Privileges and Conduct Committee: 15th Report

Lord Sewel Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Chairman of Committees]

That the 15th Report from the Select Committee (Further amendments to the Code of Conduct and Guide to the Code of Conduct) (HL Paper 182) be agreed to.

[The Chairman of Committees (Lord Sewel)]

My Lords, this is the second set of changes to the Code of Conduct and the Guide to the Code of Conduct that we have considered in the past two months. This 15th Report makes three recommendations. The first section of the report establishes a stronger link between the requirements of the Code of Conduct and the system of financial support for Members. To this end, the Committee for Privileges and Conduct proposes that a sentence be added to the relevant claim form stating that, in making each claim, the Member concerned should have regard to the obligation in the Code of Conduct to act on their personal honour. It also proposes that the Guide to the Code of Conduct be amended to emphasise further the fact that Members should follow not only the letter of the rules but also the spirit of the rules and the sense of the House when claiming financial support.

The vast majority of Members make claims for financial support that are beyond reproach, but public concerns about isolated examples of abuse remain. The changes proposed should serve to highlight the importance of all Members acting on their personal honour, and they reinforce the need for the highest standards of propriety in this area.

The second section of the report proposes a code of conduct for Members’ staff. This follows a recommendation from the Council of Europe Group of States against Corruption. The new code sets out the requirements imposed on Members’ staff, most of which already exist but have not previously been set out in one place. The new code for Members’ staff also lays down some general principles guiding the conduct of Members’ staff in their parliamentary work—for example, that Members’ staff should not use their access to the Parliamentary Estate to engage in lobbying.

The final section of the report relates to the imprisonment of Members. The House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill is expected to receive its Third Reading after this debate. That Bill provides that a Member who is sentenced to imprisonment for more than one year will cease to be a Member of the House. However, if the conviction is outside the United Kingdom, the Member will cease to be a Member only if the House resolves as such.

The Bill addresses the most serious cases where Members have breached the criminal law. However, we think that the House should make provision for the Code of Conduct to deal with cases of imprisonment that do not fall under the Bill. If the Bill becomes law in its current form, the Code of Conduct need cover only those situations where a Member is sentenced to, first, imprisonment for up to and including one year; secondly, a suspended term of imprisonment; or, thirdly, imprisonment for over a year outside the UK where the House has not resolved that the Member should cease to be a Member.

Accordingly, we consider that it should be deemed a breach of the Code of Conduct for a Member to be sentenced to imprisonment, whether in the UK or elsewhere, for any length of time, including suspended sentences. Where that is the case, the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct will recommend an appropriate sanction. We recognise that there is a need for safeguards in respect of convictions in foreign jurisdictions and we recommend a scheme that takes account of this. That is necessary because a situation could arise when someone could be convicted in a common court for an activity that is not a crime in this country, or, indeed, for something which would be praiseworthy in this country.

Together with the 13th Report of the committee, which the House agreed on 6 March, I believe that this 15th Report will make significant progress in strengthening our system governing conduct. I am, of course, happy to answer questions. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Geddes (Con)]

My Lords, I have read the report and listened most carefully to the Chairman of Committees. This is probably down to my gross mental inadequacy, but could the Chairman of Committees explain more fully to the House the difference between the sanction proposed for imprisonments of under one year and that for imprisonments of over one year?

[The Chairman of Committees]

I will make a general point first. This House has responded to individual abuses of the scheme in a way which has shown that it has not been prepared to duck the issue: it has tightened the regime, and tightened it quite significantly over a period of months and years. That is to the credit of this House as a self-regulating House in the full and proper sense of the word. I agree that many people, including some of your Lordships, are enormously frustrated that because of the Writ of Summons, it has not been possible to move to exclude individual Peers even in the most severe circumstances. However, that has now been tackled through the new legislation and through what we are putting in place here.

On the detailed point about the difference between imprisonments of over one year and those under one year, imprisonments of over one year mean that it is going to be expulsion while for those under one year the House will work out a sanction for itself. That is the difference: under one year it is not automatic expulsion while over one year it is.

I will deal with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Richard. The commissioner has said that there are two conditions that your Lordships have to fulfil to make a valid claim. He has come to that on the basis of what we have agreed in the Guide to the Code of Conduct, the Guide to Financial Support for Members and the certificate that we sign when we make our claims. On the basis of those documents, two conditions have to be met. The first is that the Peer has to be present in the Chamber or at a committee meeting—presence has to be established. However, that in itself is not a complete fulfilment of the conditions.

The second condition is that parliamentary work has to be undertaken for every day that is claimed. That is not defined, and it would be very difficult to get into definitions, but it rests on the concept of personal honour. When this concept of personal honour started to be developed, I was one of those who thought that it was rather a woolly notion and could be easily evaded by someone saying, “Well, in my view, I did act on my personal honour and who are you to say that I did not?”. However, it has proved an enormously powerful concept, because we have got to the stage where it has been operationally developed and applied to cases where it was made abundantly clear that the individuals concerned had not acted in terms of personal honour. The definition is not a subjective definition: it is a more objective definition based on the meaning of personal honour in a particular case and how it would be interpreted by the House generally. That has proved to be the basis on which five people have been suspended, so it has had a very strong and robust application.

Motion agreed.