Standards

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the House for tabling the motions. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and his Committee for all the hard work that they have put into their inquiries and reports on standards over many months. I really would have liked to see all that work recognised in the motion today. After months of calling on the Leader of the House and her predecessors to implement the Standards Committee’s full recommendations, I am sure that the right hon. Lady will have imagined my initial excitement when I heard the words “Members’ code of conduct” during her recent business statement, but sadly that turned to some disappointment when I found that it did not include all the Committee’s work to strengthen standards in Parliament. I understand what the right hon. Lady has said, but I will come back to that shortly.

Let me now turn to the substance of our debate: the appeals process. Let me first place on the record my thanks and welcome for the work that Sir Ernest Ryder has done on the House’s current system for the Standards Committee. It has been helpful to have a well-respected external figure investigating whether or not our existing standards needed to be improved or strengthened. I know that the Committee made good use of Sir Ernest’s extensive experience when considering the important issues of fairness, natural justice and the right of appeal, and I note that he gave thoughtful and considered support to our standards system overall. I picked out the issues of fairness, natural justice and the right of appeal because I seem to remember those words being used in a debate on 3 or 4 November 2021 which, I am afraid, did not show the House in a good light. That is partly why we are here today.

Sir Ernest proposed that there should be a right of appeal against both the findings of the Standards Committee and any sanctions that it imposed or recommended. It seems wholly sensible that such an appeal should be to an independent body with judicial expertise, and that leads us inevitably to the Independent Expert Panel. I am assured that its chair, the right hon. Sir Stephen Irwin, has said that the panel should be able to take on this role, and that it should be able to manage the workload without expanding the current panel size of eight. I am grateful to him for that confirmation. I assure the Leader of the House that she has my support on the motions, and that they will be supported by the Opposition.

However, let me turn to the slightly wider but related issue of standards in general and, in particular, standards and ethics in parliamentary and governmental life. It was the well-respected former Cabinet Secretary Lord O’Donnell who said recently, “It’s always best to look at reasons why your predecessor fell and fix that.” Unfortunately, however—and I say this with disappointment and sadness, because it affects all of us in this place—everything we have heard from the current Prime Minister, not just during her leadership campaign but in the context of her lack of action since taking office, suggests so far that we are in for more of the same when it comes to trashing standards. I wanted to believe that that was not so, but the Prime Minister even refused to say that she would appoint an independent ethics adviser after the previous two had resigned—admittedly, under the previous Prime Minister—in despair.

I am glad that the Leader of the House has said that the Government are committed to appointing one, but I want to see some urgency. It would be reassuring for the House and for the country if the Prime Minister could commit to appointing that much-needed ethics advisor.

On parliamentary standards specifically, there should have been a lot more in the motion—namely, the rest of the recommendations, in my view. I thank the Leader of the House for her update, and she has been extremely co-operative with me and my office on this, but again we need some urgency to repair the damage that has been done by some—not all—on the Government side to the public’s view of how we conduct ourselves in this place and the surrounding neighbourhood.

In response to my questioning on this at business questions last Thursday, the Leader of the House said:

“It is not that we are not doing them”.—[Official Report, 13 October 2022; Vol. 720, c. 260.]

I absolutely believe her, but does this mean that the Government will bring forward a motion to cover all the Standards Committee’s recommendations? I get that sense from what she has said, and I would like to know that that is the general direction of travel, but if not, why not? Can she tell us which ones the Government like and which ones they do not? I would be grateful if she could give us a much more specific timeframe for when they will be brought forward.

I welcome the assurances that the Leader of the House has given, but when it comes to parliamentary standards and the Tories, I think she probably understands why the public are feeling a lack of trust. Unfortunately, it is the party that refused to fix a loophole that let one Member off the hook for a particular misdemeanour. It is the party that was prepared to change the rules retrospectively seemingly to support cash for access but not to stop sexual harassment.

I do not kid myself that there was ever a golden age when the public saw us all as completely trustworthy and the holders of the highest standards, even though I believe that most of us in this House absolutely are. However, the public need to—and at times have been able to—trust the system of standards enforcement and sanctions around our general principles. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda once told me, there have been rules on how MPs should behave honourably since 1695. Since that time, the rules have only ever gone in one direction, which is to be strengthened—that is, until some Conservative Members unfortunately sought to drag them backwards during the Owen Patterson affair, which showed all too clearly that we have, in Conservative Members, some people who seem to be willing to change the rules retrospectively if they or their mates get caught.

Until we see a motion on the Order Paper covering all the Standards Committee’s recommendations—or some form of them—we can only assume or guess that the Government have apprehensions about bringing them forward. Banning MPs from doing paid consultancy work and increasing the transparency of Members’ interests are measures that Labour has long been calling for, and I believe that there is cross-party support for them. I have referred to the Owen Paterson affair with good reason, because that was the place where some of those concerns grew really strong.

We will of course support the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain). It seems a great pity that they needed to be put into writing, but evidently they did—

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

indicated assent.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I see that the hon. Member is nodding. I support the amendment and the motions, but I want to put on the record that if we were in government and I were at the other Dispatch Box, I would want to enact the Standards Committee’s recommendations as soon as possible.

In that vein, can I urge the Leader of the House to bring forward a further motion to do the work that she has referred to? She will find that she has support from this side for any co-operative and collaborative work that she wishes to do, and even for any critical or difficult work. We stand ready to work with her. This is not a matter that should be party political, although I have made some party political points because unfortunately it has been shown to be so in the past year. I will support the motions and the amendments, and I commend the report and the inquiries of the Standards Committee to all right hon. and hon. Members.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I rise today to speak in favour of the two amendments on the Order Paper in my name. I will confine my comments to those amendment, but first I want to echo the expressions of thanks to the Standards Committee and its Chair, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), for their work. I also offer my thanks to the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), the Chair of the Procedure Committee, who met me earlier this year in relation to this issue. I am grateful to her and her Clerks for giving me their time.

As has been highlighted by both the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House, my amendments make a straightforward change to what happens when the House votes on a motion to sanction a Member for their conduct. At the moment, a Member in that situation can vote on their own censure. Some of us might think that would never actually happen after an independent investigation has found a Member not only responsible for breaking the code of conduct but responsible for such an egregious breach that their privileges as a Member of this place should be curtailed as a result. We would like to think that there would be a sober reflection and making of amends in that situation but, sadly, we know that is not always the case.

It is less than a year since the censure of the former Member for North Shropshire. In those two votes, the former Member voted against his own suspension. As a result, I secured a Standing Order No. 24 emergency debate on standards, as an opportunity for the House to begin repairing the potential damage that affects us all in this place when such things happen.

It might be the former police officer in me—I have mentioned being a former police officer a few times today, as I spoke in the debate on the Public Order Bill—but it infuriates me that a Member can vote on their own suspension. It puzzles me, too. Surely, with the million rules and conventions in this place about what we can and cannot do, it should not have been allowed.

I had a look and spoke to the Clerks, who are much appreciated by all of us as a fount of knowledge. I found that, yes, there is a convention that, although Members can speak at the start of a debate on their conduct, the expectation is that they should subsequently withdraw, with the implication being that they should not return for the vote. There is a further convention that a Member can lodge a motion objecting to another Member’s participation in a vote in which they have a financial interest in the outcome, but I think you would agree, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this is cumbersome and basically impossible with the rate of business and the number of MPs that we now have in this House.

Importantly, they are both currently conventions, not rules. Simply put, conventions last only as long as people choose to adhere to them. When people do not, it reflects on all of us. The Conservative party potentially had the most mud stuck to them as a result of what happened last year, but this is House business and it reflects on all of us to ensure that we uphold standards in this place.

My two amendments amend the Standing Orders to make these two conventions a rule. Members will not be able to vote on sanctions relating to proven breaches of the code of conduct by themselves. It is worth noting that the vast majority of cases considered by the Standards Commissioner are either not upheld or are rectified without further action, but there are always MPs under investigation, and I suspect there always will be. Although it has nothing to do with those individuals, it is important that we as a House are seen to be acting accordingly.

Where cases are more serious and there is a report to the Standards Committee, and where all the appropriate procedures, including those set down in the motion itself, have been followed and the recommendations reach the Floor of the House, we must ensure that due process is done and, most importantly, seen to be done.

Ironically, it was during Parliament Week last year that we saw the situation that the shadow Leader of the House mentioned, and it is almost Parliament Week again. When I talk to my constituents, they ask me about working here, fairness and transparency, and I genuinely think this is the best job I have ever had. It is an enormous privilege, and I think the vast majority of Members agree and want to act accordingly.

I want to be able to tell my constituents, and I feel very encouraged that I will be able to do so, that we have taken a long, good look at ourselves and that the vast majority of us who want to maintain those high standards and hold the respect of the people we serve did something to make things better.

I am keen that this is not seen to be a party political issue, and the hon. Members for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater), for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), and the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), all put their names to the amendments. For that reason, I hope very much that I will not need to press them to a vote. If there is an objection, I intend to do so this evening.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Committee on Standards, Chris Bryant.