Honesty in Politics

Sheryll Murray Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (in the Chair)]

Before the debate begins, I remind Members that the motion is on a general topic. The normal rules about criticism of or accusations against Members of either House are not affected. I remind colleagues of the rules in “Erskine May” paragraphs 21.21 and 21.24 and, in particular, that “Erskine May” paragraph 21.21 makes it clear that it is not in order to try to evade those rules by quoting someone else’s words. I call Martyn Day to move the motion.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 561730 and 576886, relating to honesty in politics.

Both petitions call for it to be a criminal offence for MPs to mislead the public or to lie in the House of Commons. I am delighted to see you in the Chair today, Mrs Murray, and equally delighted to lead this debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. It is perhaps a pity that such major events are being discussed in the Chamber, or we would have had a larger attendance.

On a home visit just the other week to Blackburn, West Lothian, my constituent Glenn told me that

“the problem with Parliament is that it filled with”

a shower of “lying B’s”—Members can fill in the blank for themselves, but they will get the picture. In politics, public perception is everything, and even more so when the public are rightfully scunnered by the actions of some bad apples and by the non-correction of genuine mistakes. Addressing the issue is therefore crucial for all of us if we want to restore public trust in our democratic processes.

The Petitions Committee had to request a revised Government response to the first petition, “Make it a criminal offence for MPs to mislead the public”, because the Committee did not think that the Government’s original response directly addressed the petition’s request. The Government’s revised response stated categorically that the Government

“does not intend to introduce legislation”,

citing the MPs’ code of conduct and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards as suitable substitutes. However, I met with the Constitution Unit, the Institute for Government and Full Fact ahead of this debate, and we all agreed that those are not appropriate mechanisms to deal with the problem of MPs’ misleading the public or lying in Parliament. That the Government had to be asked for a response that actually addressed the petition’s request is an indication that this issue was not given due and proper consideration. I hope that today’s debate will correct that, and that agreement can be reached on how we achieve a mechanism that alleviates the existential high public concern over MPs’ misleading Parliament.

Both petitions are now closed, and over two years have passed since the Government responded to them. I will refer to the responses further during my speech, but it is appropriate at this early juncture to state the obvious: events have passed relating to this matter since the responses were given. Indeed, I will discuss one of those events at length to demonstrate how the current Commons procedures hinder accountability for MPs who mislead or lie. It will be interesting to learn whether the responding Minister agrees with the Government’s historical responses, or whether the passage of time and related events have since been given due consideration.

By way of background, it is relevant to note that this debate was originally scheduled to take place on 6 June 2022. However, it was delayed by the related event that I will discuss: an investigation by the Committee of Privileges on a matter referred to it about the conduct of the former Prime Minister and Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Mr Boris Johnson. It concerned whether Mr Johnson misled the House of Commons and whether, in its nature, his conduct

“amounted to a contempt.”

That is an important word to which I will return very shortly. I raise the Privileges Committee’s inquiry because its investigation of six gatherings between 20 May 2020 and 14 January 2021 at No. 10 Downing Street, during Mr Johnson’s residency, substantiates the petitioners’ concerns, even though the gatherings were not public knowledge when the petitions were started in November 2020 and April 2021.

I recently met Mr Baccas, the creator of petition 561730, entitled “Make it a criminal offence for MPs to mislead the public”. I asked him what led him to start the petition more than a year before the allegations that covid rules had been broken in No. 10 emerged. He told me that it was due to the lies that had been told in relation to Brexit, and that he had been influenced by the failed legal challenge on the ground that Mr Johnson had

“repeatedly lied and misled the British public as to the cost of EU membership.”

I am spotting a pattern here.

Mr Baccas believes that if an MP “intentionally or recklessly” does not speak the truth or misrepresents facts, they should face sanctions in the same way that other public servants would. It is simple: as public servants, MPs should face tangible accountability. Mr Baccas further believes that this would improve the quality of our politics, and I am inclined to agree with him. He shared his disappointment at what he described as the Government’s “expected response” to his petition, and revealed that his intention had been that the anticipated response would put on the record, and thereby highlight, the poor quality of UK politics. I agree that the response reflected the poor quality of our politics currently.

Mr Baccas added that he understood it was not in the Government’s interest to face sanctions for misleading people. I believe that self-interest should not be so apparent, given that the Government are supposed to serve the country and that MPs are elected to serve their constituents. Mr Baccas agrees, pointing out that it is in the interest of voters that MPs are expected to tell the truth due to the impact they have on other people’s lives. He believes that MPs are guardians of the morals and standards that create a civilised society, and that they should set an example to which the population aspires. In Mr Baccas’ own words:

“If MPs cannot be relied upon to maintain those standards, why should the electorate maintain them? The passive attitude towards dishonesty in politics opens the door to the breakdown of civilised society.”

Who can argue against improving the quality of our politics? I thank Mr Baccas and all the petitioners for making today’s important debate possible.

After allegations emerged about the Downing Street gatherings in December 2021, Mr Johnson proceeded between then and May 2022 to make over 30 statements to the House of Commons about compliance with covid rules and regulations in No. 10. The Committee of Privileges concluded that Mr Johnson’s statements “misled the House”, and it shared its provisional conclusions with him on 8 June 2023, inviting him to make further representations. That led to Mr Johnson announcing his intention to resign the next day, with his resignation being confirmed three days later. The fact that he made a statement ahead of the Committee’s final report being published on 15 June, knowing that the Committee would not be able to respond publicly, is significant. Indeed, Mr Johnson’s conduct on 9 June was considered

“in itself a very serious contempt”.

That brings me back to the importance of the word “contempt”. It strikes me that, in this context, the word is important for two main reasons. First, the House of Commons initially referred the matter to the Committee of Privileges to consider whether Mr Johnson’s statements amounted to a contempt. The reason for doing that is that, in parliamentary terms, the word refers to a contempt of privilege, which describes any act that might disrupt Parliament’s work. Additionally, the Committee’s final report used the word repeatedly, indicating its thoughtful consideration, and concluded that:

“Mr Johnson’s conduct was deliberate and…he has committed a serious contempt of the House.”

When the final report came to the Commons for debate on 19 June, the word “contempt” was again used multiple times by Members of different parties. On that day, I joined 353 other Members in approving the Committee’s findings. This is an opportune moment to thank all members of the Committee of Privileges for their diligent work in producing its final report. To be clear, the Committee found that the work of the House had been frustrated by the highest office of Government, and the House of Commons agreed with its findings.

The second main reason why the word “contempt” is important is that the seriousness of the findings is not reflected in the consequences, given that expulsion from the House is the worst penalty a Member can face when they do not speak truthfully in Parliament. Being expelled from the House pales in comparison to the penalties for committing a contempt of court, which can see someone going to prison for up to two years, getting a fine, or both. Being expelled from the House pales in comparison to the legal framework for coronavirus restrictions and fixed penalty notices, some of which amounted to thousands of pounds that ordinary members of the public had to pay.

Let us bear in mind that a false statement made in court amounts to perjury, or lying under oath—a crime treated with great seriousness because the very foundation of the legal system depends on trust and credibility. Let us remember that in many cases perjury leads to justice being perverted. The very foundation of democracy also depends on trust and credibility. Democracy must not be perverted, especially by those who have been entrusted to defend it. Why should lying in Parliament not be treated with the same seriousness?

Contempt is usually associated with legal jargon and is defined as disobedience to or disrespect for the rules or orders of a court or legislative body. The House of Commons is not a court, but it is a legislative body that debates and passes new laws, and changes existing laws as required. The Government introduce most plans for such laws and the Government actively seek public comment on some of the legislative change that they wish to pursue. For that reason, the Government should be cognisant that in this case the rules are perhaps reversed, and the public is asking them to

“introduce legislation to make lying in the House of Commons a criminal offence.”

Why should they not comply with such a reasonable request? After all, it is the collectively held will for the common good that forms the political legitimacy of the social contract and determines that we should all live by a common rule. Why should introducing legislation to make lying the House of Commons a criminal offence be opposed? Or is it indeed a case of one rule for them and another rule for everyone else?

Both petitions are clear that trust, truth and honesty are crucial elements in a modern democracy and that lying in Parliament should carry the same penalties as lying in court. I agree with the sentiments of the nearly 244,000 people who felt compelled to sign the petitions. As Members take an oath before they can take their seat in the House, just as anyone does ahead of appearing in court, the same principle should be applied to this legislative body as in a court.

Let us look again at the Government’s response, which states:

“Once elected to Parliament, all MPs must abide by the seven principles of public life which form the basis of ethical standards expected of holders of public office. These are set out by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and are: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.”

Honesty is there, but should truthfulness be introduced as an eighth principle in public life just for the avoidance of doubt?

The MPs’ code of conduct states,

“Members have a duty to uphold the law”

and it is part of the parliamentary commissioner’s job to oversee the code of conduct. Despite the Government’s response citing the MPs’ code of conduct and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards as suitable substitutes to legislation, it is noted in the code of conduct’s procedural protocol that

“The Commissioner cannot investigate allegations solely about breaches of the Seven Principles of Public Life.”

Will someone please enlighten me as to what sense these myriad procedures make? We have only to look at the length of time between public concerns being raised about Boris Johnson misleading the public and his referral to the Committee of Privileges to see that

“the hurdles to achieve this are very high.”

As the director of the Constitution Unit points out,

“In any less extreme case even triggering an investigation to examine the facts might have proved politically impossible.”

Would it not be more straightforward to make lying in Parliament to be an offence?

The UK Government should take the number of petitioners that want legislative change as a clarion call that legislative change is not just desired, but necessary. We must never forget that we are elected by people across the UK to represent their interests and concerns, not our own. We must never forget that as MPs our primary privilege is that we are elected to serve our constituents, not ourselves. We must also never forget that one of our duties, as laid out in the MPs’ code of conduct, is that we should act on all occasions in accordance with the public trust placed in us. At the very least that must mean being truthful.

It is a sign of the backwards nature of the Westminster system that in February 2022, after both of the petitions had closed and it was obvious to many that lies had been told, the then SNP Westminster leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), was forced to leave the Chamber for telling the truth. At the same time, the then Prime Minister, who happens to be the guardian of the ministerial code, was able to use his position to spread misleading information and rebuke facts through lies, without recourse or accountability. The hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) was also ejected for calling Boris Johnson a liar—she was expelled for telling the truth. This madness places a stain on both Members’ parliamentary records for getting it right. Can the Minister put on the record whether either Member has even received an apology?

When the House of Commons’ rules eject Members from the Chamber for calling out dishonesty, the rules are clearly not working. Parliamentary privilege grants Members the right to speak freely without fear of legal liability or other reprisal, but that privilege has been abused, and that abuse goes against our code of conduct with little repercussion. We should grab the opportunity to examine the challenges and complexities of this matter and come together to find a solution that works. Legislation should be brought forward that prevents the trust between Government and those who are governed being further eroded. It should be done at the earliest opportunity, so we can move the backward nature of this Parliament forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Foord]

The right hon. Member is exactly right. We absolutely need to put on a pedestal those people who are prepared to stand up and admit when they have made a mistake and applaud those who correct their own record.

Before I close, one other aspect that I see increasingly is neighbouring MPs claiming credit for the work and achievements of the community campaigners in my part of Devon. Flattery is clearly at play here; it is sometimes said that mimicry is a form of flattery. However, what we are seeing is against the Nolan principles of honesty and accountability.

Finally, anyone who has joined the House of Commons Chamber at the start of proceedings will remember this part of the prayer that we listen to every day. We pray that Members

“never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices keep in mind their responsibility”.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (in the Chair)]

Before I call the next speaker, I gently remind hon. Members that accusations of dishonesty against currently sitting MPs should be made via the proper channels, and not in a debate on a general motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I completely agree. If this Parliament does not get around to doing it, the next Parliament will have to address this issue far more seriously than we have heretofore. I will come on in a moment to some of the problems with the present system. I commend the right hon. Member for suggesting a way to deal with it. She is not the only Member to do so, as a Member from my own party has done the same. I will explain why I disagree with the precise route that she wants to go down, but I do not disagree with what she is seeking to change. Incidentally, what I said about the meat tax could be said about seven bins, and so on.

A legitimate point was made by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) from the Liberal Democrat Benches, which is that the public does not draw an enormous distinction between whether an MP has lied in Parliament or out of Parliament. They just think that we all lie all of the time, and that at pretty much the moment our lips start moving, we are all lying. This is surely problematic for the whole of democracy.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk alluded to another problem. We have a rule that states that a Member cannot say that somebody else has lied, unless the motion on the Order Paper is specific on whether that is what we are debating. I remember some people got awfully excited in the Chamber when people started saying that Boris Johnson had lied, when the motion on the Order Paper was about whether Boris Johnson had lied. Of course, we have got to be able to advance that argument and prosecute that case in such a debate, but we have an assumption that we cannot say that a Member has deliberately lied. We have to say “inadvertently”, even though we all know that every time somebody says, “He has inadvertently lied,” the person who is saying “inadvertently” is actually lying themselves. What they really believe is that the other person has not “inadvertently” lied at all, but has absolutely advertently lied, and deliberately and recklessly done so. We then throw that person out of the Chamber for a day if they refuse to retract the point. I do not want us to get to a place where we spend all our time accusing each other of being a liar. That would be a very inelegant way of conducting our business, and it would not enhance political debate in this country. We are, however, going to have to review this rule at some point.

It is also a particular irony that, as has been said, two Members of Parliament were thrown out of the Chamber for calling Boris Johnson a liar when, first, Boris Johnson patently was a liar, and secondly, he was subsequently found to have misled the House on precisely the grounds that had been adduced by the two Members concerned. Yet they are the ones who ended up on the list of bad MPs—they are on my list of 25. I think we will have to review that.

My second point is that it is even more important that a Minister tells the truth, as I said earlier, in so far as they are able to know it to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The reasons for that are, first, Ministers have an army of advisers to make sure that what they are saying is true and to tell them that they must correct the record should that be necessary; secondly, decisions on spending and public policy are made on the basis of what Ministers say in the Chamber; and thirdly, it is a fundamental principle of good Government and written in the ministerial code that Ministers must always tell the truth.

I honestly think that 98% of the time Ministers do tell the truth. I know lots of Ministers who are very rigorous with themselves and their teams: “Can I really say that? Is that really true? Is that a correct interpretation of the statistics?” But there are others who are perhaps a little more casual with the use of statistics and whose approach effectively amounts to being misleading. That is why it is so important that Ministers have the opportunity to correct the record and should do so. They do it hundreds of times every year.

Ironically, Boris Johnson did it only once. Just after the second invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when asked by the Leader of the Opposition whether Roman Abramovich had been sanctioned, Boris Johnson told the House that yes, he had been sanctioned. I quizzed him again, and he said yes, Abramovich had been sanctioned. The next day, however, he corrected the record to say that no, Roman Abramovich had not been sanctioned—he was subsequently, but not at that time. It seems a little odd that the only time Boris Johnson chose to correct the record was when a Russian oligarch, with very deep pockets and very expensive lawyers to hand, called on him and made him do so.

As I said earlier, this system for correcting the record should be available to all Members, and I hope that the motion is carried tomorrow; I am fairly confident that it will be. But what are we to think if a Minister, or a series of Ministers, keeps on repeating something by using a statistic that is false, and that we know to be false because the Office for National Statistics, which consists of a pretty dry set of people who are not all that interested in getting into party political argy-bargy, writes to the Minister, “Thou shalt not use this statistic because it is not true any more”? I have a simple answer: if the Office for National Statistics writes to a Minister to say that they must not mention something again, and copies in Mr Speaker, but the Minister does not correct the record within 28 days, they should automatically be considered to have breached the code of conduct. The Committee on Standards could then decide the importance and significance of the issue. If a Minister were faced with such a situation, I suspect that after the first time they were caught out and suspended from the House by the Committee on Standards, they would never do it again. That is the kind of measure that we need to introduce.

In the present system, someone has to refer the matter of whether an individual Member has lied to the Committee of Privileges. This is phenomenally cumbersome. For a start, they need to get the whole House to vote in favour of it. Therefore, in the main, it is unlikely that Government Members, who, by definition, are in the majority, will vote for one of their own Ministers—let alone a Prime Minister—to be referred to the Committee of Privileges. It has happened once, but I suspect it is unlikely to happen again. It is a very long and cumbersome procedure. It requires Mr Speaker to grant permission for the reference to the Committee of Privileges. We need to reform that.

I note yet another irony: when the Department for Culture, Media and Sport Committee found, in essence, that Nadine Dorries had lied to the Committee, it decided to not seek a reference to the Committee on Privileges—I guess because it thought that it was just too cumbersome and tedious a process. We probably need to make this process simpler, and to not necessarily require a Committee of the whole House to do it.

The Government response to the e-petitions says:

“It is an important principle of the UK Parliament that Members of Parliament are accountable to those who elect them. It is absolutely right that all Members of Parliament are fully accountable to their constituents for what they say and do and this is ultimately reflected at the ballot box.”

Well, yes—sort of. I am conscious that I represent the Rhondda, the only seat in Parliament that has been Labour since 1885, although it is being redrawn at the next election. My point is that some MPs are more accountable to their electorate than others. We have a first-past-the-post system, which means that many MPs are sitting in very safe seats, and so are not as accountable. That is why it is all the more incumbent on the whole House to take these issues very seriously. We cannot just leave these issues to the ballot box.

Various ways of sorting out the issue have been suggested. One is that the Speaker should intervene and decide. I regularly see people on Twitter condemning poor old Lindsay for not having told off such-and-such a Minister for lying. That is not fair. We cannot have the Speaker decide on the accuracy or inaccuracy of comments made by any Member of the House; that way madness lies. I fully support not giving that power to the Speaker; it would be unfair.

There is an argument that there should be a criminal offence of lying, and I understand that. However, I used parliamentary privilege to make allegations about Roman Abramovich in the Chamber, which I think enabled the Government to proceed with eventually sanctioning him under the Ukraine sanctions regime. I am sure that he has very expensive lawyers and would have sought a criminal prosecution. I think I was doing the right thing, and operating under another principle: the principle that all Members should speak without fear or favour. That is of course guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, which says in article IX that no proceeding in Parliament should be questioned or impeached in any court of law, or in any other place. That guarantees that we cannot be sued in other places for the things that we say in Parliament. It is important that we maintain that; otherwise, he would have been seeking some kind of criminal prosecution of me. We MPs need to use that power judiciously and carefully, and I admit that I have sometimes got that wrong. However, we need that power in place to ensure that we have a fully functioning system.

A further point to make about a criminal offence is that it will not deal with what happens outside Parliament. It would be difficult to start having MPs brought to court for what they may or may not have said on Twitter or whatever, unless they were inciting violence or breaking another law.

We must also bear in mind that sometimes two people can, quite legitimately, read the same event completely differently. I use the Evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—as an example. Matthew and Luke have completely different versions of the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain; they differ on whether Jesus is standing up or sitting down; on whether it is “Blessed are the poor” or “the poor in spirit”, and so on. That is a frivolous remark in one sense, but I am being deadly serious. I really do not want the courts—and, for that matter, the police—to spend all their time analysing whether something is proportionate, deliberate, and so on. That is why I am not in favour of a criminal offence. However, I do think that the offence of misconduct in public office is ripe for reform. It has been around for a very long time. It is rarely used. I am not aware of it ever having been applied to a Member of Parliament, but there is an argument that, if a statutory offence of misconduct in public office were introduced, then it should apply to Members of Parliament in certain circumstances.

I have two final points. First, I cannot tell you, Mrs Murray, how many times I have been told, or have heard on television or radio, during this Parliament: “The public doesn’t care about standards in public life. This is all just Westminster tittle-tattle.” I am sorry, but that is so wrong. If we do not care about it, the public certainly do. I gently suggest that the by-elections last week point to a public who genuinely care about standards in public office and lying. Let us not forget that Boris Johnson was referred to the Committee on Standards over what he said about parties in Downing Street; he was not referred to the Committee of Privileges for what he said about Chris Pincher, which was actually what brought him down—but that was another set of lies. There were dozens of different issues that could have been sent to the Committee of Privileges if necessary.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton, who spoke for the Liberal Democrats, was absolutely right: the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy, which has done a lot of work on this subject, said that by far the No. 1 thing that it sought in a Member of Parliament was honesty; that is by far the No. 1 quality it wants in a Member. Its favourite option would be to throw Members out of Parliament if they lie to Parliament. With all the caveats that I gave earlier—that we sometimes make mistakes and so on—if a Member refuses to correct the record, that is by definition a wilful misleading of Parliament.

This is my final point. Why does all this matter? In the end, if people start losing trust in democracy, it may lead to them not voting, or to believing, “Well, it is a lot more efficient just to have an autocrat decide,” as has happened in other places in Europe in recent years. We will then have lost one of our fundamental freedoms, and something that makes this country very special. Parliament is on trial. The linchpin of that is about whether MPs tell the truth or lie; whether we—the rest of the House—care when a Member lies; and whether we do anything about it.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (in the Chair)]

I gently remind Members that it is appropriate to refer to Mr Speaker as Mr Speaker, not by his Christian name.