Privileges and Conduct Committee: 15th Report

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard (Lab)]

My Lords, I have listened with great interest to what the Chairman of Committees has said in relation to this report and, indeed, to the previous ones in relation to Lord Hanningfield. I am bound to say that the more I listened to it, the more disturbed I got. Are we not now in a somewhat strange position? For a person to be able to claim his allowances, first, he has to be seen by the House or the committee, and, secondly, he has to do parliamentary work. One can easily imagine a situation in which you will be doing parliamentary work for almost the whole of the day without setting foot inside the Chamber or appearing in front of a Select Committee. In those circumstances, noble Lords would presumably do what Lord Hanningfield did—although he did not do the parliamentary work—which is turn up and be seen by somebody here, and then, on your honour, you will have fulfilled both conditions.

I am not raising this point in defence of Lord Hanningfield at all. I am merely pointing out that the present situation almost invites a situation in which people turn up in the House just so that they can be seen in order to fulfil the legitimate requirements before they can get their allowances. I do not know whether anything can be done about this—I suspect that the answer is probably not. However, I would like the Chairman of Committees at least to give us an indication of whether they are thinking about it.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the proposal of the Chairman of Committees. It is the least that we can do regarding prison sentences. I am sure the noble Lord will agree that, among the general public, there is an absolute incomprehension that people who have been convicted of serious crimes, and have therefore served prison sentences, can go on being Members of this House. I have had that said to me time and again, and I am sure he will agree that it is a conundrum that we have to solve.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Committee for its work in producing these reports. Nothing can be more difficult, I think, than trying to put into words the circumstances in which we can claim our £300 or £150 a day tax free.

I hope the Chairman will forgive me if I raise one or two points on the Committee’s latest formulation. I am sorry that I did not raise these points with him in advance but, like many noble Lords, I only got round to looking in detail at the new proposals today. However, we know enough about the expenses scandal and the Lord Hanningfield case—and, I fear, others—to know that the language of our self-restraint, if one might call it that, is very important. It does not help to leave that language too rubbery and too open to different interpretation. For example, in the latest formulation, paragraph 4.1.3 of the Guide to Financial Support for Members talks about “appropriate parliamentary work”. However, the claim form simply talks about “parliamentary work”; there is no reference to “appropriate”. Paragraph 8 of the Guide to the Code of Conduct talks about Members in the discharge of our “parliamentary duties”—“duties” as opposed to “work”, and “work” as opposed to “appropriate parliamentary work”. Those three phrases are more than capable, and with some justification, of different interpretations. I urge the Chairman and his committee to consider that point with a view to further amendments, because we do not want any more of this.

I would also like to add, if I may, that there is constant reference to “honour” and to a “sense of the House”—a breach of honour according to the sense of the House. There is absolutely no guidance on what the sense of the House might be in any circumstances. I understand that you cannot find a form of words that will be clear in every circumstance, but I again put it to the Chairman that he might consider that the committee should have a number of scenarios in which it says that it would be contrary to our honour, in those circumstances, to claim or not to claim.

I am afraid that these are issues that the press are looking at closely. Lord Hanningfield himself, in the Daily Mirror article last July, talked of 50 other Peers clocking in and clocking out as he did. I really hope that we do not leave ourselves in the position where we are vulnerable to another wholesale attack on what is going on here, with us apparently doing nothing about it. If any of your Lordships claimed for the full 139 sitting days last year, that would have come to £41,700 tax free. If you gross that up, it is a lot of money, and I am afraid that we remain unduly vulnerable. This is something that we need to address, because the work of this House is of such crucial importance.