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

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wilson]

As my hon. Friend knows, this Bill is expressly limited to matters of conduct. That has been made clear in the Bill and throughout the debates in this House and the other place. The power of expulsion that the Bill confers on the other place is similar to the power that we already have in this House. This House has an inherent power to expel Members if it needs to, but the other place cannot do so because, without primary legislation, it cannot override the right of peers to receive a writ of summons. I hope that that deals with my hon. Friend’s point.

The Bill is also already explicitly limited to matters of conduct by subsection (4) of clause 1. It is certainly envisaged that a resolution to suspend or expel would only follow from a report from the Committee for Privileges and Conduct. Proceedings on the Bill in the Lords made it clear that any relevant breach would be linked to the existing code of conduct. The Government therefore do not support the new clauses or amendment 18.

[Sir George Young (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I should like to begin by thanking all my hon. and right hon. Friends who have taken part in the debate for their interest in the Bill. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) for making it clear at the beginning of his remarks that he supported the principle behind the Bill, and I am grateful to the Minister for confirming that the Bill conforms to the requirements of the European convention on human rights. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who, as always, has raised important issues that will need addressing as we go through the legislation.

I should like to put the new clauses and amendments, and indeed the Bill, into perspective. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said, the Bill basically does two things. It enables a suspension to go beyond the lifetime of the current Parliament, and it enables the House of Lords to expel a Member. It does not change anything else. It does not change the code of conduct or the environment in which the code is administered, and it does not change the interface between the House of Lords and the courts in regard to issues such as exclusive cognisance. So, to some extent, the broader issues that he has raised have already been dealt with in the context of the original introduction of the code of conduct and of how the system works.

The Bill has no direct impact on this House. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said that clauses had been dropped because they were controversial, but there has been no sign so far—certainly in the upper House—of any controversy. Indeed, there was an absence of controversy as the Bill went through. The upper House sees it as an important building block in restoring the reputation of that House, by giving it clear powers to expel a Member whose behaviour is unacceptable. There will be an indirect benefit for this House, in that anything that restores confidence in Parliament is good for both Houses.

I turn now to the new clauses and the amendment. I understand exactly why my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury tabled new clause 1. I understand that in the House of Lords, technically, it is not the Lord Speaker who lays such documents. That is in fact done by the Committee for Privileges and Conduct, which lays on the Table the reports of any investigation into the conduct of a Member of the House of Lords. The Committee is already required to do that by Standing Order No. 68 of the House of Lords, which states:

“Reports from Select Committees shall be laid on the Table and ordered to be printed. Notice shall be given on the Order Paper of the day on which the report is to be considered .”

I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend will agree that we do not need any changes to the legislation or to Standing Orders to enable such reports to be laid.

My right hon. Friend made an important point about natural justice. If he looks at the House of Lords code of conduct, he will see that paragraph 19 states:

“In investigating and adjudicating allegations of non-compliance with this Code, the Commissioner, the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct and the Committee for Privileges and Conduct shall act in accordance with the principles of natural justice and fairness.”

Also, if he looks at those who sit on the Committee, he will see that it is required, by Standing Order No. 77, to include two former holders of high judicial office. I therefore think that we can be confident that the fate that befell poor Lord Lovat will not befall any errant peer; no one will be subjected to a kangaroo court. We can be confident that the principles of natural justice will be upheld. The Standing Order also states:

“A Committee for Privileges and Conduct shall be appointed at the beginning of every session; sixteen Lords shall be named of the Committee, of whom two shall be former holders of high judicial office.”

My right hon. Friend went on to deal with the issues of privilege, and he referred to the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 and an amendment inserted in the Bill that became that Act by the House of Lords. That Bill was a very different animal from this one. The Bill then being considered contained provisions that seriously risked breaching privilege. He may well remember the decisive intervention of the then Clerk of the House, Malcolm Jack, who produced a report during the passage of the Bill expressing the concerns in this House. That Bill explicitly required the production of a code of conduct relating to financial instruments and it set out that it must be laid before the House of Commons. The Bill detailed at some length the procedure of any investigation into a breach of that code and established a new offence of providing false or misleading information about allowance claims.

The short Bill before us is a very different animal and does none of those things. Unlike with the 2009 Act, the Bill has raised no concerns from the Clerks of the Parliaments, nor has anyone raised any concern about its current drafting risking parliamentary privilege. As the Minister has just said, matters of parliamentary privilege do not need to be expressly stated in legislation in order not to be justiciable.

Let me now address the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on the code of conduct. A code of conduct is already produced, and it is published by the Committee for Privileges and Conduct. That already takes place under Standing Order No. 77. All reports from that Committee that have recommended that a sanction should be applied have included a very clear reference to the relevant provision of the code that was breached in each instance—that is also what happens in this House. The most recent investigation gives us an example of how this is done. The Committee’s report summarises and includes the findings of the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards and the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct, all of which include specific reference to which paragraphs of the code of conduct the Member was alleged to have broken. The most recent report states:

“The complaint alleged that Lord Redesdale breached the Code of Conduct by not registering certain interests in the Register of Lords’ Interests (in breach of paragraph 10(a) of the Code) and by registering certain other interests more than one month after those interests came about (in breach of paragraph 13).”

Other reports on the conduct of noble peers, such as the one on the conduct of Lord Hanningfield, contain explicit reference to which particular breach of the code has taken place. My understanding is that the case of Lord Rennard was not referred because the code specifically says:

“Matters not falling within the Commissioner’s remit include…Members’ non-parliamentary activities.”

That is not wholly dissimilar to the rules that apply to us in this House and it explains why that case did not go before the relevant Committees.

[Mr Chope]

With the greatest respect, my right hon. Friend has not addressed the issue raised by Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who expressly contemplated that this Bill was going to go wider than the existing code of conduct. The purport of my new clause 3 is to ensure that it cannot do that. In so far as it is a belt and braces, why will my right hon. Friend not accept my new clause?

[Sir George Young]

If my hon. Friend looks at the Bill, he will see that clause 1(4) specifically refers to “conduct”. It talks about:

“A resolution passed by virtue of subsection (1) must state that, in the opinion of the House of Lords, the conduct giving rise to the resolution”.

I know that he wants us to be more specific about the sort of conduct, but if one goes down that road, there is a real risk of breaching parliamentary privilege. We may run the risk that if we are too specific in the legislation, the courts may then have reason to look behind the conduct and then the exclusive cognisance that we have at the moment might be prejudiced. That is why the Bill is specifically drafted in order to avoid prejudicing parliamentary privilege.

[Mr Chope]

I imagine that my right hon. Friend was much associated with the drafting of the 2012 Bill. It was a Government Bill and it made a specific link with breaches of the code of conduct. Why can we not make that link? Clause 1(4) currently refers only to the “conduct giving rise”; it does not say that that conduct has to be conduct that is in breach of the House of Lords code of conduct.

[Sir George Young]

Because the moment one puts the code of conduct into legislation, one runs the risk of the courts having another look at it. I am not sure, but the Joint Committee that looked at the Bill the Government published may have recommended that that specific provision be removed—I stand to be corrected on that. The key thing is that the Bill before us does not go beyond the general reference in clause 1(4) to “conduct”, for the very reasons that I have given. I am sure that my hon. Friend, who is a member of the Standards Committee and the Privileges Committee, would not want to run the risk of the courts second-guessing the decisions of the Select Committees on which he serves. Given those assurances, I hope that, on reflection, my colleagues will not press their proposals to a Division.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wilson]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for being so brief.

The Government oppose the amendments, but I will speak briefly because I want to give my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) the opportunity to push the Bill through today. Amendments 1 to 5 and 16 remove all references to expulsion in the Bill, thereby removing from the entire Bill the power to expel a peer. The Government do not support removing the power to expel. That power would allow peers to deal with particularly serious misconduct and would bring the disciplinary powers of the House of Lords more in line with those of the House of Commons.

We expect the House of Lords to need to use such powers rarely, as has been the case in the House of Commons, which has not exercised its powers to expel since 1954. Nevertheless, we think it appropriate for both Houses to have such a power in order to deal effectively with those who bring the House into disrepute.

[Sir George Young]

I have listened carefully to the points made by my hon. Friends in this debate, and particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who in Committee made it clear that he had reservations about expulsion. I have gone back to the sponsors of the Bill and had discussions with the upper House. If anything, the power to expel is almost more important to them than the power to carry on suspension beyond a Parliament, and it would strike at the very heart of the Bill if that provision were removed.

We already have powers to expel if someone is sentenced to more than a year’s imprisonment, but during debates in the upper House it was made clear that many breaches of the code of conduct would not be a criminal offence but are of sufficient severity to justify a Member of the House being expelled. The House of Lords wants the powers that we have to expel a Member if their conduct is unacceptable. Expulsion is different to suspension, and it is important that the upper House should have the power to expel because its Members cannot be expelled by constituents in the way that we can be. We should therefore think hard before we deny the House of Lords a power that it wants and sees as essential in restoring confidence in the institution—a power that the House of Commons already has.

[Mr Chope]

Can my right hon. Friend give some examples of where a power of expulsion is needed?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend raised that point in Committee and I gave some examples that were used in the upper House such as repeated offences, for example, or a criminal sentence of less than a year. Members may take the view that that activity is unacceptable and that the Member should be expelled. Expulsion must be related to conduct, which is specifically mentioned in the Bill. Fears that someone might be expelled because they are a man or a woman simply do not arise because it must be related to their conduct.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said that he was unhappy with some of the decisions made by the upper House. I understand that, but wonder whether his criticism applies to the decisions it has made when it has come to censoring or suspending its Members. My view is that that has been done fairly and impartially. His suggestion that a life peer might be removed by the leader of their party who appointed them would strike at the heart of the independence of the upper House—I wonder whether, on reflection, he wishes to pursue that line of argument.

As for the arguments on public knowledge, the key phrase is in line 15:

“in the opinion of the House of Lords”.

There are real difficulties in defining public knowledge, and it makes sense to leave to the opinion of the House of Lords whether the conduct was public knowledge before. At the moment there is no time limit. In other words, anything that happened before the coming into force of the Bill is potentially within its scope. This is part of the process of rebuilding confidence. If a horrendous offence came to light that had happened before the commencement of the Act, is it right that the House of Lords should not be able to take any action? Far from bringing it into repute, it would bring it into disrepute.