Registration of Members’ Financial Interests

Debate between Kevin Barron and Edward Leigh

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.