standing Order No. 150 be amended, by inserting the following new paragraph after paragraph 10.

“(10A) The Commissioner shall have leave to publish from time to time—

(a) information and papers relating to—

(i) matters resolved in accordance with paragraph (3) of this order;

and

(ii) complaints not upheld;

and

(b) information about complaints received and matters under investigation.”

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

With this we will consider the following:

Motion on the Power of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to Initiate Investigations—

(1) That this House approves the Seventh Report of the Standards and Privileges

Committee, Session 2010-11, HC 578; and

(2) That accordingly Standing Order No. 150 be amended, by leaving out paragraph (2)(e) and inserting in its place:

“(e) to investigate, if he thinks fit, specific matters which have come to his attention relating to the conduct of Members and to report to the Committee on Standards and Privileges or to an appropriate subcommittee thereof, unless the provisions of paragraph (3) apply.

(2A) In determining whether to investigate a specific matter relating to the conduct of a Member the Commissioner shall have regard to whether in his view there is sufficient evidence that the Code of Conduct or the rules relating to registration or declaration of interests may have been breached to justify taking the matter further.”

Motion on the Lay Membership of the Committee on Standards and Privileges—

That this House agrees with the principle as set out in the Twelfth Report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that lay members should sit on the Committee on Standards and Privileges; and invites the Procedure Committee to bring forward proposals to implement it.

[Relevant document: The Second Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, Session 2009-10, implementing the Twelfth Report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, HC 67.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barron]

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for providing debating time for the three motions relating to the Committee on Standards and Privileges. It is right that they should be debated and I welcome the opportunity to answer any questions that hon. Members might have about them. All three motions relate to unfinished business from the last Parliament and, to that extent, they can be seen as a package. However, each is free-standing and I will speak to them in turn, in the order in which they appear on the Order Paper.

By agreeing to the first motion, the House will bring its publication policy on the complaints handling process into line with best practice. The current regime, which greatly limits what is published, no longer meets legitimate public expectations. Sections of the media have been able to portray the way in which less serious breaches of the rules are rectified as “secret deals”. There has also been inaccurate reporting of who is, and who is not, under inquiry, and what they might be under inquiry for. By enabling the commissioner to publish the information, the House will ensure that it is both accurate and complete. The alternative is to leave us exposed to unfair allegations of cover-ups and to allow the media to continue to set the agenda for us, often on the basis of inaccurate or incomplete information.

Under the new policy, each month the commissioner will publish on his web pages statistical information about the number of complaints and self-referrals he has received, the number he has accepted, and the number he has not accepted. He will not publish the names of Members who have been the subject of complaints that he has not accepted for inquiry or the details of those complaints. To do so would be unfair and would encourage malicious complaints and publicity seekers. To put this into perspective, if the new policy had been in place in 2009-10, no details of the 245 complaints that were not accepted for inquiry would have been published. All that would have been published would have been the information on the 72 complaints that were inquired into.

As for complaints that are accepted, each month the commissioner will list on his web pages inquiries that are under way, including in each case the name of the Member who is subject to the inquiry, with a brief description of the nature of the allegation and an indication of whether the inquiry is active or has for any reason been suspended. Other than in exceptional circumstances, which would have to be approved by the Committee, he will not publish other information about specific inquiries while they are under way. As our report makes clear, the commissioner already confirms or denies to inquirers that a complaint against a named Member is being investigated. The change will introduce consistency into a process that at the moment is random and largely media-driven.

The commissioner will also publish on his web pages his determination letters on specific complaints or allegations that, after inquiry, have either not been upheld or have been rectified as soon as possible after they are produced. He will also publish relevant evidence he has received about such cases. In the Committee’s view, it is in the best interests of the Member concerned and of the House that where evidence of a possible breach has been fully investigated but the allegation has not been upheld or the matter has been rectified with the commissioner’s agreement, both the decision and the reasons for it should be made public.

It is perhaps worth repeating that complainants—some of them politically motivated—have always been free to publicise the outcome of the commissioner’s inquiry into a complaint that is either rectified or not upheld, but at a time and in a manner of their own choosing. That unregulated state of affairs will be replaced by one that is consistent and, I believe, fair and that is under the authority of the House. Publishing the information will help Members to set the record straight publicly and will go some way to redressing the balance.

The motion also proposes that historical information going back to April 2008 should be published. I know that that has caused some concern, but the reason for backdating the information is to make it broadly consistent with other recent decisions of the House to introduce greater transparency. I remind the House that, contrary to what sections of the media have claimed, the commissioner’s determinations are not secret. Much of it is already out there, although often in incomplete form, because complainants have always been free to publicise the outcome of their complaint. By allowing the commissioner to publish his determinations and the relevant evidence, the House will ensure that what is published is both accurate and complete. If the House supports the Committee’s proposal, the commissioner will start to publish information on his web pages later this month.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

For the record, is my right hon. Friend in a position to tell the House how many of the complaints that the commissioner accepted for investigation resulted in a finding against the Member and how many were dismissed at that stage?

[Mr Barron]

I quoted the figures from the commissioner’s last annual report. During the time of the leaks, The Daily Telegraph and everything else, 245 complaints were never followed up whereas 72 were. My hon. Friend will know that they were not necessarily all upheld, and in such cases the commissioner wants to say that in terms so that there can be no equivocation.

The numbers that are investigated and the number of complaints that are not upheld are sometimes published by the commissioner, as my hon. Friend will know, through the commissioner giving a memorandum to the Committee and the Committee doing its own investigation on that basis and publishing it. All the information has been around in the House in one form or another for many years—since before I became a member of the Committee. I do not have the exact figure for the number of people among the 72 whose cases were followed up who were not found to have done anything wrong. If my hon. Friend is interested, I will try to get that figure from the commissioner, but we must recognise that the commissioner works independently from the Committee, although we have contact with him.

The second motion seeks to implement a recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life—I think we used to call it the Kelly committee—that the commissioner should be able to carry out an inquiry without receiving a complaint. As my Committee’s seventh report points out, that would bring the House’s procedures into line with those of the House of Lords and of the compliance officer. It will also allow the commissioner to investigate a matter that has been reported on by the compliance officer and that raises code of conduct issues. For the first time, it makes proper provision for self-referrals, although they will continue to be subject to the Committee’s agreement.

There is a risk, as the report acknowledges, that giving the commissioner such a responsibility might raise public expectations that each and every allegation will be investigated or that the commissioner will turn into some kind of witchfinder-general. Let me make it clear that that is not going to happen. The Committee does not want it and the commissioner is not asking for it.

The amendment to the Standing Order provides for the commissioner to inquire into

“specific matters which have come to his attention”.

There is also a built-in requirement that there must be sufficient evidence of a possible breach of the code or rules to justify taking the matter further. In the 245 cases in the last annual report there was no evidence and they were not acted on. A lurid newspaper headline or unsubstantiated speculation will not lead to an inquiry. The process must be driven by the evidence and the evidence must come to the commissioner.

It is important, as my Committee’s report recognises, that the commissioner has the resources he needs to do his job. We supported the temporary expansion of his office to deal with the increase in the number of complaints over the past two years and, if necessary, we will do so again. However, there is no expectation that that will happen. The current work load is somewhat smaller than that of 12 months ago.

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

I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for missing his opening remarks, but it was his subsequent remarks that I wanted to hear. Will the motion allow right hon. and hon. Members to make self-referrals, which we know the commissioner discourages?

[Mr Barron]

It would do that. Self-referrals would carry on and, indeed, there has been one since the election. However, self-referrals will still have to come in front of the Committee and the commissioner will effectively ask permission, although we do not direct the commissioner by giving permission or telling him not to do things. He works independently of the Committee. Self-referrals will carry on in much the same way as they do at the moment.

Of course we can all help to ensure that the commissioner has the resources to do his job by acting at all times in full compliance with the code of conduct and the associated rules. Members of this House decide what workloads are and whether treatment is fair or unfair by what we do on a regular basis.

The third motion, tabled in the name of members of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, was not on our original shopping list, but we are grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for adding it to today’s business. It relates to a proposal that was put to Sir Christopher Kelly and the Committee on Standards in Public Life by our former Chair, now the Leader of the House, to add lay members to the Standards and Privileges Committee. The proposal was supported by the Kelly committee in its 12th report. Lay members already serve on the Members Estimate Audit Committee and they will soon sit on the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. Lay members provide the public with reassurance that the Committees are not cosy gentlemen’s clubs, where deals are stitched up and scandals are hushed up. They can also bring valuable outside experience and expertise with them. It is common practice for standards bodies dealing with the professions to have lay members, and in the view of the Committee on Standards and Privileges it should be the practice here too. I say that as a now former lay member of the General Medical Council; I spent nearly nine years in that role, sitting with various clinicians.

That said, adding lay members to one of the House’s senior Committees raises some important questions. For example, the Committee on Standards in Public Life recommended that the lay members should have full voting rights on the Standards and Privileges Committee. The question is whether that would mean that the lay members could vote on matters relating to privilege. I assume not. I know that the Clerk of the House has reservations about allowing lay members to vote at all, because he wrote to me about it following the publication of the motion. In practice, of course, we have to recognise that any decision of the Committee that was not supported by the lay members present would lack public credibility. It may be that the lay members will not need to have a formal vote to have a decisive influence.

The Procedure Committee might wish to consider other questions identified in my Committee’s report, such as how many lay members there should be and whether they should form part of the Committee’s quorum. The Kelly committee suggested there should be two lay members, but a case can be made for more than two. I hope that the Procedure Committee will wish to consider that. We also suggested that lay members should receive modest remuneration, directly related to the volume of work that they carry out. We felt strongly that to provide the public with the greatest possible confidence in their appointments, the lay members should be appointed to the Committee but not by the Committee. The Procedure Committee may wish to consider what would be the best way of making the appointments, what qualifications those appointed should have, what should be the term of the appointments, and who should be involved in making them.

My Committee’s understanding until recently was that progress on the issue was being held up by the Government’s work on their recall policy. However, a recent letter from the Leader of the House to Mr Speaker has put us right on that, and the House has now been given the green light to proceed. In the Committee’s view, the best way forward is to ask the Procedure Committee to come up with some workable proposals for putting the matter into practice. It is an important reform and it needs to be got right.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many of us are very concerned about whether these three proposals will improve the system’s ability to ensure that justice is done for people who are referred to my right hon. Friend’s Committee. We feel strongly that over the past two or three years, the way in which people have been referred to his Committee has been partial. Some have been referred and a report made, leading to a prosecution by the police. Others have never had the opportunity to put their case before the Committee. Will these three changes bring some sense of justice back to what goes on?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Interventions have got to be shorter.

[Mr Barron]

Only one referral of the nature that my hon. Friend sets out has happened in my five years on the Committee, and the matter is out of the Committee’s hands. My understanding is that it happens elsewhere and is not done by the Committee. As I emphasised earlier, there has to be an evidence base for any complaint that is taken up and investigated by the commissioner. The last annual report showed that 245 cases had not been pursued because there was no evidence, but that 72 had been, although some of the Members involved will have been found to have done nothing wrong. I commend the motions to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

I do not think that I can add anything to what I have already said. This is a matter for the Standards and Privileges Committee and for the commissioner, and certainly not a matter for a Minister at the Dispatch Box to comment on, other than to say that I hope that justice will always be done in the most transparent way.

[Mr Barron]

I have two points to make in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). First, I do not believe that Ian Gibson ever went to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards or in front of the Committee. Secondly, on a wider matter, discussions are currently taking place between the compliance officer, the commissioner and others on a memorandum of understanding about referrals, and whether cases will go to different organisations rather than to the commissioner and then on to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

Is the hon. Gentleman absolutely sure about all this? This is a very important point, because in his earlier remarks he said that the Government should not be involved, but he subsequently said that the recall element meant that they should be involved. The recall element is very important. Can a Member be recalled only when they have been through the Committee and been found wanting? What about Members of this House who were prosecuted, never having had the opportunity to go through—

[Mr Barron]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Sheerman]

My right hon. Friend is shaking his head, but people were prosecuted, and people are being prosecuted, without having gone through the Standards and Privileges Committee process; they were just taken down to the police station and charged. Where is the equality there? Do we have recall in both Houses or both—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

Actually, I think the matter was referred to by the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee.

[Mr Barron]

What I said in my speech was that we thought that the question of lay members serving on the Standards and Privileges Committee was being held up because of the likelihood of a recall Bill. The reason the motion is on the Order Paper today is that it is about having lay members on the Committee—certainly in respect of standards—so that people can have more confidence that the Committee is not about gentlemen or gentlewomen looking after other gentlemen and gentlewomen.

[Mr Heath]

I thank the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee for making that clear. We have had enough of this House appearing to be a cosy club for its own benefit. The previous Parliament took steps towards improving the situation. What we are debating today is a continuation of that process, and I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barron]

The hon. Member for Worthing West (Peter Bottomley) spoke of media headlines serving as reasons for investigation. That is not the case now, and it will not be the case in future. Investigations are not made on the basis of media headlines; they are made when the commissioner is provided with evidence and he or she is satisfied that there are grounds for examining, for instance, a potential breach of the code of conduct.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) discussed rectification, which involves two issues. Rectification sometimes takes place on the basis that the individual concerned has been found to have done no wrong, but, as I explained, it does not always take place in a right and proper way. It may take place in a very ill-informed way, and a complainant who has done no wrong can still go to the media and say “Yes, but…”. I think it eminently sensible to improve that process of rectification.

When people have done wrong and have admitted doing wrong, rectification has been the right and proper thing to do from the commissioner’s point of view. It is his decision and no one else’s to take the matter no further. Money is paid back, and matters are settled. However, the information is not published in a right and proper way at the moment. We need more transparency, so that people can understand exactly what is happening. I entirely accept that that involves the question of retrospection. We are trying to put the last 18 months behind us, and, as I said, in that context I think that retrospection is right and proper. I hope that the House will accept it on that ground.

I think it highly unlikely that there will be further complaints on the basis of these publications. Even if there were, evidence beyond that which had enabled the commissioner to reach the point at which he had arrived would presumably be required for any investigation to take place. I do not believe that cases that have been rectified will be reopened, whether they have been upheld or not.

My hon. Friend also mentioned a spike in major complaints just before a general election. Political opponents often make complaints. That is a judgment to be taken not by the House or the Committee, but by the commissioner, who I hope would use common sense in those circumstances. I say that because it would be wrong—I am only one voice, but I chair the Committee—for us to define a code of conduct for the commissioner. The commissioner is independent of the Committee and must remain so. We cannot have a situation where someone investigates complaints against MPs, but works to a code of conduct written by a Committee of MPs.

[Tony Lloyd]

It would not necessarily be my right hon. Friend’s Committee that created the code of conduct. The commissioner could operate his own code of conduct. That might give the House the reassurance that it needs.

[Mr Barron]

That is entirely a matter for the commissioner. From what was said earlier, I gather that he is with us not just in spirit for the debate. I am sure he will read the report in Hansard tomorrow. The Committee should not be a party to drawing up a code of conduct for somebody who works independently of the Committee. That would be wholly wrong.

On the subject of lay members, we have said that that will be a matter for the Procedure Committee, and I hope the House will agree. I mentioned that I had been a lay member of the General Medical Council. The Procedure Committee may want to know something about my journey to that role. The first time I was appointed to it, I was the Labour appointee. There was also a Liberal Democrat and a Conservative appointee. They were appointed by the Leader of the House.

That is what used to happen under the old system. The GMC was a big body, consisting of 124 members and three MPs, one from each major party. The second time that I served as a lay member on it, I had to attend an appointments session up in Leeds. I was appointed by a panel who asked me questions about what I had to bring to the table.

I say to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) that I would hesitate to suggest to the Procedure Committee that it ought to have some form of permanent secretary. I had worked in industry as an electrician. I had been to see doctors, of course, because everyone gets ill from time to time. I used to sit on fitness to practice committees when a doctor had done wrong. Those were national cases. I was not qualified to take on the medical profession. I was there in a different role. My role was to bring to the committee what I thought ordinary people would think about the situation—to bring common sense to the issue.

That is what we ought to ask of the Procedure Committee. How it achieves that is entirely up to the Committee. I hesitate to go down the route suggested and lay any sort of guidelines whatever. If lay members come on to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, as I hope they will at some stage, it will be up to the Committee to decide whether they have anything to do with privilege. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that as soon as we get a privilege Bill, or a draft privilege Bill, as we are promised, we can see what that means. There has been a ruling of the Supreme Court on these matters in the past 24 hours. We should look at that in the context of what has come to light in the past few months. The Procedure Committee should get on with the job, if the House agrees to the motion.

I hope the House will accept all three motions without Division. As I said, they serve to clear up issues from before the general election and make sure that the workings of the House are as transparent as is humanly possible, so that people outside have more confidence in us than they have had in the recent past.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

(1) That this House approves the Sixth Report of the Standards and Privileges Committee, Session 2010-11, HC 577; and

(2) That accordingly—

a. The Commissioner may publish papers relating to complaints rectified or not upheld since the beginning of financial year 2008-09 and information about complaints received and matters under investigation since the beginning of financial year 2010-11.

b. Standing Order No. 150 be amended, by inserting the following new paragraph after paragraph 10.

“(10A) The Commissioner shall have leave to publish from time to time—

(a) information and papers relating to—

(i) matters resolved in accordance with paragraph (3) of this order;

and

(ii) complaints not upheld;

and

(b) information about complaints received and matters under investigation.”

power of the parliamentary commissioner for standards to initiate investigations

Resolved,

(1) That this House approves the Seventh Report of the Standards and Privileges Committee, Session 2010-11, HC 578; and

(2) That accordingly Standing Order No. 150 be amended, by leaving out paragraph (2)(e) and inserting in its place:

“(e) to investigate, if he thinks fit, specific matters which have come to his attention relating to the conduct of Members and to report to the Committee on Standards and Privileges or to an appropriate subcommittee thereof, unless the provisions of paragraph (3) apply.

(2A) In determining whether to investigate a specific matter relating to the conduct of a Member the Commissioner shall have regard to whether in his view there is sufficient evidence that the Code of Conduct or the rules relating to registration or declaration of interests may have been breached to justify taking the matter further.”—(Mr Barron.)

lay membership of the committee on standards and privileges

Resolved,

That this House agrees with the principle as set out in the Twelfth Report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that lay members should sit on the Committee on Standards and Privileges; and invites the Procedure Committee to bring forward proposals to implement it.—(Mr Barron.)