Committee on Standards: Members’ Code of Conduct Review

Debate between Mark Fletcher and Thangam Debbonaire

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire]

The Committee has made recommendations about more engagement and more training, and we are going to have to work really hard at that. It behoves all of us here today who clearly do believe in the system to also be the ambassadors for the system. We have to be the ambassadors for it in all its glory.

Others have spoken about the backdrop to the debate and about what happened with the former Member for North Shropshire, so I have cut all that from my speech. I just want to highlight a couple of key points. I have written to the Committee in full with a response to all its recommendations. That is winging its way to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and his Committee even as we speak. There are so many recommendations that I strongly support, including those on clarity, on training, on finding more ways to engage colleagues and on ensuring that the independence of the Standards Commissioner and the Standards Committee is maintained. This will help to restore and buttress trust in our Parliament, which is so important.

A key recommendation is that there should be an outright ban on second jobs as parliamentary advisers. That is Labour policy and I definitely agree that there should be an outright ban on any Member acting as a paid parliamentary adviser, consultant or strategist— whatever we call it. This has been a recommendation since 2018 from the Committee on Standards in Public Life. It is long overdue, and I strongly support it. Similarly, there is a recommendation for a contract for outside work with explicit statements. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) about the difficulty with contracts, but I still think that it is a difficulty we should push through with. This would help to dispel the misconception that MPs are for hire in any way. It is our constituents we are here to serve, not outside interests, so I strongly support that recommendation.

[Mark Fletcher]

rose—

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am not going to take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because I feel that I should honour Madam Deputy Speaker’s stricture.

The recommendation to clarify the criteria for serious wrong exemption in the lobbying rules would help to make clearer what constitutes a conflict of interest. In the case I have referred to, the Committee said that that exemption should be treated as a narrow exemption, not a wide loophole. I of course support the recommendation that there should be clarification.

We need to ensure that there is consistency when it comes to standards for MPs and Government Ministers. I therefore strongly support the recommendation, detailed by my hon. Friend, about ensuring that ministerial gifts and benefits can be found in the same place as information about MPs. I also support the recommendation about transparency and ease of use of the website. My goodness, it is sometimes hard to find even one’s own details in full.

I feel that any strengthening of the system—I know that this is outwith the scope of the report—should be accompanied by a strengthening of the ministerial code. The last Labour Government legislated to clean up politics after the sleaze of the 1990s, with various significant measures relating to, for instance, freedom of information, the ministerial code itself, and public registers. We have put forward a plan that the next Labour Government would introduce to strengthen the system, but of course we cannot wait a day longer to protect and strengthen our standards systems. I urge all Members who have not yet read the report to read it in detail. In fact, we could have a quiz—a party game. Who knows what paragraph 174 says? I do. We could also encourage our colleagues to respond to the request for consultation—I think we have another week or so to go.

I hope that the Government have learnt from the fiasco that surrounded the former Member of Parliament for North Shropshire, and I hope that all of us can get behind a new, invigorated system of standards. Wherever we end up, we have to salute and support it, because it says so much about our democracy that we have these standards and pride ourselves on trying to live up to them.