Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy

Debate between Kevin Barron and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move amendment (a), after “others,”, insert

“in consultation with the Committee on Standards and the Parliamentary Commission for Standards,”.

The Committee on Standards has discussed the working group’s report and authorised me yesterday to write to the Leader of the House setting out its unanimous view. The letter was published on the Committee’s website. The Committee welcomes the report and strongly supports its commitment to zero tolerance of sexual harassment, bullying and harassment within the parliamentary community.

Members will have seen that an amendment, which was tabled yesterday, was signed by all the elected members of the Committee, calling for the Committee on Standards and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to be formally consulted as part of the process of implementing the working group’s recommendations.

We were a little surprised not to have been mentioned in the motion, as the House has given the Committee and the Commissioner important roles in dealing with the conduct of Members. May I say to the Leader of the House—I am sure I can say this on behalf of all members of the Committee—that I welcome what she said earlier in relation to the Standards Committee and the Parliamentary Commissioner being involved in future work.

The House should take note of the fact that we are currently carrying out a long-planned review of the code of conduct, which will be announced in due course. The current review will obviously be informed by the working group’s report. As Members have said, the Committee is unique among Select Committees in containing lay members. Those lay members, along with the Commissioner, provide a much needed element of independence in the current standards system.

May I just react to one or two exchanges that have taken place this afternoon? It is true to say that lay members are not allowed to vote. That was the wish not of the Standards Committee at the time we set up the first three lay members many years ago, but of this House. My understanding is that the House did not want to bring the law inside this place and inside its Committees.

The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) has been talking about bringing in the law. As I understand it, that would be a big step. I think the reason why lay members were not given a vote was that we were advised that we could not take them on without bringing the law into the Committee system. I still think that if we are going to legislate on that at any stage, we should give that some consideration.

[Mr Jenkin]

rose—

[Sir Kevin Barron]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but just let me say this: I do not understand the case that he mentioned—about the judge taking a harder line on a case than the Committee did. We are not involved in taking our judgments to law. The law is a completely different process. From time to time, we will refer Members there if it is felt that there is anything that is a matter for the law and not for the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I think he knows the case to which I was referring. I will not name it, because it is too tiresome. It was a case in which the Committee adjudicated on someone who then tried to make the same case in a court of law under a completely separate jurisdiction, and he lost his case. He was also criticised by Ofcom. The point is that the proposals that PACAC has made are not about bringing the judiciary into our own proceedings—this is not about that—but about the House appointing our own legal person to make these adjudications on behalf of the House, and on behalf of his Committee so that he has a far more unimpeachable judgment handed to his Committee on which to act than he is compelled to work with at the moment.

[Sir Kevin Barron]

I think I now know the case that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. The person in question did not agree with what happened to him, and he went to court and got nowhere. If it is the case I am thinking about, the court supported exactly what the Committee had said about the individual involved. Let me move on.

As hon. Members will know, the current system has developed as a series of merely reactive measures in response initially to the cash for questions scandal in the 1990s and, more recently, to the Members’ expenses scandal. This means that it is arguably skewed too much towards issues of financial impropriety—important though they are—and neglects other aspects of Members’ conduct and behaviour towards other people.

Standards

Debate between Kevin Barron and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Barron]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Kevin Barron]

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

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

Publication of Information about Complaints against Members

Debate between Kevin Barron and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[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.