House of Commons Commission

John Bercow Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I join the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton) in paying tribute to—I have no idea whether he is right honourable, but if he is not he certainly should be—the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell), and in thanking David Maclean for the service he has given. I say to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, and to you, Mr Speaker: thank you for the role you fulfil.

I do not know whether the Commission has much to do with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, but IPSA deserves to have as much support as possible in getting right its role. I shall not talk now about its responsibilities, but I would say that IPSA was set up because the House and the Commission—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The subject of IPSA has precisely nothing—repeat, nothing—to do with the terms of the motion. I therefore know that the hon. Gentleman will not seek to dilate on the matter but will confine himself to the specifics of the motion.

[Peter Bottomley]

I thought, Mr Speaker, that I had left IPSA behind in the wake of my introductory remarks, and I intend not to refer to it again.

The point I was going to make is that the holder of your office, Mr Speaker, and the holders of other offices, failed to support Elizabeth Filkin when she was Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am afraid that, although the hon. Gentleman has tried, the second go was no better than the first. The matter has absolutely nothing to do with the terms of the motion, on which I hope the hon. Gentleman will focus the remainder of his remarks.

[Peter Bottomley]

If the House of Commons Commission has no role in relation to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, I am misguided.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let me help the hon. Gentleman. I made no such observation or suggestion whatsoever. The issue is not the sphere of competence of the Commission but the substance of the motion that Members are supposed to be debating.

[Peter Bottomley]

In welcoming the proposed appointment of my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) and the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), I express the wish that my confidence is not misplaced, as it sadly might have been in the past. If we expect the Commission to be able to defy, on occasion, the wishes of this House and support the work of those who work with the Commission and alongside it, we will be able to praise them not just in advance of their appointment but after their service as well.

I make this point without anticipating contradiction: had we done better in the past, those who take on the responsibility of being part of the Commission would have had, and will have, an easier job than they have had. In the days when I was defending the holder of a different office, most of the House asked why I was doing it. The reason was that the Speaker, the Leader of the House and others have responsibility for considering issues on their merits, and I expect that those appointed to the Commission will do the same.

The fact that there may have been failures in the past was not a big surprise, because some in high authority did not give the backing they should have done. I hope that if any member of the Commission finds that they are in a similar position in future, they will say, openly, “It may be a minority interest, but those who serve in this House have got to be prepared to be unpopular, to defy convention at times, and to remind those who serve this House that virtually every page in “Erskine May” is there because something has happened for the first time.” If anyone rolls out the historic negative, saying, “You can’t do this in a new way because nobody’s done it that way before”, they should read the pages of “Erskine May”—not just the present edition but those from the past as well.

I wish honourable service to those who have joined the Commission, and I praise those who have been part of it. Let us never again find that when MPs are investigated, members of the Commission, whether in that position or in their other positions, fail to back those who ask for a higher standard of behaviour within this House. I say that, I think, without contradiction this time.

[Mr Speaker]

We are grateful.

Question put and agreed to.

[Mr Speaker]

Now that the motion has been agreed and Mr Nick Harvey has been discharged, and in the light of the very welcome remarks of the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House, I should like to record my heartfelt thanks to Nick Harvey for his five years’ service on the Commission and the Members Estimate Committee, and especially for acting as Commission spokesman throughout that time, as well as for his work on the 2008 review of allowances. In addition, I should like warmly to thank the former Member for Penrith and the Border, David Maclean. He was appointed to the Commission on 1 November 2005, replacing Sir Patrick Cormack, and he served until the end of the last Parliament. We appreciate the work of Mr Harvey and of David Maclean.