Committee on Standards

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I thank the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), and the Committee on Standards for their diligent work and fair recommendations, clearly expressed. It is never enjoyable for any of us when a motion to suspend Members comes before the House. It is disappointing for us all, and it does no good to the reputation of this place in which we are all proud to serve, or to the rules by which we should be bound, as I believe most Members are on a daily basis.

To a certain extent I am not at all surprised, because where there is an example from the top, such as when the Prime Minister was happy to prorogue Parliament entirely illegally, it is not surprising that five Members on the Government Benches felt it appropriate to interfere and improperly influence judicial matters in the trial of a former Member. As the Committee on Standards pointed out, it is particularly egregious that two of the Members involved had substantial legal experience, and I am disappointed to read in the report that at least one Member is continuing to maintain that he did not breach the rules, and that he would do the same again. I find that troubling, and I give notice hereby that I will be carefully scrutinising the letters of apology that the Committee on Standards recommended, because unfortunately this brings a bad note to us all.

Thankfully, and rightly, the letters were completely disregarded by the Lord Chief Justice, and I note that the Members involved—with the exception of the one I mentioned—have fully apologised and taken account of their actions and the consequences of those actions. However, this behaviour is corrosive. It does nothing but undermine trust in Parliament and damage our reputation. It could have ended up undermining the independence of the judiciary, which is one of the standards we hold dear for this country, and one of the things that we send our armed forces out to defend throughout the world. We talked much this summer about the separation of powers as a part of British values, and about the importance of democracy and the rule of law. This issue is part of that.

The detail in the report of mitigating and aggravating factors troubles me, but I will leave it to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda to speak about that in more detail. Instead of using appropriate and proper channels to raise their concerns, the fact that these individual Members chose to write privately to senior judges to request intervention on a decision with which they disagreed is reprehensible. I am glad that the Committee has shown that alternative courses of action were open to those Members, which they chose not to take. The Labour party thanks the commissioner and the Committee for their investigation into that conduct. That Members attempted to influence the judiciary is a matter of utmost seriousness.

I know the Leader of the House will come back and say that Friday is a sitting day—I note that it is not the Leader of the House in front of me, and it is obviously always a pleasure to see the right hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew). However, I wish to make a serious point. Friday is a sitting day, yes, but it is not the same as missing an entire day—we all know that. Yes, it is a sitting day, but it is not a Monday. It is not a day on which any of those Members will lose their right to question Ministers or table questions. It is a day on which we have private Member’s Bills, and it is a pity that the Government chose to impose this sentence on that day. A different type of sitting day is available—it is called Monday.

There is no previous precedent for Members to be suspended on a Friday, and given that many Members, including those concerned, are unlikely to be here anyway, it is not as if it is an inconvenience. If the Government believe that to try to unduly influence the judiciary and bring the reputation of Parliament into disrepute is a serious offence, it would have been more fitting for them to have decided that the suspension should fall on a normal sitting day. I will be watching closely for the letters of apology, and I thank the Committee and the commissioner once again for their diligent work.