Risk-based Exclusion

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant). I think that I agree with most of what he said.

There is an old joke about asking directions where the answer is, “Don’t start from here.” Given a fair choice, I would not start with the motion in front of us, but I do support the idea that the House should be able to exclude somebody who has been accused of or charged with a serious offence. That is in the interests of the safety of the people who work here and visit here and of the reputation of the House, so I think I support the principle.

However, there are various issues with the actual motion we have in front of us. It appears to have been written for a process that should have applied when someone has been accused of something or arrested for something, but has ended up being applied when someone has actually been charged with something. If we were starting from scratch and saying, “What should we do if a Member is charged with a violent or sexual offence?” I am not sure we would come up with the process that we have here.

That was the logic of the amendments that I have tabled, which seek to say that if somebody has actually been charged in that situation, they should just be excluded until that process has been resolved either by the charges being dropped, or by them being acquitted or convicted. It is hard to see, based on the experience we have had of people choosing to self-exclude, that the panel would ever meet and choose not to exclude somebody who had been charged—that seems extraordinarily unlikely. So what is the advantage of having the panel in that situation? It would only add in some level of discretion and some risk that what is reported in public is that the House thinks this person has been charged with something so serious they have to be excluded, but that somehow we do not think this person is really guilty so they have not been excluded. That would taint the process to no advantage.

My suggestion is that, if the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) is not carried, and this process continues to apply solely on charge, we just scrap the panel completely and the person is excluded until the whole process is resolved. That is fairer, neater and more clearly understood and it would be a better situation to have. I wish this process could be a lot quicker and that getting from accusation through to arrest, to charge and to conviction or acquittal did not take a year or two years, because if it did not, this would not be such a significant process. Somebody would be out of Parliament for a few months at most, not a few years. However, that is not the world we appear to live in, and so having clarity, where everybody knows the position, would be better than having the panel.

I have a few other points. This House appoints Members to the Standards Committee and elects the Chair; what we have here is a more serious process where somebody can be excluded for a very long period, effectively by Members who have not been elected by the House for that purpose. We can argue that when the House selects Deputy Speakers to a very serious position, that is a reasonable part of their role, but I am not sure that the choice to have the third member—possibly the casting vote—be a member of the Commission is a sensible one.

The Commission is formed of a member of the Cabinet, a member of the shadow Cabinet, an SNP-appointed person and then three others appointed by the Government or the Opposition. We have generally tried to steer clear of having the Government exclude Members from Parliament—I think my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) would strongly agree—so that was a terrible choice for who the casting vote might be. It should have been the Liaison Committee, or a member of the Panel of Chairs, or somebody who is senior in the House and has had some kind of endorsement from the House, but is not tainted by being a Government appointee.

I think that in evidence to the Procedure Committee both the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House said they would not want to be on the panel in that situation, so now we are down to four members who could do that work. What if one of those members was accused? What if one of them was the victim? How would we form the panel? Perhaps, when we come to review this question in future we could find a better way of doing that.

My final point is on the proxy vote. It would have been fair enough, if we were applying this process at accusation or arrest, to say, “Well, somebody may not be guilty or even be charged with this, so to exclude them completely would be the wrong thing to do. Let’s at least give them their vote.” We have had a Parliament in recent memory with a very small majority, and an exclusion in such a situation could have changed the result of some votes, so I can see a logic for a proxy vote in that situation. But can anybody really see the logic of a proxy vote for somebody who has been charged?

We do not give proxy votes for people who are representing this House on other assemblies around the world; we do not give them to people who are on official House Select Committee visits or other official business. That we would give a proxy vote to someone who was in a courtroom, in the dock, on trial for rape, is ridiculous. If we believe acting at the point of charge is right, the Member should be excluded and have effectively no role until their name is cleared. If the hon. Member for North East Fife’s amendment is not carried, I urge Members to scrap the panel, which adds nothing and makes the situation worse, and not have a proxy vote. I think that would be a terrible tainting of the House’s reputation.