Independent Expert Panel Recommendations for Sanctions and the Recall of MPs Act 2015

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for bringing the motion to the House as he said he would. He is absolutely right that it closes the loophole that was recognised and identified as we were putting the measure through the House.

I have been on the ICGS since its inception—I have been on all the working groups and bodies that have been assembled to get to where we are in producing the report and having the policy in place in the House—and I would say that what we have achieved in the past few years has transformed the culture and behaviour around the House. It has been a thoroughly positive initiative and piece of work. I thank everybody who has been involved in the past few years, because we are in a much better place in this House than we were a few years ago when some of these issues were identified.

The Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House are entirely right to talk about the experience of the last few days, its impact on all of us and how the House is being perceived, because there is goodwill towards the House. People are looking at Members of Parliament and what we do and observing how we conduct our business. For the first time in a long time, we are seeing a bit of respect and a grudging admiration for the type of thing that we get involved in and the work we do on behalf of our constituents.

It is right, therefore, that we start to pay attention to some of the outstanding issues in the House that we still have to deal with, such as the essence and culture; how we perceive the behaviour of others; and how some of those behaviours, when they go so badly wrong, as they have in a couple of circumstances, are addressed and rectified. In the ICGS, in the past few years, we have made good progress to address those things, but there are still issues and difficulties that we need to look at.

The SNP will support Labour’s amendment, because no one should get away with something because of a technicality or a loophole, or because a process was not in place at the time of the offence. There is almost a sense that somebody has got away with it and that the whole idea of justice has not been served, particularly for those who were so badly compromised by the actions of one of our colleagues in the House. It is absolutely right that that is addressed and put right.

The Leader of the House is right to identify the concerns of Sir Stephen Irwin, to whom I pay tribute for his work on the IEP. The coming together of the IEP in the last year has been a fantastic innovation. It has been the cherry on the cake for the ICGS; it has allowed us to go into these issues and cases with a depth and thoroughness that would not otherwise have been available. I thank Sir Stephen for the work he has done and for the way that the independent expert panel has made such a difference to the workings and arrangements of the ICGS.

I was at the Commission meeting when Sir Stephen detailed his concerns and difficulties with some of the proposals, but I think the shadow Leader of the House has designed a means for the amendment to be made constructively and within the spirit of what has been achieved. If there is a willingness to try to ensure that justice has been served for the victims in this particular case, we should do that, regardless of the difficulties we may encounter on the way. If it is the right thing to do, the House should do it. We will support the amendment today.

As we go forward, it is important that the House starts to look beyond this at some of the other issues. Something that has not been addressed yet, and which we will have to look at in future, is the concern that Members of Parliament under investigation for the most serious of transgressions against members of staff in this House are still able to access the parliamentary estate and go about their business as normal.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

What about the principle that somebody is innocent until proved guilty?

[Pete Wishart]

That is a very good principle, and it is one that underpins nearly everything we do in this House and throughout the legal systems of all jurisdictions across the United Kingdom, but it does not apply in all the other workplaces throughout the United Kingdom. If somebody has been identified as a transgressor in the most serious way, that person will not have access to their workplace as we are suggesting they still can in this House. I have discussed this with the staff unions in the House and with several members of staff, and I know there is still huge concern. They are looking to bring the matter forward for the House to take a view on and try to resolve to their satisfaction. We are going to have to confront this issue.

The motion is a good one, which we can all support, and I thank the Leader of the House for bringing it forward. It deals with the loophole, and we now have recourse to recall in a way that we never thought we would be able to secure, even a year ago. There is no good reason not to apply the provision retrospectively, if there is a willingness in the House for the issue to be addressed, and to be addressed in the way outlined in the amendment that the shadow Leader of the House has put forward, which I will support. I thank everybody once again for the support we have had throughout the creation of the scheme. I acknowledge the progress that we have made, but there is still more work to be done.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I agree with much that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has said, but I am a little more sceptical about whether the changed attitude towards the House and its Members will remain for much longer than another 24 hours. I have been here before, and if we look at some of the online comments some of us have received over the last 72 hours, we see that they have been even more aggressively nasty than the ones last week.

I thank Sir Stephen Irwin, who I think has done a magnificent job ever since he started with the independent expert panel, and all the other members of the panel. However, it is also worth remembering that the person who works most closely with them is the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. I think we should pay tribute to the magnificent work that she has done in this field as well. These are often complex, difficult and highly emotionally charged cases to deal with, and coming to a secure idea of what has actually happened in some instances is not simple.

One danger with adopting the policy that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire suggested, in an environment where each parliamentary office has a Member of Parliament and perhaps three or four members of staff, is that it might reveal the name of the complainant, which breaches confidentiality. That needs to be addressed carefully.

When the 2015 Act was introduced, it was absolutely clear that the House intended the process to apply to all the cases that might possibly be brought, because they could then be brought only to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, hence the way in which the legislation was drafted. Any case of bullying or sexual harassment that might have come to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, if we proposed a sanction of 14 or more days or 10 sitting days, would have invoked the recall petition process. When we created the independent expert panel, as the Leader of the House was absolutely right to say, many of the trade unions were opposed to the idea of making that process apply. I have always thought that they were wrong, for the very simple reason that we have ended up looking as if we take offences about registration of interests, paid advocacy and things like that more seriously than bullying and sexual harassment.

Bullying and sexual harassment cases could not possibly lead to somebody leaving the House through the recall petition process as it is presently constituted. However, the independent expert panel could, if it wanted to, recommend the expulsion of a Member. I do not know what the case would have to be to lead to that—that is a matter for it—but I will come on to that later in relation to the amendment from my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House. I just think it is wrong that we should have what seems to be a higher bar for sexual harassment and bullying cases than for other cases that come before the Committee.

As Sir Stephen has said and as the Leader of the House intimated, it would be better to correct that by legislation, and I have had this conversation with the right hon. Gentleman. Leaders of the House always say that there is never any time to do anything by legislation and that it is absolutely impossible, until suddenly they find that it is absolutely possible, it is absolutely necessary and it must all be done in one day. That is the kind of thing that happens to Leaders of the House: somebody who lives on a street a little bit further up Whitehall somehow manages to tug the ear of Leaders of the House, and they find time that they never had before.

The slight danger of doing it this way is that something has to go from the independent expert panel to the Committee on Standards. I know that the Committee shall produce a report and it must be equal to the report that has come from the independent expert panel; none the less, there is a danger that the process is a bit more cumbersome and it undermines an element of the independence of the independent expert panel. We might end up having a debate in the Standards Committee, and I think that would be entirely inappropriate. If the House cannot have a debate on it, why on earth should the Standards Committee be able to have a debate on it? I can assure the House, having discussed this with the Standards Committee, that we will not debate that. However, I am the Chair today, and who knows who might be the Chair in the future or who might be the members of the Committee in the future? So I would still prefer us, at some point, to have proper legislation to clear this up, rather than simply relying on the Standing Orders and the good will of the Committee on Standards.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman is a very effective Chair, and I think we all respect and admire the work he is doing. On the legislation versus Standing Orders issue that he raises, he is right that Sir Stephen did indeed want legislation, which I would support, but the concern was that such legislation might be subject to legal challenge, and I do not know exactly where that leaves us. I am interested in his view if we were to go down the legislative route. What would be his concerns if legal challenges were to emerge because of that?

[Chris Bryant]

We have not been advised of any problems with legal challenge. I still think legislation would be better. Legislation always—or nearly always—puts things completely beyond doubt, whereas Standing Orders changes do not always put things completely beyond doubt. However, it would then be a proceeding in Parliament and, as we all know, article IX of the Bill of Rights says that no proceeding in Parliament should be

“impeached or questioned in any Court”

of law or any other place.—[Interruption.] I have got it right, have I not? I think we would be able to rely on that very solidly, and that must appeal to the Leader of the House because it goes back to the 17th century. On the question of the independence of the IEP, we are very keen in the Standards Committee that we will do everything to maintain that independence, and it will not be questioned or impeached by us in any shape or form.

I note that the changes to the Standing Orders say that the Chair of the Committee can do something if the Committee has not managed

“to meet within 3 sitting days”.

I think this would happen quite often, because it is quite difficult to ensure that the Standards Committee is going to meet within three days, especially because the independent members come from some distance and we would not necessarily be able to gather them together, and we can be quorate only if we have three lay members and three members who are Members of the House.

I gently suggest to the Leader of the House that it might be nice, at some point, to have a Standing Order that says that all motions from the independent expert panel or from the Committee on Standards will be before the House within three sitting days as well, but I know what he is going to say. He will say that it is all very difficult, and that sometimes it is impossible to find time and sometimes it is possible to find time—