Registration of Members’ Financial Interests

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

The report by the Standards and Privileges Committee on all-party parliamentary groups makes three reasonable suggestions that I support. First, a list of commercial companies that donate more than £5,000 to an APPG should be available on request. However, I see the case for a lower threshold—possibly £500—to ensure that APPGs are as transparent as possible. Secondly, a charity that supports an APPG should have its website listed on the Register of All-party Groups so that people can access relevant information. Thirdly, publications by APPGs should carry the names of their authors and the organisations that provide secretariat services to the group, plus the names of any relevant client or sponsor. Parliament should be transparent and I believe that these reforms will help us to move in that direction. However, I am concerned about which organisations can become an APPG’s secretariat and the parliamentary access that it affords.

Last week at business questions, I asked the Leader of the House for an urgent statement on iEngage, an extremist group that seeks to influence Government and discredit moderate Muslims. It has been appointed secretariat to the new APPG for Islamophobia. It defends mosques that host terrorist preachers, schools that teach anti-Semitism and homophobia, individuals such as Daud Abdullah who have pressed for terrorist attacks on the British Navy, and the invitation of hate preachers to Britain. When those revelations emerged, the elected chair of the APPG, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), and the vice-chair Lord Janner, stood down in protest.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am sorry to trouble my hon. Friend, but perhaps I can give him notice that I will make a passing comment on that matter if you call me to speak later in the debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. There may be more than one side to this.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Comments must relate to the motion. I understand the advice that has rightly been given, but speeches must relate to the motion.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. For us to stick to the terms of the motion, passing references to individual matters may be fine, but if we are induced—rather than “provoked”—into going into such issues in detail, the debate will change its character and its usefulness. If the advice to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) was that he could mention the subject, that is fine, but to go on at great length will lead to the rest of us trying to do the same thing.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That is quite right. Hon. Members could start raising other issues, and I am therefore frightened that the debate will not be the one that we should hold, and that we will be drawn into other subjects. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned the issue that he needed to raise, but the debate must not stray from the motion.

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[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and others. I am not certain that security vetting solves all problems. The number of people who have been assassinated by their own bodyguards suggests that there might be a weakness in that.

[Chris Bryant]

It is worth bearing it in mind that the person working as the secretary for the all-party parliamentary group on Russia, prior to my becoming the chairman, is supposedly being thrown out of the country by the Government, yet managed to get a security pass here.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I recall that about 25 years ago, the London representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation was assassinated for being too moderate. Many people who take part in public affairs are at risk, which is one of the risks that an open society faces in peacetime just as it does at times of war.

Let me say to the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) that, although I do not intend to try to divide the House on the first motion, I think it would be better to specify 0.2% or 0.3% of the parliamentary salary. A long time ago, when I was a Minister, I visited a country in south-east Asia and was presented with a tin bowl. I saw the same bowl in a shop priced at the equivalent of £130 in local currency, so I gave it to my private secretary. At the airport on my way home, I saw it again priced at £65, so I asked for it back. [Laughter.]

There will be boundary problems of that kind whatever limit is set, but my general view is that a limit of £130 or £180 would be better, and that it would be even better to make the limit the same as that applying to gifts presented to Ministers. As for the question of Members’ including on their websites gifts whose value was below the minimum, the registrar could advise us if we tried to include details that were not required according to the interpretation of the rules.

In view of your ruling, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall not add to what has already been said about the motion on all-party groups. If it is possible for me to attend the meeting of the all-party group that has been mentioned, I will happily do so.

Let me, in passing, pay tribute to some people in my constituency. When I was involved with students from the Three Faiths Forum, I was delighted that the senior Jewish woman in my constituency was willing to meet us, as were representatives of the local Islamic society and mosque, the Salvation Army and the Worthing Churches Homeless Projects. It was immensely valuable that people were able to share that experience, and learn along with members of other faiths and people with different views. I also pay tribute to members of my local mosque, who have been pleased to attend the holocaust memorial event in Worthing. I hope that its organisers will at some stage focus on the massacre at Srebrenica. It should be borne in mind that the most recent modern massacre in Europe was a massacre of Muslims, both secular and otherwise, by people claiming membership of other religions.

I have no strong views on the issue of all-party groups, but there seems to have been a bit of “creep”. Paragraph 13(b) on page 5 of the “All-Party Groups” report by the Committee on Standards and Privileges, the eighth report of Session 2008-09, HC 920, states that in future such groups should have to

“register any commercial company with a direct interest in the work of the APG which contributes materially (say more than £5,000 or 5%, whichever is the lower) to meeting the central costs of the charity.”

According to the motion,

“The charity or not-for-profit organisation must agree to make available on request a list citing any commercial company which has donated either as a single sum or cumulatively more than £5,000”.

Perhaps the Minister who replies to the debate will tell us whether the movement from the requirement for a “direct interest” to no qualification was deliberate, and, if it was not, whether it could be considered when the resolutions are before the House.

Let us suppose that, for instance, the Army Benevolent Fund were to provide the secretariat for an issue-based all-party group. I am not saying that it should do so. Given that it has raised millions of pounds for our armed forces, I think that it would be going too far to have to list every commercial company that has given it money for that purpose, whether by gift aid or otherwise. At one stage I was chairman of the Church of England children’s society. A fair amount of money was donated to us by commercial companies for events and other purposes. I think that we might be putting a burden on some charities and not-for-profit causes if the resolution followed the motion—which will obviously be accepted—rather than the committee’s report.

Let me return briefly to the issue of earnings as opposed to gifts. For a number of years I have tried to avoid having any outside earnings. I failed in the current year, because I wrote an obituary for a friend and, rather to my surprise, received a cheque from the newspaper that kindly published it. I have given the money away, but it clearly constituted earnings, and I think that I am obliged to declare it. I believe that the sum was £300. A long time ago, between 1979 and 1984, I was personnel director of a fairly major commodities trading company. I should have been very prepared to declare the salary that I received for that.

On another occasion, I was an adviser to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. I gave it advice that it did not take and did not want, but its founder asked whether I would do more work for it, which I did, although it did not take any notice of what I said. That relationship came to an end in time.

What is clearly employment or something done for the purposes of an organisation for which one is paid should be declared, and what one is doing outside ought to be. However, I have a warning. Let us suppose that Peter Thurnham, who was a colleague at one stage in this House and who bought two machine tools when he was unemployed and set up an engineering business, entered the House of Commons when the business was on its feet. How would he calculate the time that he was putting into the business? That seems to be a very difficult thing to do. When James Callaghan was a farmer after being Prime Minister, how much time did he put into it? When Michael Foot was writing his biography of the founder of the health service, how much time did he put into it? If I, for example, had to put in the number of hours that I spent on the obituary, I would have to guess. It is obvious that we have to be prepared to put down rough and ready figures, which will not be easy.

The key point is to back a system where people will feel embarrassed if they know that they are doing something wrong, rather than having an enormous box-ticking exercise. I hope that when we ask the Committee on Standards and Privileges to review the matter and it conducts a consultation, more people will agree that 0.1% is too low and could be at least doubled or trebled without disadvantage to the House or to the interests of the public.

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[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am aware that I slightly bounced the right hon. Gentleman with my question about paragraph 13(b). If he is not able to say tonight whether the reference to

“a direct interest in the work of the APG”

was taken out deliberately, could he ask someone to let me know whether it was deliberate or whether it was just one of those things?

[Mr Barron]

I will make sure that the hon. Gentleman gets that information.

The Committee also said:

“The trivial nature of some of these payments and the disproportionate effort involved in recording and then registering them has called into question the utility of the rule. The February 2010 edition of the Register contained over 100 more pages than the June 2008 edition.”

The figures were 264 pages as opposed to 157. If what we have heard is correct, it is clear that the many hon. Members who have not registered bouquets of flowers, pots of honey and so on could eventually find that they are outwith the register. Given those circumstances, we need to address this area.