Privileges Committee Special Report
Michael Fabricant Excerpts(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Thangam Debbonaire
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. A cursory glance at the Standing Orders of this place would have informed those Members of that.
I do want to take a small moment to put again on record my thanks to the members of the Committee, from all sides of the House, who worked so hard to come to a unanimous conclusion, and to the Clerks who, under considerable pressure, continue to work to uphold the integrity of this House and its standards system.
In my view, the named MPs should apologise. Unfortunately, some of them so far have instead doubled down, claiming that what they have said is merely their exercising their right to freedom of speech. That is absolute nonsense. They tried to interfere in a disciplinary procedure that was voted for unanimously by this House; nobody voted against it. If those Members had wanted to, as the report sets out, there were other legitimate ways open to them as MPs who want to influence any Privileges Committee inquiry. I will refresh their memories: they could have had their say on the MPs appointed to the Committee: they could have opposed the motion instructing the Committee to look into this in the first place; and they could have submitted evidence. There were any number of legitimate avenues open to them, but instead of properly engaging, they pursued illegitimate ways.
I am afraid this all comes back to integrity in politics. Last month, when the Committee published its report into Mr Johnson, the current Prime Minister also had an opportunity to draw a line between him and his predecessor. He could have shown some leadership, he could have pressed the reset button and he could have lived up to his promise of integrity, professionalism and accountability, but, mired in splits and division in his own party, he was too weak to stand up to his former boss.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady not think that, in a debate on privileges, perhaps now is not the time to enter into cheap party politics?
Thangam Debbonaire
I have to remind the hon. Gentleman that we are all bound by the same code of conduct, and that includes the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister found time last week to comment on cricket, but could not even find time to comment on the lies of his predecessor—I am responding to the hon. Gentleman—or to the Committee. He could have shown some leadership, but as well as not voting, he could not even bring himself to give us a view.
At the Liaison Committee last week, the Prime Minister said that he had not even read the report. It is not long, and it is about his own MPs. Has he read the report now? Does he understand why this matters so much, and if so, does the Leader of the House know if we will get to hear what he thinks of today’s motion? Does he accept the Committee’s conclusions? Will he be voting to approve the report in full? He is the Prime Minister, and this matters because it was a predecessor Prime Minister of his who has brought us to this point by lying to this House. If we want to turn the corner, if we want to move on and if those Conservative Members shaking their heads really want to turn the corner, it matters that the current Prime Minister has failed even to draw a difference between himself and his predecessor.
Ms Harman
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the hon. Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) is saying that he does not believe the Privileges Committee’s inquiry into Boris Johnson was a witch hunt, I warmly welcome the fact that he has said so. I thank him for putting it on the record that he does not believe our inquiry was a witch hunt.
Michael Fabricant
Does the right hon. and learned Lady not think it would have been courteous of the Committee to warn those listed in the annex that they were going to be listed? If a mistake had been made, it would have given those people an opportunity to make their point before the Committee’s report was published. Would that not have been fairer?
Ms Harman
The points and issues that we included in the annex to our report were put in the public domain on Twitter. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman himself put into the public domain that, in relation to the Committee, there was a question of “malice and prejudice”. He felt it was important to put that on to the public record.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I have not called the hon. Gentleman to make a point of order. If the right hon. and learned Member does not want to give way, which is her right, it is detrimental to the debate if Members who cannot get their own way then make a point of order.
Michael Fabricant
My point of order is that it is also discourteous to partly quote something, actually. And what it clearly—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat. That is not a point of order. He is addressing it directly to the right hon. and learned Lady, not to me. No more of that, thank you.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
One thing on which I think we can all agree is that we do not envy those people who had to serve on the Privileges Committee. A lot of us on both sides of the House received emails some time ago from 38 Degrees, but apparently that was nothing compared with the number of emails that particularly my Conservative colleagues on the Committee received: a colleague who is no longer in his place told me that he received something like 600 emails. That really is completely unacceptable.
It is wrong to try to interfere with the Privileges Committee, just as it is wrong to interfere with the Standards Committee or indeed with any other Committee of the House, whether that be the Transport Committee, the Committee of Selection—the best Committee of all—or the Administration Committee. That in itself is a breach of privilege, but as colleagues have said, it is also a breach of privilege not to allow Members of Parliament to speak out.
Michael Fabricant
In a moment. Part of the argument presented for the motion is that there was some sort of collusion going on. I know what drove me to make my comments, which I shall read out in full, as the Chairman of the Committee, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), did not. I will shortly explain what provoked me to make them. The point is that many of the comments that people made were spontaneous and driven by events. I will explain why, because I see doubt on the face of the right hon. and learned Lady, but let me first give way to the Father of the House.
Sir Peter Bottomley
In the form letter, of which 600 copies were sent to our colleagues on the Privileges Committee—for those who are following the debate, it is on page 11 of the report—colleagues were implored to
“protect your own integrity by rejecting this committee”.
The letter ended with a call for them to
“protect your integrity by resigning from this committee”.
I agree with my hon. Friend that those words were unacceptable. They should not have been said while the Committee was holding hearings. Other things, perhaps, should not have been said either.
Michael Fabricant
I certainly agree that it is completely unacceptable to say:
“We urge you to take action and protect your integrity by resigning from this committee immediately.”
Incidentally, if hon. Members received 600 emails just like that, with hardly any change in the wording, I hope that those emails ended up where many of the identical emails we get end up, which is in the bin. That is what they deserve.
But this Committee was particularly difficult. I think it is fair to say that there is nobody in this land who does not have a view, one way or another, about Boris Johnson; I think possibly Margaret Thatcher is the only other person to have fallen into that category. It is perfectly human. Whether someone is a judge in the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court, or whether they sit in a quasi-judicial role, they are bound to have views. I totally accept that members of the Committee will try hard, often with success, to put those views in the background while trying to make a fair and decent judgment.
So why did I say what I said? I will read it out in full:
“Serious questions will need to be asked about the manner in which the investigation was conducted”—
I was talking about procedure.
“These were no jurists as was apparent by the tone of the examination. The question of calibre, malice and prejudice will need to be answered now or by historians.”
I think people will ask these questions, and they may well exonerate the Committee. They may well say that there was no malice or prejudice and that the calibre was excellent, but I think it is fair to pose the questions.
The next question one might ask is why I tweeted those questions at that time. Well, I attended the hearing at which Boris Johnson gave his evidence, and I was there for the whole period. When he gave his evidence, the Committee had a quasi-judicial role. He had to raise his right hand and swear an oath, and he did. Some of the Committee’s members—I will not single out any individuals because some of them are very close friends of mine—behaved with absolute dignity and professionalism, but one turned his back on Boris Johnson as he gave evidence, another gasped in frustration and two looked heavenwards, as if to accuse him of being a liar. If it were a court of law, and we have heard that it was not, the judge would have called the jury to order.
Of course it was not a court of law, but when a witness comes along and swears the oath and a group of individuals give judgment, I would call it a court of law. I simply make the point that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. Certainly on the day the evidence was given, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham pulled one of her faces, as she has just now. It is not in order to do that when taking evidence in a quasi-judicial role.
I simply suggest that members of a Committee sitting in a quasi-judicial role, whether it be the Privileges Committee, the Standards Committee or a hybrid Bill Committee, such as the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill Committee, are not all professional lawyers. Many of them are not. There is a very strong argument that they should be trained in how to take evidence when sitting in a quasi-judicial role, not just so that it is fair—it could be argued that it was not fair—but because, as I said earlier, justice needs to be seen to be done.
Most journalists who were present, as I was, did not feel on that day that justice was seen to be done. The Committee may well have come to the right conclusions. I did not vote against the Committee’s original conclusions —I personally thought the sentence was a little vindictive, but I certainly was not going to vote against the main findings—but it is important that a Committee sitting in a quasi-judicial role is seen to be acting in a fair and proper way.
Was there collusion in the timing of my tweet? No, there was not. It was provoked by the behaviour of the Committee when it took evidence from Boris Johnson, and I still stand by my comment. I will say that if, because I sent that tweet during the hearing, it intimidated any member of the Committee in any way, and if they thought I had acted to put pressure on them, I apologise.
Michael Fabricant
I do not think for one moment that I intimidated my hon. Friend, in any way, with my comment, but if I had—I use the subjunctive, not the indicative—of course I apologise because that would have been a breach of privilege, as we should not interfere with the proceedings of any Committee.
Alberto Costa
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. The report, with its annex, highlights a sample of some of the tweets. I note that he tweeted on 31 July 2022:
“Harriet Harman determined to ‘stitch up’ #Boris by changing rules of Privilege Committee kangaroo court.”
Does he now accept that referring to the Privileges Committee as a “kangaroo court” is wrong?
Michael Fabricant
I now regret giving way to my hon. Friend. I do not remember that tweet, but the answer is yes, I do.
My hon. Friend gives me the opportunity to say that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant)—I say “Rhondda” correctly because I speak Welsh—had the integrity to stand down after the tweets he sent. Of course, it is fair to say that the House of Commons approved the appointment of the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham as Chair of the Privileges Committee, but I wonder whether on reflection, given the comments she had made publicly, she might have said, “No, it is not appropriate for me to chair the Committee,” just as the hon. Member for Rhondda had.
I think I have now spoken enough. I believe the Committee attempts to behave with integrity, and I think it does behave with integrity. Whether it behaved without expressing some sort of prejudice beforehand is a moot point. Whether it was able to ignore prejudice is an interesting question, and one that historians may well ask in the future.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is a great privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris). Not for the first time, she has spoken with great integrity on an issue and opened my eyes to a slightly different point of view, and I am very grateful to her. May I echo her thanks to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the Chair of the Committee? Let me take her back to 2010, when I joined the House for the first time and she gave the new Members’ speech. She spoke of what a great privilege it is to be in this House and of its great standards. I recall those messages even now, 13 years later. I would like to disassociate myself from the comments of people here who would in any way wish to impugn her integrity, in this role or in any other while she has been in this House.
I have made it a rule not to participate in any of the somewhat introspective debates on privileges or standards to date, and I will probably wish that I had maintained that record by the end of these remarks. I am not a lawyer. I have not read, and have no desire to read, “Erskine May”. I am just a Member of Parliament and so I have to find my way along as we manage these rules. It is in that context that I hope Members of the House will listen to me.
I was inspired by the opening comments of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. In her well-chosen words, she summarised where the House as a whole—perhaps not everyone—is on this. As the shadow Leader of the House is now back in her place, may I mention that I was a bit in despair about her comments? I feel they opened her up to people having a perception, which she perhaps did not wish to convey, that there was some partisan benefit from those comments and that this was a party political issue and not in the round a matter for all MPs, regardless of their party. I will mention that again in a minute. I thank all members of the Committee. As has been said, being on it is not an easy appointment.
Richard Fuller
No, not yet; I may come back to my hon. Friend.
As a regular MP, for me, and I think for many, the habit or custom is that we accept standards or privileges reports in this House without contention. I feel that because I do not see all the evidence. I was not in there for the discussion, so I have to rely upon the good integrity of our colleagues who were. Therefore, it is rare that I would vote against; I broke a three-line Whip on Owen Paterson and I know that some colleagues in the House today did likewise. I had to swallow a lot of disagreement with the report on our former Prime Minister and vote for the report on Boris Johnson. To take the shadow Leader of the House back to this, it concerns me—it is a suspicion; I do not know this for a fact—that, on the last vote on Boris Johnson, a vote was engineered on the report and there was not a willingness for there to be a debate. May I caution hon. Members? I think that today’s sentiment is that we are going to have a good talk about this—we will agree and disagree—but there is not much willingness for us to engineer or to have a vote. We should look poorly upon any Member of this House who seeks to engineer a vote for partisan reasons.
Let me explain the depth of my concern about that. I wish to support all of what the Privileges Committee and the Standards Committee say—it is very important that we do that. However, we have increased the level of sanction available to those Committees, given the changes that were put through this House about eight or nine years ago on voter recall. We are giving those Committees not just the ability to judge our behaviour, but the sanction to remove someone from the House. That is another concern as to why we should not allow these processes to fall into partisan issues.
I am still confused—if I am honest, because I am not a lawyer—about the difference between interfering and opining, and about the definition of “impugning the integrity”. We say, “You know it when you see it; it has that sense that you sort of know.” So we have a self-regulating observation. My concern is that decisions on whether the Committee has been impugned are made by the Committee itself. It would decide whether it felt it had been impugned and then make that recommendation to us as a House of Commons to advise whether we agreed with it or not. However, if our habit is ordinarily to agree with the report, there is really no way to work out whether someone has been impugned or not. As may have been said in this House already, if we look through some of the specific examples—I understand that there are others—we see that some may not fit everyone’s definition of “impugning integrity”. Both in the phrasing and, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) said, in the fact that it does not accord in respect of the Standards Committee and the way it is interpreted, there are major issues with that part of this.
Parliamentary Services for MPs
Michael Fabricant Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of Parliamentary services for Members.
Before I get to the substance of my speech, it is worth referring to the Administration Committee’s meeting earlier this week with officers of the parliamentary contributory pension fund—we regularly meet the House’s excellent Officers. The fund’s documentation is almost impenetrable to normal human beings. It is 284 pages long, and those who started reading it 10 years ago are about halfway through. The officers tried their best, but the upshot of our informative meeting was a joint letter from the chairmen of the 1922 committee and the parliamentary Labour party asking the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for greater clarity on the technicalities of the McCloud judgment. That is how the Administration Committee makes progress on a weekly basis.
We are debating House services, and I will focus most of my remarks on the Administration Committee’s report, published yesterday, “Smoothing the cliff edge: supporting MPs at their point of departure from elected office.” Before I move into the substance of the report, it is important that I thank the Clerks who wrote the report and gathered the evidence. I have been a Select Committee Chair for 10 years, and it is remarkable that, wherever I go, I am always given the best Clerks. I said to my wife, “What is it about me that means I always get the best Clerks in the House of Commons?” And she said, “It’s because you require close management.” I am not sure that is entirely what I wanted to hear, but I have wonderful Clerks. All Clerks in this House serve us brilliantly, day in and day out.
I am alive to the public and media cry that we need better MPs. We have heard the cry in its various guises: “We need better MPs,” “All MPs are rubbish” and so on. When I was in business before coming to the House, I always welcomed conversations with colleagues who said, “We need to make this company more profitable.” That was not the end of the conversation but the beginning: “Okay, so we need to make the business more profitable. How will we do it?” If people genuinely want better MPs, that is the start of the conversation and we need to ask ourselves how we will do it. That is what the Administration Committee—we have members of the Committee in the Chamber today—set its mind to doing when we embarked on this report. The Committee started taking evidence about four months ago.
Most members of the Administration Committee have a business background, which is a hugely valuable resource. We learned and appreciated that Parliament is in a war for talent, and it is an employer like any other. If we want to attract some of the best and brightest 30 and 40-year-olds from their successful careers, we need to compete with business, academia, science, the arts, healthcare and education. All these wonderful careers are now not just nationally focused but internationally focused. These talented young people are working on not only a national stage but an international stage. We need to convince them that a vocation in Parliament is worth undertaking. That is now very difficult because, increasingly, a vocation in Parliament is linked to career jeopardy.
I speak to young people on both sides of the political divide—Labour and Conservative, and Scottish National party when I am up in Scotland—and they say, “That’s all very well, Charles, but we love what we do. We love to discuss politics and think about politics, but you would be mad to think that we will step out of our career to take part in politics.” I hear that too often.
As we move towards the 100-hours-a-week MP, where we expect Members of Parliament to focus every waking hour solely on their constituency, the gap between the career they have left, their vocation in Parliament and their future career—the difficulty of accessing and reintegrating with a career—becomes wider and wider. That is what we start to address in our report.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I spoke to you earlier while you were in the Chair. Every single Member is prepared to make sacrifices to serve their constituents. Some of those sacrifices are very large, and some of them are far too large. I look across at the shields on the Opposition side of the Chamber, which I know will soon be joined by another shield on the Government side of the Chamber.
We address that career cliff edge in this report. Wherever people come to Parliament from—Scotland, Wales or England; Labour or Conservative—they serve their constituents with diligence and with every ounce of energy, but there is a career cliff edge when they leave this place. Employers say, “It is all very well that you’ve been a Member of Parliament, but what skills do you have? What can you bring to our company? You are all very remote, aren’t you? That’s what we read in the newspapers.” We need to address that, because we want people who serve here to be able to take their amazing skills—I will address the skills that people secure in this place—to future employers.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
It has been a great pleasure to serve on my hon. Friend’s Committee. Does he agree that, for Members of Parliament, there is a difference between working here and working in a company? Generally, one leaves a company either because one has not performed well and is sacked or because one chooses to make a different career choice. Many people leave this place not because they have behaved improperly or because they did not do the work well, but because the general tide of national politics sees them go. We saw that in 2019, when many good Labour MPs lost their seats. That was not a reflection on them, just a reflection of the national tide. Is that not why we have a duty of care to these people?
Sir Charles Walker
My hon. Friend makes a fantastic point that gets to the crux of the report. I was going to say that he encapsulates the report in a short sentence, but it was a brief intervention of more like three sentences. I will address his points more directly in a moment.
We did not just sit down and write this report. I did not grab a pen, drag my colleagues into a room and say, “Let’s just write a report. Let’s put down on paper the first thing that pops into our heads.” No, we went out and consulted academics, leading headhunters, outplacement specialists, retired senior Army officers and senior officials from Sport England. We went out and talked to people who know how to transition people from one all-encompassing vocation or career to another, and they all said that the way an institution treats people at their point of departure impacts that institution’s ability to recruit bright and talented people. That is because people watch this place closely now—30, 40 and 50-year-olds watch closely—and they know what is going on here. We also took evidence from former colleagues, who, as my hon. Friend said, largely lost their seats through no fault of their own.
Although we have a wonderful parliamentary democracy in so many ways, it does not score highly when it comes to the way it treats departing Members, so the Committee came up with a number of key recommendations, and I will go through them briefly—our report is actually brilliantly short, and while many Select Committee reports are 200 pages, ours is a little more than 50.
First, Members of Parliament should be preparing to leave this place from the day they arrive. That is a really difficult thing to get your head around. When I was elected in Broxbourne and handed the envelope that the winning candidate gets, I went white with fear, but never once did it occur to me that I would ever leave this place. Now I have announced that I am going, and I am preparing for my departure, but I wish I had thought about it a little harder over the past 17 years.
I am lucky, because I am leaving voluntarily, from what is notionally a safe seat, although if we read Electoral Calculus at the moment, that may not be the case. The average tenure of a Member of Parliament is nine years, but this is an uncertain career and vocation. However, even if a Member of Parliament serves for just one Session —for two, three, four or five years—they build up a huge skillset: mediating, negotiating, communicating and dispute resolution, to name just four. The Committee’s report suggests that those skills are not just captured but accredited by top-flight universities—in a sense, they are micro-qualifications. In this busy and complicated world, those are just the types of skills that industry needs. Members of Parliament are brilliant at juggling a whole range of complex issues and seeing a way through quickly. I am talking not just about those at ministerial level, but about what we do day in, day out with competing interests in our constituencies. So there is the issue of micro-accreditation and micro-qualifications.
Secondly, Members of Parliament must have access to ongoing career advice while they are here, and to outplacement services before, during and after their point of departure. That is absolutely critical. When I say “point of departure”, I do not mean the ballot box—I do not mean just those MPs who lose at the ballot box in a general election. I mean that all Members of Parliament need access to good, ongoing career advice and outplacement services. Again, the Committee did not make that up; it is what all the expert witnesses told us. They said, “You need to support people out of one workplace into another.”
Thirdly—there is no way of dodging this for an easy life, and I do not want an easy life—there should be better financial support for those leaving Parliament. Winding up a parliamentary office with tens of thousands of bits of casework does not take a couple of months; it can take many months. The way we financially support leaving Members is, again, an area where we score really badly. We score really badly against the Scottish Parliament. We score really badly against the Senedd in Wales. We score badly against almost every major, mature western democracy.
Let me put this into perspective. Since I announced I was leaving, I have had—possibly this is a slightly made-up number, because I have not kept a close record—511 conversations with people who know that I am leaving. Two of those were extremely positive: “Oh my word, Charles, you’re leaving. You’re going to be a huge success at whatever you do.” The other 509 have been, “Oh my word, what the hell are you going to do when you leave? What can you do?” It will be no surprise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, because you know these two people, that the two positive conversations were with my mother and my wife. The other 509 were with people who are quite worried for my future welfare. It is that difficult. I am smiling, but I am making a serious point.
Although I cannot prove this, I suspect that some, although by no means all, long-serving Members of Parliament would love to leave, but are frightened and put off leaving because of the financial uncertainty—the financial cliff edge—and the career cliff edge they will face if they do go. With perhaps six months’ resettlement grant and some outplacement advice and career advice, we could actually free up seats, which would be to the benefit of those who want to leave and certainly to the benefit of their constituents.
The Committee’s fourth key recommendation—it makes me extremely sad that we had to make it—is to do with the security of Members of Parliament. In most cases, when you leave this place the personal risk to you—I mean you, Mr Deputy Speaker, as well as me and all colleagues in this place—diminishes very quickly. However, for some it does not. In the past, as soon as someone ceased to be a Member of Parliament, responsibility for their security was handed to his or her local police force. That is not ideal. We took some powerful evidence in private from Members of Parliament and ex-Members of Parliament who faced an ongoing and real risk. I was really pleased that we had the head of House security before us, and we are definitely going to do something on this issue—and we need to.
Fifthly and finally—there are more recommendations after five, but this is the final one in my speech—we need to give MPs better advice throughout each Parliament about Dissolution, winding up their offices, the expectations placed on them, the expectations they can place on the House, and the support services they will be able to access. All those things need to be thought about. I know we do not like to think about leaving, but we must have the opportunity to think about it and to understand what is expected of us and what we can expect of the House. Provision for that needs to be updated on a six-month basis and regularly notified to not just Members of Parliament but their office managers.
I want to touch on something briefly. There was a sentence in the report—I think the shadow Leader of the House knows where I am going with this, because I can see her smiling—suggesting that Members of Parliament should receive a medallion from the Speaker in recognition of their service to democracy. This has been positioned as a medal of the type that changes one’s name or means one gets letters after one’s name, but that is not what we are suggesting; this is about workplace recognition. A decade ago, I was awarded the president’s medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It gives me no standing anywhere, and it does not mean that I get to the front of the queue anywhere. It gives me huge personal pleasure and satisfaction to know that the royal college recognised my contribution to mental health, and I may just wear it if I am invited to one of its events. That is what I meant, and what the report and my colleagues on the Committee meant, about a medallion of service. It is something that we could be presented with by the Speaker, and that would mean something to us.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
I was fascinated by the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) about the transparency of this organisation, because in many ways it is not transparent. I rather suspect that she has been waiting a long time for the opportunity to say all those things. I am not sure that I agree with all of them, but her point that this place must have transparency was very clear. All of us on the Administration Committee feel frustration at times with the fact that when we do not agree with something, we let it be known, and the Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), lets it be known, but then it happens anyway. That sometimes causes members of the Committee, and members of the Finance Committee, to think, “Why are we even serving on the Committee?” But you know what, Mr Deputy Speaker, that does not actually have anything to do with the report. The report, which the Chairman spoke about in so much detail, is entitled: “Smoothing the cliff edge: supporting MPs at their point of departure from elected office”.
A lot of praise has been heaped, quite rightly, on all the people who work here. At the risk of being accused of gross sycophancy, I am going to mention the Whips on both sides of the House. I think people outside this place think that all the Whips do is impose discipline, but that is not the case. What they do is partly HR with attitude, as a former Whip once put it. They are also, talking about my former career, the floor managers of this place. If it were not for the Whips—I am looking at Labour, Conservative and SNP Whips—people would not turn up on time and debates would not finish on time. Mr Speaker and Mr Deputy Speaker might try to arrange that, but they are in the Chair. It is the Whips who go scurrying around, making phone calls and sending messages to ensure that Ministers and shadow Ministers are there on time for the work to be done. I am only singling them out because they were not mentioned in all those marvellous comments that my hon. Friend—he should be right honourable—spoke about.
This is an odd place. We want to get people of the finest ability to work here and there are many different types of people who come here. My hon. Friend talks about the loud and the raucous. Occasionally, it is rather nice to be loud and raucous in this place. When I first became an MP—I joined at the same time as you, Mr Deputy Speaker—I remember standing up in the Chamber and giving one or two earnest speeches and asking one or two earnest questions. A marvellous former Member of Parliament in the Press Gallery, Matthew Parris, then a sketch writer for The Times, said, “Michael, why are you like this in the Chamber? You must never forget that this place is theatre. Be theatrical, make your points. Be yourself.” And since I have done that, I have never been promoted! [Laughter.] No, no, I have. It is important that people should be themselves, but we have to be able to attract them in the first place.
Sir Charles Walker
My hon. Friend is raucous and wonderful, but he also does himself a great disservice. He is an expert in technology and has a background in radio. The Committee works so much better for having someone who knows not just how to plug in a PC, but how turn it on.
Michael Fabricant
This is turning into a mutual admiration society, but what is wrong with that occasionally, Mr Deputy Speaker? It is all about friendship, too. That is important in this place.
It is true, and I raised this point with my hon. Friend when he gave his excellent and passionate speech, that we have a duty of care to one another generally in society—there is such a thing as society—and we have a duty of care to Members of Parliament. I was there, I think, for all the evidence sessions—correct me if I am wrong—but reading the report again, drawn up by excellent Clerks, one becomes aware of how distraught and empty people are when they leave here in an involuntary way. Sometimes people leave voluntarily, as my hon. Friend is doing, as in any other organisation. Sometimes they leave because they have performed so badly here that the electorate decide to get rid of them. But more often than not they leave simply because of a national swing which is no fault of the individual Member of Parliament.
There is a rather lovely quote in the report:
“For some Members, coming to terms with their departure, whether through choice or not, could be similar to the grieving process. Dame Jane Roberts told us how ‘That loss…is akin to grief. That is true about all work but…leaving Parliament involves an intensity of emotion that does not often apply to other jobs’. She noted in her research how the majority of those that she had interviewed ‘had grieved the loss of political office in some way, often intensely. In adjusting to a very different life, most had experienced a sense of dislocation. They had initially struggled to find a new narrative about who they were and what they did, and a number had struggled to find employment.’”
It is not that these people are unemployable, as I sometimes say, or that they came here only because they could not get a job anywhere else; it is that if they have dedicated their life to a political ideal or to helping others, they will be emotionally invested in this place. Because of that investment, the movement away—the wrench—is as extreme as a torn muscle or worse, or the bereavement of losing a close relative.
Nick de Bois, a former Member of Parliament, told us:
“Sensitivity is lacking in the whole process.”
We heard evidence of people turning up and being told that they had to clear their office within two weeks. We know why—they have been replaced, and the House authorities have to decide how to deal with the House’s property—but when someone loses their seat after being here for many years, being expected to clear their office is a huge burden when they are grieving over the loss of a lifestyle.
What about staff? We heard evidence from staff who were completely at a loss as to whether they would be able to get a job with another MP. Colleagues already know all this, but it is worth saying. You never know: somebody might read Hansard. Many years ago, a former Chief Whip—a great friend of mine who is now in another place, with whom I had dinner last night, as it happens—said to me, absolutely rightly, “Michael, if you want to keep a secret, say it in a speech in this place and it’ll still be a secret.”
Assuming that somebody will actually read this speech, however, let me say in case people do not realise it that it is Members of Parliament who choose their staff. Members’ staff are imbued with huge trust: trust that they will keep constituents’ secrets and trust in how they help Members. What if there is a big change? In 2019, there were staff who had worked really hard for Labour Members, and it would have been difficult for them to get a job with a Conservative MP. We have a duty of care to them, as well as to Members of Parliament.
One Member said:
“You come out of an election when you are losing the thing that you have given your life to, for however many years. I have taken that as an experience of how I would not want to treat my employees today. It was an experience of what not to do rather than what to do. You immediately had your pass removed. You had to be escorted everywhere, whether it is around that centre or around the building. At moments, it felt like you were a criminal.”
Nick de Bois said that there is
“a huge gap that…the party needs to address”.
I think it is a gap that the House of Commons needs to address. He also said that
“you are cut off overnight. Your phone stops ringing pretty quickly”—
actually, to me that would be a relief. He went on to say:
“Friends are there, but there is not the support that some colleagues need.”
Dame Maria Miller
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about the impact on departing Members. Does he share my concern that that impact, which he is describing so eloquently, may also be a massive disincentive for right-minded people to stand for election? As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) has been saying, we need to attract the brightest and the best to this place, but such people generally do not want to set themselves up to fail, or to be in an environment where they may end up being treated in not the most respectful way.
Michael Fabricant
I agree with my right hon. Friend, up to a point. I would argue that the problem is not one of people coming to this place, because they came to this place knowing that it was a risk. You do not become a Member of Parliament thinking you are here as of right. What concerns me more is that people who come here should think that they will be treated decently and that their staff will be treated decently, and that means being treated with kindness and compassion.
That brings me back to something that impressed me hugely. The duty of care is a great principle in English law: “Neither through action nor through inaction should someone cause someone else to be damaged.” We heard about it from members of the armed forces who gave evidence to the Committee.
Michael Fabricant
My hon. and gallant Friend wishes to intervene, and I will let him do so in a moment.
Those members of the armed forces talked about the continuing treatment that people who join the forces are given right from the very beginning. The Chairman of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, also talked about that in his excellent speech. It is the sort of treatment that we should be giving MPs, and perhaps their staff as well—again, right from the very beginning. We should be giving them knowledge that they can use when they eventually leave, and we all leave at some point. What was it that Enoch Powell said? I am looking at my friends on the Front Bench now! “All political careers end in failure.” It may not be true, but I think it probably is: “failure” in the sense that one leaves a ministerial career eventually.
James Sunderland
I commend my hon. Friend for his outstanding and thought-provoking speech. As Members will know, I served for a long time in Her Majesty’s forces—in the Army—and then left at very short notice to become an MP.
I will be honest: at times I have grappled with comparisons between the two organisations in which I have served. I think that Members do sometimes behave badly here— perhaps there is a lack of team spirit, perhaps people are uncompromising, perhaps people do not behave in the right way—but I am absolutely convinced of the sanctity of what politicians do, and I am also clear in my mind that the vast majority of Members on both sides of the House behave impeccably, are here for the right reasons and always operate in good faith. So my question to my hon. Friend is this: how do we convince people more broadly that politicians are a force for good? How do we convince them that we are here doing a very important job, that we work very hard, and that, actually, our intent, most of the time, is pure and honourable?
Michael Fabricant
I have an answer to that question, deep as it was. Stop watching Prime Minister’s Question Time; instead, watch parliamentlive.tv, and see the work that goes on in Committees and in debates like this, among others. Often there is huge consensus and co-operation between the parties on either side of the House.
The other day, I was present when some legislation was going through Parliament. The Liberal Democrats had tabled an amendment, and it was not a bad amendment, and we accepted it. I was rather amused, I have to say, that the Liberal Democrats looked more shocked than we were. They all started waving their Order Papers as if it were a victory—but the victory was that they had come up with a good idea and the Government had said, “Yes, it is a good idea. We will incorporate it in law.” And they did. That is the sort of thing that people need to see: that Parliament is a thoughtful place, and that on the whole, as my hon. Friend has just said, we strive to work together, and we strive to do what is best for the British people, and indeed for others, too, outside the United Kingdom, whether it be in war-torn Ukraine or in developing countries elsewhere in the world.
Nevertheless, the House has a duty of care to ensure that Members of Parliament can do their job as best they can by restructuring the existing systems, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke so marvellously explained, and by attracting people here by showing care for the time when they will eventually leave this place. The Daily Mail, and one or two other newspapers and one or two broadcasters were saying, “This report says we should be giving hundreds of thousands of pounds to Members of Parliament when they leave.” No, the report does not say that. But redundancy rules do exist for ordinary companies and for those who work in the civil service. For all the reasons I have explained, our job is far more volatile than those careers, because we can lose our job for reasons that have nothing to do with our own ability, or lack thereof.
Our redundancy payments should be the same as those in other sectors. Is that unreasonable? The press might say so; I would say it is just natural justice, and that is all the report asks for. I hope that people will read it and that the House of Commons Commission—we do not know what exactly it gets up to—reads it. I hope that Mr Speaker, who is very imaginative and for whom I have the highest respect, reads it. More importantly, though, I hope that something is done about it.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
We come now to the Front-Bench contributions, starting with Deidre Brock.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker) and the rest of the Administration Committee on securing this debate. It really is important that Members have an opportunity to reflect on how we can best ensure that the House’s services and facilities are equipped to help us carry out our roles as representatives of our constituents and as legislators. My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), who is a member of the Administration Committee, is very sorry that she is unable to be here today herself.
Some might wonder why an SNP Member is concerned about the running of this Parliament, when one considers the fact that our dearest wish is to be away from it as soon as we possibly can be. However, we have to serve our constituents to the very best of our abilities, and we of course want to see addressed anything that might constrain that or reduce that impact.
Michael Fabricant
The hon. Lady mentioned her colleague who could not be here; the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) is a superb example of what my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) asked about. She provides huge amounts of information and ideas to the Administration Committee. Regardless of whether she is SNP, Labour, Conservative or whatever, we all love her and wish she could be here today. That shows the degree of constructive co-operation that goes on among the parties in this place.
Deidre Brock
Well, I will certainly make sure that my hon. Friend hears that comment. I know she will be pleased that her efforts are appreciated. She is a very effective parliamentarian, as the hon. Gentleman knows, and would always be intent on making sure that services run as effectively as possible. I am sure she appreciates the admiration expressed by the hon. Gentleman and, I am sure, by other Committee members as well.
The hon. Member for Broxbourne spoke of the importance of holding this conversation about improving not just House services, but the quality of representation and, indeed, representatives for our constituents. He made the fair point that this place needs to be aware of the competition it faces from so many other sectors in today’s world. He spoke about the uncertainty of this role and the fact that that can prove unattractive, as well as about the skills needed for the role, from spinning lots of plates to diplomatic skills—for most of us, anyway. He also touched on security, which I agree is a vital issue, particularly in the light of the dreadful circumstances of the deaths of two Members of this House in recent years.
The hon. Member for Broxbourne mentioned the provision of better advice for Members. The information available to Members on how this place works has improved vastly, even since I was elected in 2015. I thank all the House staff for their long and hard work on that. I spent some time being interviewed by them and passing on my thoughts, and I know that many other Members have done so as well. I know that the staff are looking to make even further improvements to that information. The workings of this place can be really quite impenetrable at times, so the information is a really big help to anyone coming here for the first time, and I am pleased to see that that work will continue.
I agree with the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) about the need for more transparency around the decisions of the House’s Committees, including the suggestion that Members should be elected to posts. It will be interesting to see how that conversation develops and how that might actually work, especially when it comes to ensuring that we get sufficient numbers of Members interested in taking on those roles. As I know from the work of the Administration Committee, there is quite a lot of work involved. We need only look at the work in the report, and the reports from previous Committees, to see what is involved. She also talked about the need for greater scrutiny of the House of Commons Commission to increase insight into what happens behind closed doors.
I am on the Commission myself and wish to pay tribute to Mr Speaker and his team for the focus that they bring to the work. I know that he is intent on further professionalising the Commission and the work that it does, which is really starting to pay off—certainly from what I have seen in the short time that I have been on the Commission—especially on things such as the recent report from Lord Morse, the recommendations of which were accepted by the Commission.
Thangam Debbonaire
I agree that commissioners should always strive to improve how we conduct our business. An interesting point of tension could arise because those domestic Committees advise us, so I will look at the right hon. Lady’s proposal in more detail. We might need to work out the lines of accountability. I thank her for that intervention.
Michael Fabricant
I will not be quite as philosophical or learned as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller). I will simply say that given this is a sort of Oscar ceremony where we are praising everyone—I already praised the Whips—we should also mention the Serjeant at Arms department, which looks after the work in the Chamber. People do not realise that it also looks after security within the boundaries of the Palace of Westminster.
Thangam Debbonaire
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that. It might have been the In-House Services team that I had not yet mentioned, and I am happy to concur. As well as having a bit of a love-in today, some of us have offered challenges to one another and to those House services that we love and respect but also need sometimes to improve.
I want to finish by saying that we thank them all. We should all strive for improved services for Members because it is in the interests of the public, of democracy and of the constituents we serve. That may mean looking at how we support Members who are leaving or working out whether we are taking care of our cleaners properly. I ask all Members to think about what we could do better, so that we can serve our constituents and, most of all, democracy to the best of our ability, and I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Standards: Code of Conduct and Guide to the Rules
Michael Fabricant Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
I take the point that the hon. Lady makes, but will she not accept that the Opposition deliberately sought to conflate the two issues of Owen Paterson’s guilt and that of procedure? I voted against the procedure; I was not voting on whether Owen Paterson was guilty or not.
Thangam Debbonaire
I cannot answer for the hon. Gentleman’s decision-making process, but I note considerable dissent in various parts of the House.
Concluding that an existing structure and process had delivered an undesirable outcome, the Government seem to have believed that the structure and the outcome must be at fault, not the person involved, and decided to change the process when it was nearly complete to try to get a different outcome. I am afraid that that is the backdrop. The resulting vote caused chaos.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
The former Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), might want to speak before me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but that is at your discretion. Thank you very much for calling me to speak.
It is important that the House understands that the Committee on Standards recognises what a huge amount of anxiety and tension the regulation of standards in the House of Commons can cause. The vast majority of Members strive—I was going to say “manfully”, but womanfully as well—to uphold the seven principles of public life and our standards, and to observe the rules. When I first joined the Committee, I was struck by how different the conversation is within the Committee from the conversation outside. I have argued forcefully that we need a much more intensive engagement and understanding between the Committee and Members so that the conversations in the Tea Room about what our code of conduct means are supportive and constructive, rather than fearful and about “How do I just stay out of trouble?” I am afraid that quite a lot of the conversation is about that.
The shadow Leader of the House would acknowledge that something that came out of last year’s debacle was the appeals process. The main contention at the time was that there was not a sufficient appeals process. There was a form of appeal, but when we had it reviewed by a retired judge, Sir Ernest Ryder, who looked at our processes and their compliance with article 6 of the European convention on human rights, it was found that our system could be made substantially better by introducing a completely separate appeal process. Had that appeal process existed last year, I do not think the debacle would have happened.
Michael Fabricant
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I totally agree with what he says. It was the appeals process that many of us objected to and, additionally, the fact that the commissioner gave her view on that case before the inquiry had begun. As it happened, I agreed with her view, but it is not for a judge to state it beforehand. That was, I think, the objection of most of us.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
My hon. Friend touches on a key change, which is that in the serious cases that come to the Committee on Standards, the commissioner will now present her findings, but will not present a conclusion. It will be for the Committee to adjudicate on the conclusion, and then for the subject of the inquiry to appeal that conclusion on various grounds to an Independent Expert Panel. That is a significant improvement, and it should significantly reduce the anxiety that Members felt about the system before.
There are only two other points I wish to make about the areas of contention. First, I argued very strongly for the changes to the descriptors of the seven principles of public life, because the bald descriptors of the seven principles on the Committee on Standards in Public Life website are difficult to translate into what we actually do as MPs. For example, selflessness—how do you become an MP if you are completely selfless? You have to advance your own interests. How do you have influence as an MP, unless you advance your own interests and you advance your publicity? Navigating selflessness as a Member of Parliament is a complicated business, and to anybody who says that it is easy to apply the seven principles of public life to all our activities, I say no. We are navigating a difficult landscape where we are constantly beset by conflicting values that we have to reconcile, and the idea is that these revised descriptors will help inform the conversation.
The idea that these descriptors will have a chilling effect on the free speech of Members is a nonsense, because the descriptors themselves have no force in the rules whatever. They simply are there for information and conversation and to help Members to think about how we apply the seven principles of public life. Indeed, any Member who has fallen foul of the rules who could argue in front of the commissioner, “Here are the seven principles of public life, and here are the descriptors, and I felt I was following these principles”, would certainly have a mitigation, in that they had thought about the principles they were seeking to uphold, but nevertheless had fallen foul of the rules. These descriptors are completely innocuous. They are designed to help Members, and I cannot for the life of me understand why the Government have decided to object to them. I do not understand the argument that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has presented.
We did not argue long and hard over the question of the declaration of ministerial interests. We would not be having this conversation if we had the situation described by my right hon. Friend, with timely, publicly accessible and regular declarations of ministerial interests on a par with the declarations that Members—non-Ministers —have to make as a matter of course in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I wish that we were not in this situation.
I have listened carefully to what my right hon. Friend has said, and I will listen further to the debate. I hope she is saying that this will be sorted out and that, in response to my earlier intervention, we will finish up with a member of the public being able to see on one register all the interests relating to that Member of Parliament, whether a Minister or not. I quite understand the anxiety about dual adjudication of the code and of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. We do not want to get into a situation where—I do not think this is accurate, by the way—there is anxiety that the Parliamentary Commissioner will somehow be adjudicating on matters that are strictly for the ministerial code.
I will listen to this debate. I have added my name to the relevant amendment, but I may well conclude that if the Government need the time to sort this out, we should give them that time, and this would not be some dereliction or watering down of standards. I appreciate that the shadow Leader of the House has to make her points on behalf of the official Opposition, for perhaps not entirely selfless reasons. However, as long as we finish up with both sets of interests being declared within 30 days and the ability to have them all in one place on one website, so that any member of the public or journalist can see exactly what interests are being declared in the name of that Member, we would be in a much better place. I wish we could do that by agreement rather than by dividing the House, but I do not know that we can.
Business of the House
Michael Fabricant Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Mark Spencer
The hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to raise that matter at Women and Equalities questions next Thursday, and he would be right to do so. We have a proud record on women’s education around the world and the Prime Minister is a huge champion of that. We in the UK are leading on it and will continue to do so.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to Ukraine and the situation with Russia, and I will try to assist him with that. His other point was that it is important to recognise that there are other challenges around the world. A lot of our focus at the moment appears to be on Ukraine, but we must not forget other parts of the world that have challenges with which we can help and assist.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Two and a half weeks ago, the Independent Expert Panel produced a report on the activities of John Bercow in which more than 21 incidents of bullying of staff members of this House were proven. For eight years that cast a dark shadow over this place, and when whistleblowers, including myself, tried to raise it in the Chamber, we were shouted down. Indeed, on one occasion, a former Labour Leader of the House came up to me and told me that it was inappropriate even to mention the subject in this Chamber.
I am slightly disappointed that since the report came out we have not had a statement on it from the Leader of the House and, in particular, about what future safeguards we can put in for after you have left, Mr Speaker. I hope you stay for a long time—[Interruption.] I do! However, if another unscrupulous Speaker—a serial liar, a serial bully—were to replace you, something must be put in place to stop what happened last time. When will we hear about some initiatives from our Leader of the House?
Mark Spencer
The answer is: right now. To be clear, there is no place for bullying or harassment in Parliament and MPs should be held to the highest standards. That is why the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme was set up to improve the working culture in Parliament. I hope that the decision of the ICGS gives all people in Westminster the confidence that if they come forward their cases will be heard fairly and that those who commit such actions will be held to account.
Committee on Standards
Michael Fabricant Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and this is one of the key things that the Committee will be asked to look at, to see whether it can clarify the interpretation on the whistleblowing exemption.
Let me return to Standing Order No. 150, which appears to provide a mechanism for the investigation of contentious cases that respects natural justice, ensures that legal counsel is appointed, is appropriate for what is a quasi-judicial process, and introduces significant checks and balances into the investigation, such as the appointment of a separate member by the Speaker to act as an assessor and the right of the Member being investigated to call witnesses and be able to examine other witnesses, rather than leaving this to the discretion of the Commissioner. In a case where so many witnesses and so many Members have made their concerns known, it is unfortunate that the Commissioner did not appoint such a panel. Indeed, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Committee on Standards have never opted to use this mechanism, despite having had many contentious cases before them.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Some 17 individuals have come forward saying that they wish to give oral evidence, but that was refused. Is not the point that, whether or not someone is guilty of paid advocacy, there must be justice and that justice must be seen to be done? In this case, many right-minded people would say that justice has not been seen to be done.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am sure that the Committee we are setting up will want to consider the appearance of witnesses and whether that ought to be a fundamental right of people accused of serious cases—
Mr Rees-Mogg
The point is that there was this facility to set up an investigatory panel, which was not used. It would have been able to see all the witnesses that my right hon. Friend wanted.
Michael Fabricant
Is not the point on natural justice in this country about the ability to cross-examine witnesses? Is it not the case that written evidence is not the sort of evidence that can be cross-examined?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Mr Speaker, my hon. Friend has made a mini-speech very pithily.
Dame Andrea Leadsom
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. We have worked together on this for many years. I must make clear to her that the amendment is not looking at the independent complaints and grievance scheme. As I have set out, that was established under a cross-party review, and it had all the laws of natural justice taken carefully into account in its establishment.
Today’s amendment is an opportunity to review the process for fairness, natural justice and impartiality in the system that oversees Members of Parliament. The review is proposed to take place within three months from today, at which time the specific case can be brought back to the House for reconsideration.
Dame Andrea Leadsom
I will just finish, because time is pressing. A colleague texted me today to say:
“Achieving change in this place is tough, but today’s amendment could lead to a standards system that is fairer for all. It is so sad that it takes a tragedy for the House to act.”
There is never a right time to act, but let us please do our best for fairness and support the amendment today.
Independent Expert Panel Recommendations for Sanctions and the Recall of MPs Act 2015
Michael Fabricant Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
I said to the hon. Lady—not sufficiently sotto voce, apparently—“No doubt you’ll be voting on party political lines for the Labour amendment?”
Jess Phillips
Absolutely not. We have just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, who is highly respected on this issue, that that will not be the case, and I have not been whipped to vote for the amendment, nor has any other Labour Member. So I would welcome my hon. Friend from Lichfield—we can be friends; his home is slightly north of mine—listening to what I am about to say and to what others have said and making a decision based on that.
I heard what the Leader of the House said about making this retrospective being bad for the people who come forward, and I take it in good faith that he says that with all meaning, but I have spoken to almost every single complainant in every single case in this House from the Conservative party, the Labour party—the Greens have got off lightly in this House; I have never had a complaint against the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas)—the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats, and I have never heard that echoed by any of them. In fact the exact opposite is the case: there is the appalling feeling among those who have come forward that people just get away with it. I have read through every single word of any report released by the ICGS; it is a brilliant panel whose members are learned, capable, thoughtful and absolutely without question fair, but anyone who thinks they would send one of their most vulnerable constituents into a surgery in Delyn tonight has not read the report.
In the last few weeks I have repeatedly had to meet with one of my constituents, a 19-year-old girl who is going through a serious rape trial, and she needs me to tell her it is going to be okay; she needs me to say, “I’ll call you next week.” I hope no one in this House would think it acceptable for her to go and sit in front of a Member of Parliament who has been found, when a member of their staff sent them a text message to say they were struggling with mental distress, to have asked them if they wanted “fun times”.
It is unacceptable that we do not take a safeguarding role. There is nothing in any piece of legislation, whether perfect or not—and much of it is not—that allows me to safeguard that 19-year-old rape victim in north Wales. That is the fundamental point here, and I agree that the amendment is not perfect—although my constituents who pay the bedroom tax will be delighted to hear that people do not think retrospective legislation should apply to them.
Michael Fabricant
I am listening to my hon. Friend with great interest, but it is a little unfair to start drawing a comparison with rape, because whatever we might think of the individual concerned no one has accused him of rape.
Jess Phillips
Nobody made that connection until the hon. Gentleman just stood up. What I said was that it is unacceptable because that person would have nowhere to go. The reality is that someone who is vulnerable is not going to come forward to somebody who has used vulnerabilities for their own ends. I am simply using an example; I could use any example, but that is a case I have been dealing with and I would not be able to say that that person should go to a surgery in Delyn.
I do not necessarily particularly like the retrospective nature of this—actually, I do not mind, because it was a loophole that should never have existed and we are all about to vote to say that it should not have existed, apart from in this instance. I do not believe that many people could stand here and say they would feel the same way if it involved their political party, and the vote today is not a political decision for me. I understand the concerns of the ICGS chairs, but it is not a political complaint that I am making: it is a moral one, and a safeguarding one that is needed to protect our House and our reputations, and to protect our constituents.
As we walk through the Lobby we have to ask ourselves if we are comfortable with how we are voting. Young women work in my offices here—and there are, by the way, people who were expelled because of this case: the two people who felt they could not work here anymore. People get expelled because of sexual harassment in this building all the time, but those people are the staff who can no longer go on because it is just not worth it. Then they cannot get a job with another Member of Parliament because they are told, “I’ll lean on your references”. I have heard that a few times from complainants in this place.
The truth is that the system was never perfect before and it still will not be perfect. As we go through and test it, we are going to find other things. Lots of us—I can see the faces of those who have been involved in this debate for the entire time that it has been going on—want to make it so that people feel confident and comfortable coming forward. The complainants, most of whom I have spoken to, do not like that we have left this as unfinished business. They want it finished, and retrospectivity will enable that to happen. For me, it is nothing to do with politics; it is to do with what is the right thing to do—what we would want for our children working anywhere, and what we would want for our constituents.
Points of Order
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Mr Speaker
Yes. [Interruption.] Order. That is a very reasonable point of order. The answer is that I reiterate that I am happy to look at that evidence, if that evidence exists.
Mr Speaker
I do not need the hon. Gentleman to chunter—[Interruption.] I do not need the intervention of the hon. Gentleman, which does not advance matters. What I say to the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), with courtesy, is that I have heard her point of order. I am willing to consider that evidence and I would come back on the matter, as advised by the Clerk, after the two statements to the House. That seems perfectly reasonable. We have two statements to follow. If the evidence exists, it can be looked at, and a response can be provided and we can take the matter from there, but it can perfectly reasonably wait and should sensibly do so until the two statements have been delivered to the House and questioning has taken place on them.
Privilege (Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Advice)
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Robert Courts
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In the middle of a negotiation, in any discussion that by necessity is high profile and tense, any disclosure of advice that might undermine a negotiator is clearly to be regretted. The Commission will have its legal advice, and we might like to see it, but there is a good reason why we cannot see it and why the Commission should not be able to see ours.
The Government are approaching this matter in a better way than the Opposition’s motion because, as hon. Members have mentioned, they have used an archaic procedure. It was not designed to deal with this situation. [Interruption.] I hear an hon. Member say the whole House is archaic. The whole House is old and historic and flexible, but this procedure has not been used for many years and is not designed for a matter of such sensitivity. It is designed for the production of documents, not legal advice
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
What does my hon. Friend think the Director of Public Prosecutions, say, might think if he were asked to give private legal advice that would then be made public?
Andrew Bowie
I am not here to debate these issues; I am here to point out the rank hypocrisy of SNP Members in putting their names to a motion demanding that this Government publish legal advice when they themselves have not done so on countless occasions, including, as my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) pointed out, recently when the Scottish Government’s Brexit Minister refused to publish their own legal advice for their continuity Bill. So I ask SNP Members what has changed: have they changed their minds on this, and do they believe now that it is in the interests of the country and of all Governments at every level—from here at Westminster to Holyrood to Cardiff to Belfast—to publish legal advice in full? If so, that is quite a change from where they were six years ago, and quite a change from where they were even six weeks ago, and it would lead to some interesting questions on the Floor of the Scottish Parliament.
Michael Fabricant
It seems to me that both the SNP and the former Director of Public Prosecutions are arguing that if Parliament passes a motion, even if it might not be in the public interest, the Government have to comply with that motion. Does it follow that if Parliament were to pass a motion that MI5 or MI6 were to open their files and make them public, the Government should naturally do that?
Treatment of House of Commons Staff
Michael Fabricant Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Andrea Leadsom
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his part in the working group; he assiduously attended meetings and took a full part in its work, and I am grateful to him for his contribution. He asks how an independent inquiry will be conducted: my intention is to make the proposal to the House Commission, and it will then be a matter for the Commission to agree whether to do that or not. The House Commission is made up of a number of Members from across the House, including one from the hon. Gentleman’s party. However, I would like to see the inquiry carried out by an independent individual who can hear from past and current members of staff of the House, so that person is free of any input from either employers or parliamentarians and people feel they can come forward in confidence.
I completely agree that it would be letting people down if we failed to deal with this, and it is vital that those who have past allegations who feel the time has passed for them to be dealt with seriously can achieve some closure by being able to come forward and be heard in that way. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is demeaning to this House and to all of us if we fail to get a grip on this, and that is why this House has shown such commitment to setting up an independent complaints and grievance policy, which is the right way forward.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
I welcome the Leader of the House’s statement. Does she agree that sometimes the accused can be victims, too, and that is why it is so important that we have an independent inquiry? Does she also agree that the House of Commons Commission would not be an independent judge or jury, and indeed would not be seen to be such, simply because of the very membership of that Commission, and that it does need to be an independent individual or group of individuals?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend raises an important point, and we were very conscious during the working group evidence sessions that it is important to protect both complainants, who are at the heart of the independent complaints procedure, and the alleged perpetrators. It is important that justice is seen to be done and that all parties are properly supported. My hon. Friend is also right that an inquiry led by the House Commission could not be independent, which is why my recommendation to the House Commission will be that it should be an independently led inquiry into allegations of bullying.
Restoration and Renewal (Report of the Joint Committee)
Michael Fabricant Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend makes two important points. One is that we do need to get on with it, and the second concerns the importance of planning for this. It is vital that we get good value for taxpayers’ money. Roughly, the projections show that we will be spending £90 million a year, of which roughly half will be throwaway once we get on with R and R, and the other half will be work that needs to be done anyway and will not be throwaway. They are the sorts of numbers we are looking at. We do need to get on and take a decision, but we must fully cost the best value for taxpayers’ money.
I have listened closely to the very real concerns expressed by colleagues—that in some way we might be forced out, never to return to this place. Both of today’s motions are intended to make it explicit that this is not, and will not be, the case. To put the matter beyond doubt, and recognising the depth of concerns from some colleagues, I am happy to confirm today that were the House to agree that we must take action now, the commitment to returning to the Palace will be enshrined in the legislation that the Government will subsequently introduce to set up the sponsor body and delivery authority. It will be on the face of the Bill, putting the matter beyond doubt.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend clarify something? If we adopt the idea of a delivery authority—I take the point my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) made about it being, in many ways, a no-brainer—will it not mean that in 18 months we get a simple “take it or leave it” decision? We will either accept what the delivery authority says or reject it completely. Would it not be better if the delivery authority did the proper costings he rightly said were needed so that we could then make an informed choice?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is exactly right: that is what the delivery authority would do. It would look at the best combination of options—value for taxpayers’ money along with the right solutions for the restoration and renewal of the Palace—and come back, in 12 to 18 months, with its recommended option, which would then be put to the House for a final “take it or leave it” vote.
Mr Speaker
I fear it may be a point of frustration, or perhaps a point of attempted clarification, but nevertheless let’s hear the fella.
Michael Fabricant
I do not think it is frustration. I think my right hon. Friend may have misunderstood a point I made in my lengthy question. Is it not the case that we will not be able to choose from a number of options put forward by the delivery authority, but will have either to accept its recommendation or to start from square one, which would not be satisfactory?
Mr Speaker
That was really an intervention without permission masquerading as a point of order, but never mind—we have heard it.
Valerie Vaz
I cannot look into the future, but I will address those points later.
Michael Fabricant
Does the hon. Lady understand the concern I raised with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House: if we leave it to the delivery authority, with just a few Members on it, and we end up with a take-it-or-leave-it decision to make, the final decision will in effect be made by the delivery authority, and not really by this House? I used to build radio stations and did a re-equip of Broadcasting House and other things, so I have some small experience in this, and in reality there will be choices to be made. Of course we want the data from the delivery authority, but this House should finally make the choice between a number of alternatives, not just have a take-it-or-leave-it one.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me his resumé. Perhaps he is suggesting that he should be on the sponsor body. Actually, it is the delivery authority, which has the experts on it, that will be accountable to the sponsor body. The sponsor body will have Members on it, and they will be the custodians and guardians of the project.