Notification of Arrest of Members

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

No Member of this House or the other place is above the law—nor should they ever consider themselves to be so. The reach of the law extends within the House, and Parliament would not seek to interfere with due process of a criminal investigation. Similarly, as the law applies to us all equally, so does the right to privacy.

Given that we are public servants, it is right that notification to the House would still take place in respect of matters such as imprisonment or remanding in custody; sentence of imprisonment; conviction of illegal or corrupt practice at a parliamentary election; and conviction of an offence relating to an MP’s expenses.

I would, however, like to ask about the practicality of the proposed measures, and I shall direct my questions to the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) as Chairman of the Procedure Committee. I believe that to be the correct process. Does the Committee believe that the event of a Member of Parliament being arrested will be kept from the public domain as a direct result of these procedural changes? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in the modern era of social media, it is increasingly likely that such information would quickly reach the public domain?

On the effect of social media, rumours very often take on a life of their own and become widely accepted truth before the interested party has a chance to respond. Does the hon. Gentleman consider that, with the removal of the duty to notify of the arrest of Members to the House, that it could be more difficult for an individual to counter rumours of such an arrest?

I was interested to see that no notifications of arrest were made to the House for 30 years—from 1978 until 2008. Were no Members arrested during that time, or is there already a system available that allows the Speaker or Clerk to exercise discretion in these matters?

Under these proposals, it is specified that Members who are arrested are not to be prevented from notifying the House of their detention. Can the hon. Gentleman say how this can be ensured?

It is intended that police forces will be required to notify the Chief Superintendent at Parliament of the arrest of any Member within 24 hours. How will information about that new procedure be circulated to police forces, and how will it be enforceable?

Can the hon. Gentleman provide examples of what he considers would fall within parliamentary privilege, or would be of constitutional significance, that would require the House to be automatically notified of a Member’s arrest, and can he explain how parliamentary privilege or constitutional significance would have affected the notification of arrests made in the past 10 years?

The recommendations in the Procedure Committee’s report rely on protections enshrined in the Human Rights Act 1998, which I thought the Government wanted to repeal. Why are they more than happy to employ the Act to protect their own rights, while wishing to remove it from the British people?

[Several hon. Members rose—]