Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Richard Drax and Brandon Lewis

2nd reading
Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend is right in the example that he gives. I will reference another one later. Operation Kenova has been successfully led and was also regarded with some scepticism at the beginning. It has shown that a piece of work, if properly done by the right people, can gain credibility, acceptance and understanding. My hon. Friend gives a good outline of exactly how this can be taken forward in a successful way for people.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I commend the Government for doing all they can to deal with this sensitive issue—as we have seen today. Having served in Northern Ireland for three tours, I quite understand where the sensitivity comes from. If this commission is going to find the truth, the likelihood is, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) has said, that on the soldiers’ side the evidence is there but for terrorists on both sides of the divide, it is not. How are the victims going to get the peace that we all want them to have when the truth is unlikely ever to be found?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good and important point. He is quite right. One of the challenges is the point about balance that I made a few moments ago. As we go forward it is important, first, that records will be made available in a way that they have not been made before, going beyond what we have done before with a legal duty for the first time on Government Departments, agencies and bodies, which will mean that a whole range of information will be available for the commission to look at. Of course, if people come forward with information, particularly in a demand-led process, as I will outline in a few moments, it will provide an opportunity for people to seek the investigation of crimes by an investigatory body with the right kinds of powers. Those crimes were committed in the vast majority, as he has rightly outlined, by terrorists who went out to do harm in Northern Ireland.

We as a Government accept that, as part of this process, information will be released into the public domain that may well be uncomfortable for everyone. It is important that we as a Government acknowledge our shortcomings, as we have done previously in relation to that immensely challenging period. It is also important, as hon. Friends have said this afternoon, that others do the same. Some families have told us that they do not want to revisit the past, and we must respect that. The new commission will therefore be demand-led, taking forward investigations if requested to do so by survivors or the families of those who lost their lives. The Secretary of State will also be able to request a review, ensuring that the Government can fulfil their obligations under the European convention on human rights.

Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past

Debate between Richard Drax and Brandon Lewis

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

I just say to the hon. Gentleman, as I said earlier, that there is a very important difference here. This is a statute of limitations. We are not pardoning terrorists for the heinous crimes that they committed. We are very clear as a Government that we will never accept any moral equivalence between those who upheld the law and served their country and the citizens of Northern Ireland, and those on all sides who sought to destroy it. I absolutely want to find a way to work through this with people in Northern Ireland—parties, civic society, representatives of the victims groups and victims themselves—to find a way forward. I ask him to look carefully at what we are talking about and engage positively on how we are looking to deal with information recovery in a way that means we can get to the truth, and with truth comes accountability. The way in the past 23 years has failed everybody. There has to be a better way of doing this and there is a duty on all of us to find it.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con) [V]]

Having served on three operational tours, I have some knowledge of the Province and more about the ongoing witch hunt of our veterans. Of course, I welcome any move to try to end this injustice, but I am afraid that I do not believe that former terrorists, on both sides of the sectarian divide, will now participate in a truth recovery process, if I have understood my right hon. Friend correctly. This is not South Africa. Does he agree that it is time for the long-awaited and frequently discussed and promised Bill, not further discussions?

[Brandon Lewis]

As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), I do recognise the desire of colleagues to see legislation and they will see legislation before the end of the autumn. I would have liked to bring legislation forward earlier, but it is important that we are working with our partners, not just the Irish Government, as I have outlined, but interested parties and political parties in Northern Ireland, to find a way forward if we can. This paper is intended to inform those discussions in the next few weeks so that we can find a mutual way forward. I recognise my hon. Friend’s point about who will and will not come forward with the information, but one challenge of the situation at the moment is that information is not coming forward. If we do not find a way of doing something different, we are, sadly, in a position where, because of time, that information will no longer be with us. We believe it is time to do something bold and different to find a way forward that can get to the truth, as far as we can, to get answers for families who have waited for far too long, as well as to help Northern Ireland to move forward.

Local Government Standards Regime

Debate between Richard Drax and Brandon Lewis

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) for providing this opportunity to have what is, in the light of what is going on, a hugely important debate. The debate is also timely because the Localism Act 2011 received Royal Assent more than a year ago—I enjoyed several months on the Public Bill Committee with my hon. Friend, as Minister, taking the legislation through—and just over six months ago, on 1 July last year, the new standards regime came fully on stream.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the central part he played in doing what I think most people in local government—perhaps not monitoring officers—will for ever be grateful for: abolishing the old Standards Board regime, thereby fulfilling an important coalition agreement commitment, and overseeing the establishment of a new regime, which should be opening the way for councils to put in place their own new localist standards arrangements. I will be clear with the House on this: I am a fan of old-fashioned democracy and I believe there is a strong case to be made, as it was in the debates on the 2011 Act, that the most effective sanction for wrong behaviour is found in transparency, particularly through to the ballot box. We need to bear that in mind when we consider what the Standards Board regime, which we are moving away from, was at risk of becoming.

Every council should aim to have a simple process that ensures high standards of conduct from all members without imposing bureaucratic burdens or providing a platform for vexatious and politically motivated complaints that not only waste taxpayers’ money but, as the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) mentioned, damage the very fabric of both local democracy and democracy generally. That was the case with the old regime. As a councillor for a decade or so, I saw that regime develop. Since coming to the House and taking my current office, I have found it worrying that, despite the change in regime, monitoring officers are expanding and developing as an industry, and changing the regime seems only to have brought that industry further in-house, rather than getting rid of it.

The essence of the new regime is that, within a simple broad framework, the design of a council’s standards arrangements is put into its members’ hands. I stress that there is no detailed central prescription about conduct. Given what is happening, there is a temptation for us to start getting involved centrally, but I am wary of doing that because it would be a move away from local accountability. It is for individual councils to decide how best to promote and maintain high standards of conduct.

I will have a look the case and come back to the hon. Lady, but my instinctive response to the councillor who refused to sign a code of conduct is that if the council has adopted the code of conduct, it is, de facto, the council’s code of conduct. I am not sure why it is necessary for every member to sign the code of conduct for it to take force. It is the council’s code of conduct.

There is no central prescription for the process a council might follow. Beyond certain clear, basic, national rules—for example, that certain pecuniary interests must be disclosed, which I will return to, because I have seen far too many farcical cases of the type raised today—it is for each council to decide its own arrangements, to decide its code of conduct, to decide how to deal with allegations that that code has been breached and to decide how personal interests should be handled. That approach puts members in the driving seat and recognises the commitment of members across local government to serving their communities, to acting consistently in the interests of those they represent and to ensuring local taxpayers’ money is well spent.

The new regime recognises the central importance and value of members’ roles, which must be a priority, and their knowing what is right for their community and authority. Rightly, under the regime members can take ownership of all their council’s standards arrangements and be satisfied that the arrangements are proportionate and appropriate to the circumstances of their authority.

The first six months of the new arrangements have seen councils and their members take a wide range of approaches in responding to the opportunities provided by our new standards regime. The Government have taken a number of steps to help members make the most of those opportunities. To assist councils, in April 2012 my Department circulated an illustrative text of a simple and straightforward code of conduct, as envisaged by the new regime. In June, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst wrote to local authorities about simple arrangements for handling misconduct allegations. We followed that in August with a plain English guide to openness and transparency on personal interests.

All those measures graphically illustrate how simple and straightforward, yet wholly effective, standards arrangements can be adopted by councils under our new regime. It is therefore disappointing and, to an extent, worrying to hear that some local authorities have developed both a code and model arrangements for handling misconduct complaints that appear to be essentially a continuation at local level of the old Standards Board regime, and in some cases go further than the old regime. I have heard about too many cases of that in the past few months.

We have heard examples today, and I will respond to a few specific points. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) described a situation that simply should not be happening. The Localism Act makes it clear that a member can go to meetings, and even campaign on an issue, and still take part in the formal decision-taking process, provided they approach that decision with an open mind, as I am sure members do. There is no basis in law for a monitoring officer to give the type of advice about which we have heard.

[Richard Drax]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He says that a councillor may campaign, as long as he or she maintains a neutral state of mind, but if someone is campaigning, they are clearly campaigning either for or against something. For clarification, is the Minister saying that councillors can campaign for something? If councillors state that they are for or against something at a council meeting, they might be accused of not having a clear mind. Does he follow my argument? I may have misunderstood him.

[Brandon Lewis]

Bear in mind that that is a decision for the individual member, as it is when we declare an interest in the House. Councillors must decide whether, at the point of a decision, they have an open mind, having heard all the evidence. If someone has been campaigning heavily against something, they may come to a meeting, hear all the evidence both for and against and then make a judgment about whether they have an open mind on the evidence. That is a matter for them. The key point is that the advice being given to councillors that they cannot do that is wrong. They can do it and, actually, that is how we represent our residents. That was one of the problems with the old regime.

On the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, since 1 July 2012, when the new regime came into force, councils have had no power to suspend a member—absolutely none. A member convicted by a court for failing to disclose a disclosable pecuniary interest may be disqualified for up to five years by the court in its sentence. In addition, the law remains that any person sentenced to three months or more in prison is disqualified from holding the office of councillor for five years.