Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I, too, recognise the important role of the Commissioner for Standards in building and maintaining public confidence in the House and in Members’ conduct. The public sometimes understand the phrase, “an hon. Member” to be some sort of honorific or title that Members enjoy, but I often reflect to constituents or visitors to this place that it is an injunction to us as Members to conduct ourselves honourably and to live up to the highest standards in public life. Kathryn Hudson certainly impressed that responsibility on me and my colleagues on our election in 2015. On behalf of the Scottish National party, I pay tribute to her work over the years. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) mentioned some of the effective innovations, such as training. I thank Kathryn Hudson for all the help and support that she has provided to colleagues in her time as Commissioner and wish her all the very best for the future.

Kathryn Hudson’s successor is recommended by the House of Commons Commission. I thank our outgoing Member of the Commission, my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), for his work in recent years. This may be my best chance in the Chamber to pay tribute to my predecessor as SNP Chief Whip, Mike Weir. I thank him for all his wisdom, support, advice and friendship before and since the general election. I am conscious of having big shoes to fill and I am glad to have my hon. Friends the Members for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) and for Glasgow East (David Linden) to help me.

I join other Members in warmly welcoming the appointment of Kathryn Stone, who was clearly a very well qualified and highly respected candidate. She met with the approval of the interview panel and the House of Commons Commission, and we wish her all the very best for her term of office. I hope that, if we as Members live up to the standards that are expected of us, her case load will be appropriately light.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Kathryn Stone be appointed Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards on the terms of the Report of the House of Commons Commission, HC 294, dated 19 July 2017.