Notification of Arrest of Members

Lord Mann Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I hate to break the consensus, but we have been here before when it comes to House business. I recall moving a resolution—but not getting a seconder—to stop the flipping of homes, some 18 months before the expenses scandal. If I had been listened to then, some Members might not be here today because others might well have survived; I suppose that outcome was rather double-edged. The reputation of Parliament might also have been partly salvaged if that resolution had been listened to, but it was not.

On this motion, I listened to the non-answer given to the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). I have a question about the impact on the British overseas territories if this goes through. Plenty of Parliaments across the world, not least those in the Commonwealth, listen to and watch what we do, and they copy and emulate it. We are not just talking about a possibility in some future stage of less democratic times under this Government. Plenty of Members of Parliament have been arrested and disappear, and it still happens to this day. They are taken by regimes citing the law, and therefore decisions we make have to be thought through for their consequences.

Ironically, the first name on the motion is that of the Leader of the House of Commons, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). He is citing the human rights law here, but he is the man in Cabinet demanding we get rid of the human rights law. It seems that the rest of the country, including my constituents, can have no human rights, but we will create some extra ones tonight for Members of Parliament—exclusively. That is precisely what this proposal does. It says that MPs will give themselves some special rights in law that do not apply to everybody else, and that is wrong. That principle is wrong and that practice is wrong. Until the question, theoretical though it may be, is properly answered, which it has not been, this becomes a double-edged sword in law for us as well. If people wish to change the law in relation to what happens when people are arrested, they should change the law. There is plenty of time in the parliamentary agenda for people to change the law. There are plenty of opportunities for the Government to change the law. This is not the way to change it for Members of Parliament, and therefore we should oppose this proposal.