Tim Loughton
Main Page: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)Department Debates - View all Tim Loughton's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I think I have to declare an interest because—I have totted them up—I am the chair of nine APPGs at the moment.
Tim Loughton
All right, the figure may be 10 if I have missed one out, but, in hurriedly putting some notes together, I could remember nine.
I chair the APPG for children, which is a substantial group. Over many years, it has produced some reports that have led to changes in the law, and I do not think that anybody is going to challenge the legitimacy of that. I chair the 1001 critical days group, or the APPG on conception to age two—first 1001 days. That was the genesis of the Government’s “best start” policy, brought in by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), which has played an important part in early years provision. I chair the APPG on archaeology, which briefs parliamentarians on changes to the law regarding the influence of archaeology on the environment, agricultural matters and cultural matters, and it is very active.
I chair the British Museum APPG, which met only yesterday. It has an important job, given that it was this House that established the British Museum back in the 18th century. When there are serious challenges ahead—the future of collections such as the Elgin marbles, for example—this House must have a voice. I chair the APPG for Armenia, which I took on reluctantly from my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) because he was a Minister again. I was told there would be very little going on, and within a few weeks Azerbaijan invaded Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia became a very hot topic. I have virtually weekly conversations with the ambassador and others on this subject, so it is an active group.
I chair the reformed Wilton Park group, an important foreign affairs melting pot financed by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I chair the all-party group on mindfulness, which has done so much good for the mentality, mental health and camaraderie of Members in this House since its formation about 10 years ago, with the strapline of “disagreeing better”; that is very relevant, and it is one of the more active groups. I chair the all-party group on Tibet, which has been absolutely essential to the whole issue of China’s abuse of human rights not just in Tibet but in Xinjiang and beyond.
I chair, too, the all-party group on photography. I took that role on after the murder of our former colleague Sir David Amess. Because I was the next named officer, very shortly after his murder I was, disgracefully, contacted by the registrar to say, “You must have an EGM within 30 days to appoint a new chair,” completely oblivious to the circumstances of the loss of our previous chair. That was how I got to take on that role. The group exists largely to organise the annual photography exhibition, which Mr Speaker very kindly supports and will be attending again later in the autumn. So those are my interests—and there is apparently a tenth one that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) will tell me about. I will therefore automatically be caught under these rules, so I have a double interest.
I do not criticise the report, although I disagree with some of its findings, but I think it has gone largely under the radar and many Members are going to be very surprised if and when it goes through that they will be impacted. I absolutely take the point from my right hon. Friend the Veterans Minister, who I am delighted is here to defend these measures today, that the all-party group system is an important part of Parliament—the report itself says that as well—and that new rules should not deter all-party parliamentary groups. I am afraid they will, however, for some good reasons and for other, unintended not-so-good reasons.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
May I, through my hon. Friend, invite the Minister before he winds up to read pages 55 to 74 of the “Guide to Rules” and see how long that is going to take and how sensible it is?
Tim Loughton
All right then, I will, but my concern is that there has been very little profile for this report and study. I notice that only one Member of Parliament submitted written evidence and only one gave formal evidence to the Committee, and I cannot see that there were any submissions or calls to give evidence face to face from any chairs of all-party groups, let alone multiple chairs of all-party groups.
Tim Loughton
But the Chairman of the Standards Committee is probably about to correct me.
Sir Chris Bryant
Yes, I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to the second round. We had a first report, for which quite a lot of people submitted evidence—both members of the public and Members of Parliament—and we also did a survey of all Members, which a large number responded to. We had other submissions as well, and various Committee Chairs appeared before us.
Tim Loughton
I am referring to the second report because we are discussing the second report. Because there was quite a gap between this study being initiated and this final report being issued, with final recommendations with imminent implications, many people thought this would not happen and might be kicked into the long grass. We all have to take responsibility if we have not noticed things, but the fact that very few people took part in the second report suggests there was a large degree of ignorance that it was taking place.
I agree that there is a problem: there are too many all-party groups—over 800—and I came to that conclusion some years ago when I was invited to the inaugural meeting of the all-party group on meetings. That was not a joke; it did get established—although I do not know whether it is still going or whether it has just had one big meeting right from the start. There are a number of all-party group subjects that clearly stretch credibility, and the fear is that too many of them are in danger of being hijacked by lobbying groups, commercial trade bodies and other interests to give them a platform in Parliament that they otherwise would not be able to get. I absolutely understand that that is a problem and something needs to be done about it. That demonstrates the case for making it harder to set up APPGs in the first place and having stricter rules for the way they operate and their transparency. Everything in the report on transparency, including financial transparency and having a much better check on financial contributions or freebies to certain Members, is essential. I have no issue with any of that and will certainly support it.
On the issuing of passes, none of the groups I am involved in have, to the best of my knowledge, issued passes to any outside bodies, which I think absolutely goes beyond the pale. I agree, too, with having an annual income and expenditure statement and an annual report. Those are all sensible recommendations, and there might be a compendium of all the activities that go on through all-party groups, which would be a good selling point in highlighting why the all-party groups are an important part of this House and the work they do.
Many all-party groups, including many I am involved in, commission reports. In some cases, we act as quasi-Select Committees to take evidence and produce reviews that are intended specifically to influence Governments and political parties and feed into legislation. They get publicity and are generally a good thing.
Sir Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman betrays something I have worried about for some time when he refers to quasi-Select Committees, because APPGs do not have the authority of the whole House. It is a really important distinction that they are not constituted like Select Committees or any other Committee of the House. We have striven very hard to make that important distinction, which is why a specific rubric has to be put on any APPG publication saying it is not from a formal Committee of the House.
Tim Loughton
That is absolutely right, but although they are not Select Committees they can adopt a Select Committee style in taking evidence in order to produce reports. The Select Committee system works really well. I have sat on the Select Committee on Home Affairs for nine years, and those Committees are one of the strengths of this House, but they cannot cover everything. The all-party groups can drill down into more specialised, niche issues that a Select Committee would never have the time or capacity to take on, in order to produce a report on something specific. A few years ago the all-party group for children produced a report on stop and search by police of young children. We took some very important evidence and produced a report with recommendations that led to a change in guidance. So there was a very clear role for doing that group, and the then Select Committee on Home Affairs did not have the time or remit to be able to cover the issue. We produced a valuable report that had a clear implication at the end of it. So all of those things are good, which is why we do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It is sensible to have a two-tier approach for groups that have outside funding, but that funding includes benefits in kind. The National Children’s Bureau is the secretariat to the all-party parliamentary group for children. It does not give us any money. It will organise receptions occasionally to promote our work, it will pay the hire fee for one of the rooms here, for example, and it gives us its time for free, which is a benefit in kind, but none of us receives any money or any perks because of that. The NCB would certainly be caught by this measure, and so would a lot of smaller groups and charities acting as secretariats.
On groups having a minimum of four officers rather than the unlimited amount at the moment, I have been involved with groups that have had large numbers of officers. We do not necessarily need so many, but four is too few. One strength of all-party groups is in the name: they are all-party groups. One wants to get as many parties represented as possible, including in the Lords, as groups are made up of Members of both Houses. To limit them to four officers may limit representation to only two parties—I think it would still apply that they would have to have an Opposition Member as an officer—would not give us a broad spread, so I do not understand the logic of having just four officers.
On limiting each individual Member to being an officer of only six APPGs, I would instantly fall foul of that. In some cases, it may be an excuse for me to be able to say, “I’m very sorry, I can’t be a chairman of that anymore” and I can stand down. But the groups I have taken on—I have given up others in the past, and perhaps there are too many—are on subjects in which I have a strong interest, are active and I think serve a good purpose for the House that I would not be a part of otherwise. So I instantly have a problem. If the new rules are coming in on 16 October, subject to any transition rules of which we know no details—the motion states they will come in when we come back after the conference recess—how is that going to work? The Chairman of the Standards Committee is about to tell me how it is going to work, which may delete my next paragraph.
Sir Chris Bryant
It might be best if the hon. Gentleman waits until I make my speech, because I will lay it all out very clearly. It is printed in the documents, but groups will have to have had an AGM or an extraordinary general meeting, which they can do virtually or by correspondence if they want to, by 31 March next year.
Tim Loughton
Therein lies the problem. There is no common year end for all APPGs. We had the AGM of the all-party parliamentary group for photography at the beginning of this week, because yesterday was the end of our year when we had to do that by. There is another group for which I have another two months to hold it. After 16 October, when the AGMs start coming up, which groups do I then have to drop to take me down to six or below? It may be ones that I do not necessarily want to drop.
The point is, why are we bringing in this change at the tail end of a Parliament? This is quite a significant change and the obvious thing, surely, is to bring it in in the next Parliament, when none of the groups will exist until they are formed again if there is sufficient interest and a sufficient number of Members interested. There may be a larger number of Members required to set them up—that is a better way of doing it. At their genesis, APPGs, whether they are renewing from a previous Parliament or are genuinely new groups, need to justify the need for setting up that group. That could involve a higher threshold of Members needing to sign the form and somebody scrutinising in more detail whether it is a credible and legitimate APPG that will serve some positive purpose for the House.
Sir Peter Bottomley
This may be slightly unconventional, but what we are dealing with actually matters to the House. Would it be possible, during this debate, for the Minister and the Whip to consult with the Leader of the House, the official Opposition and the Chair of the Standards Committee, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), to see whether it is possible for us not to make a decision on the motion today, but to come back to the issue in September? That would still allow whatever timescale is needed, and would allow more MPs to be aware of the implications.
We also have to hear from the Chairman of the Standards Committee, which will tell us more, but it might be sensible if the Government, the Opposition and the SNP considered not coming to a decision, having the debate and then coming back in September when minds will be clearer and more MPs know what is going on.
Tim Loughton
The Father of the House, my constituency neighbour, makes a very helpful suggestion. I do not understand the rush in any case. As the motion stands, I cannot support it. It would be a bit unusual if we had to force a Division on it— I am not one who usually likes to have Divisions on reports by the Standards Committee. There is a need for change—I absolutely agree—but I think we are going to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There will be damage and harm done to APPGs, which is specifically what the Minister says he does not want to happen and goes against the thrust of a report that wants APPGs to continue to play their very important role.
There are other details in the new rules, for example putting up the quorum for an AGM from five to eight. We all know it is often difficult to get five MPs to attend a meeting to form a quorum because of the competing priorities in this place, and unwitting MPs are literally dragged in from the cafés to boost numbers. Again, I am not entirely sure what that is aiming to achieve. We have the idea of having outside chairs to chair these AGMs, but who will those people be? Will Mr Speaker have to create another pool of chairs or whatever? Again, I will leave that for the hon. Member for Rhondda, if he is going to explain more in his speech.
In conclusion, I support reform of the all-party groups, because there has been abuse, they are open to abuse and we do not need as many as there are. However, we do need a great many of them and we need greater transparency in how they operate. I fear that some of the detail around the implementation of these rules, though well intended, will undoubtedly have the result that many APPGs will not be able to continue in their current form, and this House will be at a loss for it. That is why I air those points in good faith.
Having had some experience of being chair or holding other offices of all-party groups over the years, I can say that the report is a good report, but in its detail it is still lacking. I would like the Minister and others to agree that further work needs to be done to come back with a more suitable solution. Preferably, the whole lot will be put into the next Parliament, which will probably not be that far away, so that we can start afresh without people involved in all-party groups now being unwittingly penalised for it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Scottish National party spokesperson.
Sir Chris Bryant
It does—and I have new hearing aids, so I am now quite precise about what I can hear and what I cannot hear in the Chamber.
The serious point here is that we have been lobbied incessantly, ever since I became Chair of the Committee, for new rules on APPGs, by successive Leaders of the House, shadow Leaders of the House, the Speaker, the Speaker in the Lords, Members of the House of Lords—because these are bicameral bodies—a large number of Members of the House of Commons, and external bodies which have been campaigning for changes in the rules because they think that the existing rules are far too flimsy and leave us exposed to a potential new scandal.
I did not like the way in which Sky presented the so-called Westminster Accounts. I thought that some of that was very unfair to individual Members, not least because it lumped any financial benefit that an APPG had received together with the financial interest of the individual Member. It looked as if some individual Members had received hundreds of thousands of pounds of financial support which had gone into their own pockets, whereas all the APPG was doing was trying to bring to the attention of Parliament and the voting public an issue relating to, for instance, a medical condition.
I am therefore keen to get a new set of APPG rules through. I have listened to everything that has been said in the Chamber, and I hope that I will have answers for pretty much everything. I am now looking at the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), because I am rarely able to satisfy him—the Member for Del Monte in his suit over there.
Sir Chris Bryant
One thing the hon. Gentleman said which I think is really important was that there are too many APPGs. That is true: 762 is just daft. One Member—I do not know who it is; I have not asked—is an officer of 88 groups. I admire their dedication, but I do not think that they can possibly exercise due diligence on 88 APPGs, especially those with financial interests. That is why we wanted to address the question of how many groups someone could be an officer of, and how many officers there should be for each one.
Tim Loughton
I hear what the hon. Member says, and I do not demur. I said at the outset that I thought there were too many APPGs. For example, dozens of them have some connection with children, which is why I recently brought as many of them as possible together to try to establish a common children’s manifesto. I am contacted virtually every week by someone asking whether I would be interested in setting up a new all-party group, to which my answer is invariably “No, we have too many already.” We need to merge more of these groups into one overarching interest. If there were more scrutiny at the outset, with someone asking, “Can we really justify setting up this APPG? Can it not be part of another one?”, that would be one way of cutting down the number at the beginning of each Parliament when they are set up.
Sir Chris Bryant
That was an idea that we toyed with. It was put to us that we should have a gatekeeper who would decide whether there could be, for instance, an all-party group for each of the Caribbean countries and one for the Caribbean as a whole, and one for each of the overseas territories as well as one for the overseas territories. The danger with that is the question of how to set the criteria for that person to be able to decide. It would mean putting a great deal of power in the hands of one individual, and that is why in the end we rejected the idea. We have reached a different set of conclusions, which we hope will lead to the same eventual outcome: that someone who currently chairs, or is an officer, of three APPGs in a fairly similar field will say, “Do you know what? I am going to try to get them all to combine, and I want to be the chair of the one.”
The guiding principle for us has been, first and foremost, that APPGs are, broadly speaking, a good thing, but there is a danger that they can be a very, very bad thing. It is certainly a bad thing if a commercial interest is effectively suborning Parliament, gaining a kind of accreditation by virtue of the APPG name. I would argue that this gets particularly acute when the secretariat is provided by an external body that is not even a charity but a PR company or a lobbying company. It seems to me that there is a commercial interest in their making APPGs just to keep themselves in business, and that is an inappropriate way for us to proceed. It leaves us open to real reputational risk for the whole House.
I will go through some of the points that have been made, starting with those made by the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers). He said that he was a trade envoy and an officer for six groups. I know that some trade envoys have decided no longer to be officers of the relevant groups because they are the trade envoy who has a relationship with the Government in relation to those countries. I gently suggest to him that that is a better, or perhaps more appropriate, way of proceeding. I understand fully why he may have ended up being a trade envoy, which is a good thing to be, although I worry about quite how the Government make people trade envoys and retain their commitment to the Government by virtue of doing so. I understand that he might have got there because of expressing his interest through those various groups. I would also say to Members that being a member of an all-party group is a perfectly satisfactory way of signifying to the country and to their constituents that they are supportive of it. They do not have to be an officer in every instance.
Sir Chris Bryant
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point, which I fully take on board. However, ever since APPGs were first created, the House has repeatedly wanted to ensure a clear distinction between reports produced by a group of MPs and ones produced officially by the House. That is an important distinction.
Not every grouping of MPs needs to become an APPG. I have chaired an APPG on acquired brain injury, and it was often difficult to get it going, because all the Conservatives on it kept on being made Ministers—they then got sacked and then they were made Ministers again. One of them, the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), may be about to become Defence Secretary—I have co-operated with him on this subject for a very long time—and another is the Northern Ireland Secretary. Keeping APPGs going is sometimes problematic, because the people who are most interested sometimes get other jobs that mean that they cannot take part. But there is no reason why someone cannot continue the work without being in an APPG.
I am not sure whether the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham was irritated when he kept getting text messages from APPGs saying, “Can you come to Room R for two minutes at 2 o’clock because otherwise we will not be quorate for our AGM.” That is an inappropriate way of doing our business. If we cannot get five genuinely interested people along to an AGM, it probably should not be an APPG, especially if it has some external financial interest. The danger is that nobody is exercising proper due diligence over the finances.
For some of us, APPGs have become a bit of a tyranny. The hon. Gentleman says that he is chair of nine, and he is also an assiduous member of a Select Committee and he is regularly in the Chamber. It would benefit us all if there were fewer all-party groups and, as I say, there is reputational risk here. The Committee expressly asked me to say that it expects that the rules we are introducing will lead to fewer all-party groups. That is the express intention of what we are doing.
Let me be clear about what we are doing. As has been mentioned, we propose that APPGs will be able to have only four officers. The intention is to make sure that every one of those officers takes a proper interest in the running of the APPG. Rather than having 10 vice-chairs, four treasurers and all the rest of it, we propose that there be four officers, who are charged with making sure that the group is run properly. We also propose that all APPGs must have an up-to-date list of 20 supporters—registered members. Thirdly, we propose that a Member can be an officer of only six all-party groups, as has been mentioned. Again, part of the reason is that we want these people to be able to exercise due diligence over the running of the group. I am not questioning the hon. Gentleman here; I belong to nearly all the all-party groups that he chairs and he has admirably driven forward issues, including on the British Museum—that was an all-party group that I founded. I admire all that work, but we do want to make sure that we do not imperil the reputation of the House.
Tim Loughton
It was David Heathcoat-Amory who set up the British Museum group, but that is neither here nor there. On most of the all-party groups where I am chair, I am actually co-chair, so it is not a question of the chair having to do all the work. Does he take my point that limiting the number of officers to four means that there will not be such a wide spread of parties to make it a genuine all-party parliamentary group? Those four people will now be key and will have greater control, accountability and scrutiny over the activities of that group.
Sir Chris Bryant
No, I do not buy that, I am afraid, because what we are trying to say is there are officers and there are registered members. All the registered members should express an interest in the running of the group, and that will demonstrate the cross-party nature of the body.
We recognise that there are many APPGs where there is no financial interest at all. There is no money or external secretariat; it is simply done out of the goodness of the office of the individual Member. We have left most of the rules for APPGs with no financial interest unchanged in all other regards, and the quorum will remain five people.
However, we are introducing a quorum of eight for APPGs where there is a financial interest, and we are saying that the chair for an AGM or extraordinary general meeting of those APPGs will be provided by Mr Speaker, as was requested by Mr Speaker and the Lord Speaker. They want a clear, independent body to be able to administrate whether there has been a proper annual general meeting and that all the rules have been abided by.
I know that Mr Speaker has had some conversations with the Panel of Chairs. It may be necessary to have a couple more members of the Panel of Chairs. We are fully cognisant of the fact that it will take time for all groups to have their AGMs and extraordinary general meetings to be able to comply with the rules, which is why we are making transitional arrangements, although we want the main body of the rules to apply from 16 October, as the motion says.
It might help if I read out the transitional arrangements, because they are important for everybody. They are at the beginning of the document referred to by the hon. Member for Christchurch, and they were in the resolution of the Committee yesterday.
“(1) The rules prohibiting foreign governments from providing or funding (whether directly or indirectly) a secretariat come into force with immediate effect on 16 October 2023.
(2) APPGs need to comply with any other new rules from their first AGM following the new rules coming into force, or 31 March 2024, whichever is the earlier; except that the additional rules applying to APPGs that meet the £1,500 funding threshold will apply only from 31 March 2024.
(3) APPGs will be able to hold EGMs virtually or by correspondence during a transition period (to meet the requirement for 4 officers and no more; and to ensure that those officers are officers of no more than 5 other APPGs) ending on 31 March 2024.
(4) An audit of compliance will be carried out in April 2024. Any APPG that has not complied with the Rules by 31 March 2024”—
which happens to be Easter Sunday—
“will be deregistered.”
I hope it is helpful that I have read that out, because we want to make it as clear as we possibly can.
Tim Loughton
Those sort of details are helpful. I understand how the transition arrangements impact the all-party groups themselves. However, to take my situation, I will have to give up the next AGMs coming up to get down to a quota of six, and they may not be the AGMs that I want to give up, but I will have to do so. That means that I have a problem, does it not?
Sir Chris Bryant
The thing is that I have a problem, too. We have been working on this and consulting the House repeatedly for three years now. We have been repeatedly told by Members that we have to come up with a new set of rules. The new rules that we have produced—all the individual elements that have been referred to so far—were available months ago. The Government responded to them, and we published the Government’s response to them several weeks ago, and we have the debate today. I am not convinced that, if we were to delay the decision today, we would come up with better rules, or a new version of the debate, in September.
Sir Peter Bottomley
That is potentially helpful. I am grateful, and the House will be as well. If the transitional arrangements concentrated on foreign Governments, or significant commercial beneficiaries, effectively supporting groups, that would be understood. It is the other parts that I do not understand. I say that as someone who was asked to chair the Austria all-party parliamentary group when Angus Robertson became leader of the SNP group at Westminster and felt that he could not do it. I stood in and did it, and I remain the chair of that group. In co-operation with the Austrian embassy, which provides no money and no resources, we welcome Austrians here. I guess that alternative arrangements for some functions of that kind could be made quite easily within the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
I am chair of the BBC all-party parliamentary group because one of our colleagues became the interim Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. To keep the all-party group going, given the importance of being able to hear from the BBC and liaise with it on controversial and non-controversial issues, I thought that it was important to stand in.
I am, I think, the chair or co-chair of 12 groups. I am the person the hon. Member for Rhondda referred to as being an officer of more than 80 groups. I could quite cheerfully take him and the House through each of the groups and why I am a member of them. [Hon. Members: “No!”] I will not go through them all, but I will give some illustrative examples.
I am the parliamentary warden of St Margaret’s Church on Parliament Square. I saw the lights on one evening and went into a service, which was the 12-step addiction service. All kinds of people with addictions, whether alcohol, gambling, sex, stealing or whatever else, were giving their witness. That gave me an interest in 12-step recovery programmes and, when a Member of the House of Lords asked whether I would help to set up an all-party group, I agreed. That is one of the groups of which I am a co-chair and registered contact, and I think it is worthwhile. The idea that we would necessarily get four members together at the same time or have 20 people registering as members is unlikely, but the work done by that group is important to all kinds of people inside the House, both Members and staff, and outside it.
I was once asked by Tristan Garel-Jones, a humanist, whether I, a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee who had been a trustee of Christian Aid and chairman of the Church of England Children’s Society, would be prepared to get a humanist group going. I said I would; I said that I was not a humanist, but it seemed to me that it was a line of thought that deserved some kind of parliamentary opportunity. The group has since grown and I am no longer a member of it.
I could go through the various other groups, but there are two that I am keenest on. The first is the group on leasehold and commonhold reform, where for more than 10 years, working first with Jim Fitzpatrick and now with the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), and with the help of the campaigning charity Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, we have fought to look after the interests of 6 million residential leaseholders. Even in the last couple of days we have had success with the Financial Conduct Authority on trying to ensure that those people are not ripped off on insurance, commissions and the like. That group can get large numbers of Members interested, but not get them all together at the same time.
The same applies to the group on park homes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has been in charge of for a long time with Sonia McColl, one of the campaigners. To show the kind of interests that we were up against, when her mobile home was being moved from one place to another, it was stolen.
I have some incredible things going on. If I were brought down to six chairmanships, I would not be able to do half the good that I do, and I do not always know which group will become important. When one of my hon. Friends became a Minister, he asked if I would take on, with the Astronomer Royal, the group on dark skies. We are co-leaders of the world in astronomy, and it is important to have parliamentary interest, so that Members of the Lords and Commons who are interested can come to meetings and we can liaise with outside groups.
I think very few of the groups I am involved in—although there are some—would not do worse if I were not interested. I say this to the Government, to those on the Front Benches and to the SNP: it is not necessary for this motion to pass. We have been told it does not matter to Parliament, because the Committee itself can set the rules, but it is possible to get through to the beginning of the next Parliament with suitable transition arrangements that are variations of what is on page 2 of the guide to rules.
Tim Loughton
I think the compromises my hon. Friend is putting forward will be helpful here. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), the Chairman of the Committee, is concerned that if we pulled this motion now and deferred it to the next Parliament, it would look like a cop-out. This matter needs to be resolved by this Parliament, but it does not need to be resolved this month. I would certainly ask the Standards Committee to come back with some small revisions to parts of the rules, particularly the transitional rules that have been queried. This is not about the bigger issues of foreign intervention or transparency, because I think we all agree on those. If the Committee came back with those revisions as a matter of urgency in September, the rules could still come in on his timeline—although, frankly, I think that if we resolved the matter now but they did not come in until the next Parliament, most of the problems would go away.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I agree, and I hope others have heard what my hon. Friend said.
I refer again to pages 55 to 74 of the guide to the rules. It may or may not surprise colleagues that that is appendix 5, on data protection and APPGs—page after page after page of MPs who run groups telling MPs who may be members of the group, or who may be on a mailing list, how we handle their data. That is one of those things where we move ten places across, from one thing to another, without anybody on the Standards Committee understanding at all what was being put forward.
I do not know whether the Chair of the Standards Committee has experience of trying to administer all-party groups. Getting the detail right is important. We try to get it right, and we make some mistakes, but to add in an extra 20 pages for each group that we may be involved in, even if we are limited to six groups, gives us more than 100 pages to fill in. It is bureaucracy. If the only people who can be members of those groups are Members of Parliament, what on earth are we trying to do? That should not be there, and I hope that it is taken out.