House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Friday 24th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, as your Lordships now know, I have the honour of chairing the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct, which is a sub-committee of the Committee for Privileges and Conduct. In that capacity I greatly welcome the Bill and the logical and highly desirable increments to the powers of the House that it would bring with it.

It may help if I try briefly to summarise where presently we stand with regard to the House’s sanctioning powers. Following the Bill that was variously known as the Byles Bill and the Steel Bill but was of course the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill, which was passed on 14 May this year, a Member sentenced in the United Kingdom to a term of imprisonment of more than one year—notice that it is more than one year and not, as I think was suggested, at least one year—ceases automatically to be a Member of the House. Provision was also made in that legislation for possible expulsion in the event of a foreign conviction and, again, a sentence exceeding one year’s imprisonment.

However, if a Member is sentenced to one year’s imprisonment or less or is given a suspended sentence of imprisonment, although now, by amendments that were introduced in June this year and can be found in the third and current edition of the Code of Conduct, such a person is deemed to have breached the code and is therefore subject to sanction, he cannot be expelled or suspended beyond the duration of the current Parliament. That is the position equally with regard to all other breaches of the Code of Conduct, however seriously they may be viewed. In other words—this has already been made plain in other speeches in this House—assuming that in misconduct proceedings later this month it were thought right to suspend a Member, the longest period for which that could be done would be to the end of this Parliament, now some four or five months away.

I should complete the present picture and add that in January this year the House introduced two new sanctions for breaches of the code: first, denial of financial support—that is to say, the daily allowance and any expenses—for a specified period which can extend for longer than a suspension, meaning that it can extend into the following Parliament; and, secondly, for a similar extended period, denial of access to the facilities of the House, such as dining, parking, the Library and so forth. Neither of these fresh sanctions has yet been imposed. Of course, they were not retrospective.

As your Lordships know, this Bill would enable us to provide in Standing Orders for the House to resolve to expel a Member permanently or to suspend a Member beyond the term of the current Parliament. The precise form and scope of such Standing Orders will, of course, require careful thought, and I certainly hope that our sub-committee would be involved in thinking that through.

I suggest that these clearly are powers that the House should have, and that although, like all these possible sanctions, it is greatly to be hoped that there will be very few occasions when they will need to be exercised, they should be available in order to safeguard the reputation of the House. I strongly support the Bill.