Standards and Privileges

Debate between Kevin Barron and Jim Dowd

Monday 16th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.