Registration of Members’ Financial Interests

Debate between Mark Francois and David Heath

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) on securing this debate about two modest but important improvements to the rules on the registration of Members’ financial interests and on the registration of all-party groups. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, as the new rules relating to all-party groups were produced under his chairmanship of the Standards and Privileges Committee back in July 2009.

The Committee’s proposal to reintroduce a sensible de minimis threshold for the registration of income from employment will remedy a problem that arose with the rule changes that the House agreed to on 30 April 2009. Under those new rules, Members are required to register every single payment they receive for remunerated employment of any kind, however small its value. The problem is that, for the House’s purposes, “remunerated employment” means any benefit of any kind which a Member might receive in exchange for providing a service.

The test is not whether there is a formal employment relationship in law, or whether there is some kind of contractual obligation on either side, but whether the Member would have received the benefit if he or she had not provided some kind of service. This includes any small gift to a Member who addresses a school assembly, opens a village fete or makes, as the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) said, a speech at a constituency function. I am very sad to hear that he has never received any sort of thank you—not even a meal, from the sound of it. I find it extraordinary that he should go so unrewarded for his labours, but nevertheless any gift—

[The Vice-Chamberlain of Her Majesty's Household (Mr Mark Francois)]

A gift would be cheaper!

[Mr Heath]

The right hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that “a gift would be cheaper” than providing a meal. I cannot believe that in the case of the hon. Member for Mid Sussex.

Anyway, any small gift received under those circumstances must be registered, and that has led to a large number of registrations of things that most of us would regard as gifts—tokens of thanks for some small service. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) has been commendably thorough in her registrations, which include a Scottish Bible Society cloth bag worth £2.95, some branded pens and pencils from a local recycling company worth £5 and a Girlguiding centenary pencil to the value of 35p. No one will honestly feel that her judgment has been clouded by the generosity of those gifts, but nevertheless she has complied with the strict requirements that the House places on us all.

My examples would not be complete if I did not mention that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has registered a gift of a pair of hand-knitted, yellow socks, which I am very sad to see he is not wearing today. He was given them when he opened a wool shop in his constituency, and I understand that the owners even went to the trouble of contacting his office to establish his shoe size.