Privileges Committee Special Report

Laura Farris Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I have said nothing on this matter until today, as I did not consider that I had a right to do so because I was a member of the Privileges Committee for only a brief time. I was formally replaced by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), who is now in his place, in September 2022, before the substance of the investigation into Boris Johnson began.

I want to highlight some of the comments that were made during the period in which I was a member of the Committee, and I feel impelled to do so because I consider that the issues go to the heart of how we choose to regulate ourselves as Members of Parliament and of the treatment we are willing to tolerate of those Members who put themselves forward to assist in the proper functioning of this House.

As the report points out, the work of the Privileges Committee is “crucial to our democracy” because the functioning of Parliament and the way we discharge our obligations to those we represent depend on Ministers being truthful in what they say at the Dispatch Box.

I was asked to become a member of the Committee in or around April 2022 by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), who was then Deputy Chief Whip. I had expressed no interest in joining the Committee, and I do not say that to be critical —it is just a fact. It is not something I had previously considered or wanted to do. I know the same applies to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who was asked to chair the Committee by her party’s Whips after the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) recused himself. The Chair had to be a Labour MP under the Standing Order, and it had to be someone of sufficient seniority, so the Mother of the House was an obvious candidate. She had expressed no previous interest, but she accepted the request. I make it clear that I am mounting no criticism of either Government or Opposition Whips, who play an important role in the smooth operation of Parliament. It was incumbent on them to find Members for this difficult and sensitive task. The Mother of the House’s appointment was not just the choice of the Opposition Whips; it was approved by the Whips on our side—I remember the discussion about it. I know that the Mother of the House drew the attention of our Whips to the tweet that she had written, and again this was approved. Ultimately, both our memberships were approved by the whole House, because the motion passed without Division.

To contextualise the appointment of the Mother of the House, I want to say on her behalf that she had already announced her intention to retire from Parliament at the next election. Her parliamentary career has spanned five decades and has been defined, probably more so than that of any other person who has ever sat in this House, by her commitment to the advancement of women’s rights. Fourteen weeks before she took up that appointment, her husband of 40 years, Jack, had died. Against that background, I invite Members to consider what is more likely: that she agreed to chair the Committee as a final act of service to this House or that she did so because she was interested in pursuing a personal vendetta against Boris Johnson?

I want to make reference to three tweets written by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park—he is named in the report and I have given notice to his office that I intend to do so. Two were written while I was a member of the Committee, on 23 July and 7 August 2022, and one is a retweet, referred to in the report, on 9 June 2023. The first two were written at a time when the Committee had done no substantive work; the only thing it had done was make a request for disclosure to No. 10 Downing Street. He wrote:

“The Partygate probe is clearly rigged.

It is a jury comprised of highly partisan, vengeful & vindictive MPs, nearly all of whom are already on the record viciously attacking the person they are judging. It is an obscene abuse of power.”

Another said:

“Anyone who has any experience of MPs knows you cannot trust them to judge their peers except through the lens of their own ambition & prejudices. It’s why this system is so open to corruption.”

It is completely unacceptable to allege or insinuate that members of the Privileges Committee are corrupt or that the inquiry was somehow rigged. The report uses the nomenclature of “contempt”, but with the word “corrupt” one could also argue that it is libellous. It has been repeatedly overlooked that a number of the Conservative members of the Committee, including my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington South (Andy Carter), for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) and for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), had already undertaken a disciplinary inquiry into Boris Johnson in July 2021 on a completely separate matter. They had been asked to consider whether his holiday in Mustique had been properly declared; they could have found against him, but in fact they found in his favour. So there was no principled reason for Lord Goldsmith’s attack, no empirical basis for contending that the Committee could not have found in Boris Johnson’s favour, because on a previous occasion it already had. At all times, it would have been open to Members of this House to vote against the Committee’s final recommendations, had they disagreed. I cannot avoid the conclusion that the tweets were designed to pressurise the members of the Committee and undermine their work—I say that as someone who, in the end, did not hear the inquiry into Boris Johnson.

However, I think that the conduct of Lord Goldsmith manifestly fell below the standard acceptable for any Member of the upper House, let alone a Minister of his Majesty’s Government. I hope you will forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, if I add that I found the environmental pretext that was advanced to justify his resignation somewhat unconvincing, in circumstances where his nose had clearly been put out of joint after he was asked only hours earlier to apologise.

Business of the House

Laura Farris Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his ongoing work. I think the House has particularly welcomed the fact that we will have a debate on the proposals for the BBC, which is an issue that several hon. Members across the House have raised.

Fire and rehire was a theme of last week’s business questions. He will know that we have a code of conduct that is currently being consulted on. These matters are incredibly important, whether someone is a veteran or not, and we know what we expect good employer practice to look like. I am sorry to hear about the case in point and will bring it to the Secretary of State’s attention.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

For years, residents of Thatcham, a town in my constituency, have faced delays at a local level crossing, which frequently gives them waiting times of up to 45 minutes morning and evening. For a long time, they have asked for a bridge to be constructed over the level crossing, but, for various reasons, that has not yet got off the ground. Will my right hon. Friend support me by asking the Transport Secretary to consider the construction of such a bridge? Will she permit a debate in Government time to discuss infrastructure in the south-east so that I can set out in more detail the huge problems that the level crossing causes?

Business of the House

Laura Farris Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

Very good, Mr Speaker.

May I thank the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) for his work in advertising to colleagues—again, very successfully—the opportunities that his Committee brings for them to air their views on things that they care about. We have run debates on the anniversary of Grenfell, and he will know that there are ongoing discussions about that just to make sure that it is what everyone wants. I thank him for that.

My commiserations to the hon. Gentleman’s team, but he is also very good at congratulating the victor.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

Two years ago, Great Western Railway significantly reduced the direct train service between Bedwyn and Paddington. In this week’s timetable change, it has halved the number of carriages on the 7.45 train from Newbury to Reading, which has led to significant overcrowding. All that is causing significant headaches for my constituents who commute, many of whom have written to me. Can we have a debate in Government time to address the adequacy of GWR’s performance through the Newbury constituency and the wider south-east?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am very sorry to hear about the situation that my hon. Friend is dealing with. I will certainly ensure that the Secretary of State has heard the concerns that she has raised again today. It is absolutely vital that market towns, including those in her constituency, are properly served by the rail service. What her constituency is having to endure is, I am afraid, not appropriate.

Business of the House

Laura Farris Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the matter and advertising the important moment when we can consider and remember all those victims of human rights abuses. He will know that the next Foreign Office questions are on 13 June. That is probably the best way to get an answer from the Secretary of State, but given that it is a little way off, I shall also make sure that the Secretary of State has heard the hon. Gentleman’s remarks.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I have been struck by the number of pubs and restaurants in my constituency, including the John O’ Gaunt in Hungerford and 137 Eat Drink Distil in Newbury, that have been in touch with me about the severe labour shortages that they are experiencing. May I invite my right hon. Friend to consider a debate in Government time to discuss the acute pressure on hospitality businesses across my constituency and, I think, more widely, and whether hospitality staff could be added to the Home Office’s shortage occupations list?

[Penny Mordaunt]

Such matters are for the Home Secretary, and the next Home Office questions are on 22 May. My hon. Friend will know that labour market participation has become a major challenge. Unemployment is at a near 50-year low, and since the covid-19 pandemic there has been a significant increase in the number of people neither in nor looking for work, resulting in near record levels of labour market tightness. I will make sure that both the Cabinet Office and the Home Secretary have heard her concerns.

Business of the House

Laura Farris Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

The hon. Gentleman, from a sedentary position, tempts me to speculate, but the new Session will be announced in the usual way. The next economic crime Bill will be a key part of that, and it will be brought forward as rapidly as possible.

It was International Women’s Day on Tuesday, and there will be an opportunity this afternoon to debate that matter. I agree with the hon. Lady that businesses that do not embrace half of the population in their economic output are missing out. Women in the United Kingdom make a huge economic contribution to the United Kingdom, and those businesses that are lacking in promoting that talent are missing out on half the talent available to them. They should reassess what they are doing.

I am delighted to join the hon. Lady in celebrating the work of social care staff not only in Derby, but across the country. I think people working in that industry contribute a great deal to society and they should be praised for the efforts that they are making.

The hon. Lady finished with the cost of living. We recognise that the effect of the Putin invasion of Ukraine is making huge ripples across energy markets and the whole world. That is clearly going to affect the United Kingdom. Luckily we are currently dependent on Russia for only 3% of our gas, but we can isolate ourselves from that moving forward. We need a balanced energy mix in the UK. We need to invest in our future and ensure that we have nuclear on tap as well as renewables. We need to move at a speed that our constituents and taxpayers can afford. The UK Government are committed to doing that.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

Crops destroyed, livestock killed, farm equipment stolen: that is the reality of hare coursing for farmers in west Berkshire. One of them recently described it to me as a form of “rural terrorism.” My right hon. Friend knows about this issue probably better than anyone in the House, so will he commit to a debate in Government time to discuss the true misery that those crimes inflict and better ways of tackling them?

[Mark Spencer]

My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to this matter. It is an issue that is worthy of debate. My only disappointment is that I would not be able to participate in that debate myself. Hare coursing has been illegal since the passage of the Hunting Act 2004 and it remains a cause of concern in rural areas. During consideration of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill last week, we strengthened the measures on hare coursing, but it is damaging to rural communities where it takes place. I encourage her to seek a Westminster Hall debate on that important issue and I wish her well.

Business of the House

Laura Farris Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am glad to see the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee nodding. It is a truly important day. I agree entirely with the hon. Lady that education is so important. The more people know and understand the horrors that went before, the more likely it is that such horrors will be avoided in future.

The hon. Lady then asked a wide range of questions about Government policy. May I say how pleased I am that she has finally moved off cake? It has seemed to me over the past few weeks that all the Opposition could ever talk about was cake—whether we have had our cake and eaten it, whether there has been no cake, whether there never was any cake, or what cake there may have been; how it was baked, how many eggs there were in it, whether it was made with margarine or butter, or what type of cake it was: did it have sponge or was it chocolate? All these issues about cake have been an obsession of the Opposition, so I am glad that we are now getting on to some more serious subjects.

The hon. Lady referred to the cost-of-living issue, and here the Government have been extremely active in helping people, including families. The national living wage will rise to £9.50 from April, which will mean an extra £1,000 a year for full-time workers. Nearly 2 million families will receive an extra £1,000 a year through our cut in the universal credit taper and increased work allowances. There is also a £140 rebate on the energy bills of 2.2 million low-income households this winter, and there are seasonal cold weather payments of an extra £25 a week for up to 4 million people during sustained colder periods.

However, the key to ensuring that the economy works lies in the steps taken by the Government during the pandemic, when they introduced the furlough scheme and bounce back business loans to ensure that the structures of the economy survived it. That is fundamental to why we now have the highest payroll employment in our history, the lowest recorded youth unemployment in our history, and the economy back to where it was before the pandemic. So the real question on the cost of living is whether the economy is being managed well, and the answer to that is “Yes, it is, because of the decisions that this Government made.”

The hon. Lady then raised the issue of fraud, and the £4.3 billion that has come out of the covid supplies. That is about 1% of the amount of money that British taxpayers provided. However, the Government have already stopped or recovered £743 million in overclaimed furlough grants. We have prevented £2.2 billion in fraud from our bounce back loan scheme, and our Taxpayer Protection Taskforce is set to recover an additional £1 billion; its investigations are under way. The Government take this seriously, but if we want to know who are the real experts in wasting taxpayers’ money, it is the socialists. When they were in opposition, what happened to the NHS computer system? How many billions were frittered away through their irresponsible approach to taxpayers’ money?

The hon. Lady raised the national disability strategy and yesterday’s court judgment. The DWP has sought permission to appeal against that judgment, which is solely about technicalities and the requirements to consult. The DWP has engaged with disabled people, disabled people’s organisations, carers and others as part of the national disability strategy, which is one of the broadest packages of real, practical action put together so far to improve the lives of disabled people in relation to jobs, housing, transport, education, shopping, culture, justice, public services, data and evidence. There is a real push to help disabled people.

Then we come on to the Afghanistan animals. The Ministry of Defence got 15,000 people out of Afghanistan in an extraordinary and amazingly successful operation, but again the Opposition are dealing with the fripperies and the trivia, not with the really big picture. All they care about are cake and animals, whereas we are getting on with the important business of government.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

Families in west Berkshire have told me about waits of up to two years to receive diagnoses of either autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for their children, often at a catastrophic cost to their educational and social development. However, I understand that the problem extends much more widely than west Berkshire. May I invite my right hon. Friend to make Government time available for a debate to discuss the provision of child and adolescent mental health services?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I thank my hon. Friend both for her question and for her campaigning on children’s mental health issues, which are of great importance and, I think, recognised as such across the House.

The Government have announced that £17 million of extra spending to build on the existing mental health support will be available in education settings, including £7 million for the wellbeing for education recovery programme and £9.5 million to fund training for mental health leaders in about a third of all state schools and colleges. That is on top of the £79 million to boost mental health support for children and young people that was announced in March. NHS England has consulted on the potential to introduce five new waiting time standards, and a response will be published in due course. I think it is accepted that there is a problem, and steps are being taken to tackle it.

Participation in Debates

Laura Farris Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The distance between Inverness and Westminster has not changed during the course of the pandemic, as far as I am aware; I am unaware of a great movement of the tectonic plates. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his commitment to Parliament in wanting to come here and the importance of a Union Parliament welcoming MPs from across the country, who come together to express their views, with the enormous contribution made by SNP Members who dutifully come to Westminster to inform and contribute to our debates and hold the Government to account. They are dutiful public servants—key workers—doing their bit for the United Kingdom, and I thank the hon. Gentleman warmly for his service to the UK.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement about the extended rights of participation for the clinically extremely vulnerable. The fact remains that there is a category of Member of Parliament who is effectively excluded from participating but who is not clinically extremely vulnerable, and that is pregnant women. I dovetail this question with the one put by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns). The Health Secretary has confirmed that pregnancy does not leave someone clinically extremely vulnerable. The reason for their exclusion is compliance with the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. If my right hon. Friend was satisfied that there were MPs who were excluded and could not participate but did not meet the clinically extremely vulnerable criteria, would he consider extending the right to participate in debates to that category?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Perhaps it would be helpful for me to explain why the view is that this should cover the clinically extremely vulnerable, which is very straightforward. That is the group that is currently advised by the Government not to go to work. If the Government were to advise other specific groups not to go to work, of course it would be right to consider whether they ought to be added to the list.

I must add one caveat, and that is on the overall numbers. To ensure that we still have proper debate and a functioning Parliament, the numbers need to be limited. That is part of the balance that I, as Leader of the House, and others are seeking to achieve, to ensure that we can maintain our business—both the legislative agenda and being held to account—but also facilitate people in particular conditions. I am not unsympathetic to anybody in a difficult situation, but we need to follow what the Government are suggesting to see which categories may be included. So far, the category is the clinically extremely vulnerable, but I am not as much of a stick-in-the-mud as some people might think.

Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme

Laura Farris Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on the work that she has done and I warmly welcome the Leader of the House’s remarks. I want to talk briefly about why I will be supporting the amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I am an employment law barrister, and I have previously been instructed by the House of Commons Commission in a number of employment disputes, most recently last year. None involved current elected Members of this House. I support the amendment because, as a matter of employment law, any process that invites Members to speak up for colleagues against a background of party allegiance and personal loyalties is fundamentally problematic.

That is not just a theoretical objection: the debate on Lord Lester that took place in the House of Lords in 2018 prompted 74 members of staff employed in the House of Lords to write a letter of complaint the following week. The next month, that letter was reviewed by the Committee for Privileges and Conduct. I believe that this may answer the point made by the Leader of the House, who said that any such debate should be a short, factual exposition, dealing purely with process. The Committee’s conclusion was that the debate had

“inappropriately strayed beyond points about the process and into implied and explicit criticisms of the complainant.”

It said that the word

“‘reputation’ was invoked (positively) 15 times to describe Lord Lester. It was not invoked once to describe the complainant.”

The debate led Naomi Ellenbogen, who undertook the independent inquiry into bullying and harassment in the Lords, to conclude in paragraph 181 of her report:

“On numerous occasions, I was told that any earlier belief that a complaint…might be worth pursuing had vanished…ultimately powerful members would protect their powerful friends, at the expense of the complainant, whose public humiliation would be immortalised in Hansard. Making a complaint was not only pointless; it was devastating”.