Standards and Privileges

John Bercow Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alan Meale (Mansfield) (Lab)]

Let me say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) that I welcome all aspects of his Committee’s report apart from one, to which I will refer in a moment.

As the Deputy Leader of House has said, it is never easy for the House to discuss such matters. It is even less easy for someone to stand up and say that they do not agree with parts of a report such as this, because inevitably those comments will be picked up by whoever is out there and played against them. However, I feel absolutely obliged to do so in respect of the case of Richard Caborn. Richard Caborn is a person who gave 27 years of honourable service in this place. In the past few weeks, people from both sides of the House have told me that what he and other colleagues are going through is absolutely appalling.

What about the three former Members who were exonerated entirely? We must, as a House, look to see what they have been put through over the past few weeks and months by people outside this place. Perhaps, as the Chair intimated at the beginning of his address, we need to look at how people treat this place and how they portray it to the general populace, as that is not in the interests of the democratic process.

I turn to what the Chair of the Select Committee said in respect of Richard Caborn. The Committee’s recommendation states:

“Like the Commissioner, we accept that there is no evidence to suggest that any of these breaches were intentional. Mr Caborn did not bring the House or its Members generally into disrepute.”

As its Chair said, the Committee accepts in its conclusions that the rules and associated guidance need to be clarified and amended, and that the rules relating to lobbying must be reviewed as a matter of urgency.

I conclude as I started by reminding the House of Richard Caborn’s long years of honourable service in this place. He served at all levels of Government and served the House well—as did Sir John Butterfill, who was exonerated in this examination. Richard Caborn spent most of his working life in this place, serving the people of this country and the people of Sheffield, only to be admonished at the end of it by this place because of our lack of rules, the sting that was referred to by the Chair of the Select Committee, and that Committee’s findings, which state that he brought neither the House nor Members into disrepute. The six-month suspension that he has been given is, frankly, disproportionate to his so-called crimes. It would have been enough to say that it was unsatisfactory that he did not make a full apology to this House at an earlier stage. If we are going into the business of bringing stings performed by people outside this place to the Floor of the House and of purging our own Members, something wrong is happening.

Question put and agreed to.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Neil Parish to present a public petition. He is not here, so we will move on.