Committee on Standards

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Treasurer of Her Majesty’s Household (Stuart Andrew)]

I beg to move,

That this House endorses the recommendations in paragraphs 52, 55 and 64 of the Second Report of the Committee on Standards, HC 582; and accordingly suspends—

(a) Mrs Natalie Elphicke from the service of the House for a period of one sitting day, on Friday 10 September;

(b) Sir Roger Gale from the service of the House for a period of one sitting day, on Friday 10 September; and

(c) Theresa Villiers from the service of the House for a period of one sitting day, on Friday 10 September.

Today’s motion follows the publication of the Committee on Standards Second Report of this Session. The report was agreed by the Committee and published on 21 July 2021. The Government have sought to schedule a debate as soon as possible, as is usual practice. It is always regrettable when such a motion is before the House. The matter has been investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and reported on by the Committee on Standards. I thank the commissioner and the Committee for producing the report. The motion endorses the recommendations of the Committee, and proposes that the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), and the right hon. Members for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) and for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) be suspended from the service of the House for one sitting day. I commend the motion to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I completely accept that. In fact, I do not like the word “punishment”. Of course this may feel like a punishment, but we prefer the word “sanction”. We have deliberately tried over the past 18 months, since I have been Chair, to create a sort of tariff of sanctions, which we apply according to the seriousness of the misdemeanour and to a set of aggravating and mitigating factors, which we try to bear in mind in relation to each individual. We have laid that out in the report.

It is unusual to have a report that refers to several Members; I am not aware of any case where we have drawn a distinction between each of the Members who have been engaged in a similar action. I hope the House would be reassured that the fact we have drawn a distinction between the five Members, because of their seniority, their previous careers and so on, is an indication that we are only seeking to bring in a sanction that is commensurate with the situation before us. We are not a court of law; we do not have competing parties and everybody represented by lawyers and all the rest of it. However, we seek to give proper consideration to both the reputational risk for an individual, even when an investigation is started, and the reputational risk for the House if we were not to take these matters seriously. We also try to make sure that there is natural justice for each of the individuals, from the beginning to the end.

We would like to bring in some changes to our practices in the future, and we are close to completing the report on the code of conduct, which will make some statements about this. We need to be a bit clearer from the very beginning in explaining to an individual Member what will happen in an investigation when the Commissioner is engaged and when the Committee is engaged we probably need to give a clearer indication of the exact process again, because no Member should have to have all this stored in their head against the day when they might suddenly find themselves in a difficult situation.

I have spoken for too long, as is my wont, but I hope that this has been helpful to the House. If hon. Members are ever in doubt about a course of action they are intending to take, the Commissioner, myself or the Registrar—we have a new Registrar, James Davies, who has just started—are always there to provide confidential advice if people would like it.

[Stuart Andrew]

It was remiss of me at the beginning not to give apologies on behalf of the Leader of the House, who is unable to be here today. I have deputised for him before at business questions and in Adjournment debates, so it is in that capacity that I have been doing this today.

I agree that the report raises some important points and I welcome the fact that the Committee is considering them as part of its review. It would be helpful for everybody to have clear guidance. All Members of this House want to ensure that we are not in danger of doing something incorrectly, sometimes with the best of intentions. This is about making sure that we get that balance right. I also welcome the contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who is right to say that Members could sometimes be scared of doing the right thing. So I am sure a debate on this would be welcomed by many Members from across the House.

There has been discussion about the sitting Friday. I gently point out that it is a sitting day. The report was published the day before recess and it is logical that the suspension takes place the following day after the motion is laid. We have tried to get this motion in as quickly as possible, and this has been a busy week. We are following exactly the recommendations of the Committee.

I accept that some important points have been raised here, and I will ensure that they are relayed to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I commend the motion to the House.

Question put and agreed to.