House of Commons
Tuesday 30 June 2009
The House met at half-past Two o’clock
Prayers
[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]
Business Before questions
New Writ
Ordered,
That the Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new Writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough Constituency of Norwich North in the room of Dr. Ian Gibson, who since his election for the said Borough Constituency has accepted the Office of Steward or Bailiff of Her Majesty’s Three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham, in the county of Buckingham.—(Mr. Nicholas Brown.)
Oral Answers to Questions
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Secretary of State was asked—
Afghanistan
I met the Afghan Foreign Minister, Dr. Spanta, in Trieste on Friday. Our embassy in Kabul is in regular dialogue with the Afghan authorities, particularly the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, which is running the first Afghan-led elections since the 1970s. We are also in close contact with the United Nations Development Programme, which is co-ordinating the international effort to support the election commission. In Helmand province we are working with the election commission, the governor and the Afghan national security forces to ensure credible elections on 20 August.
What reports has the Foreign Secretary received of fraudulent voter registration in the run-up to the elections, such as the mass registration of women in Nuristan?
My attention has not been drawn to the example that the hon. Gentleman has given, but the United Nations and other authorities have been as vigilant as possible in ensuring that the extra voters who have been registered—4 million or so have been registered, which is obviously a good thing—are indeed real voters. I understand that about 85 per cent. of people in Helmand province have been registered, and we are confident that the appropriate procedures have been followed there. However, if the hon. Gentleman has any particular evidence that he wishes to supply to me, I should be happy to have it.
Iran
It is for the Iranian people to decide on their Government. The whole world has watched the post-election debate, demonstrations and violence against protesters with mounting concern. The grim effectiveness of the clampdown by the authorities has clearly not ended the debate inside Iran.
We are extremely concerned about the continued detention of some of our locally engaged staff in Tehran. That constitutes unacceptable harassment and intimidation, as European Foreign Ministers made clear in their joint statement on Sunday. I have discussed the issue with Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki, and we agreed in our second telephone conversation yesterday that a swift resolution was in both our interests.
Has it been possible to make an accurate assessment of the number of Iranian protesters who have been arrested and imprisoned, and have any British nationals been harassed or detained?
It has not been possible for us to conduct an independent assessment of the total number of protesters who have been arrested, let alone the number who have been intimidated. As for the hon. Gentleman’s question about British nationals, he will know of the case of a dual-nationality Greek-British journalist who was detained for a time. The handling of his case is being led by the Greek authorities, and I talked to Foreign Minister Bakoyannis about it at the weekend. Obviously any detention or intimidation of journalists or diplomatic staff is to be deplored, which is why we are working so hard on the case that is currently at the top of our list of priorities: that of our own locally engaged staff.
The European Union has said that there will be a “strong and collective response” if the issue of embassy staff is not sorted out. Can the Secretary of State tell us what the nature of that “strong and collective response” might be?
No, because one of the features of a strong and collective response is that we do not advertise its various aspects in advance. At this stage, it is important for the Government of Iran to recognise that the unanimous view was first that the arrest of the nine staff constituted intimidation and harassment of an unacceptable kind, secondly that it was imperative for the individuals concerned to be released unharmed as soon as possible and able to go about their business, and thirdly that there would be a strong and collective response in respect of intimidation and harassment.
It is important to understand that what is happening in Tehran and the wider country is not a bilateral dispute between Iran and Britain. There is a debate within Iran about how the people want to be governed, but it is also the case that Iran seeks engagement with the wider international community. The wider international community is determined that that engagement should take place on the basis of mutual respect, including respect for all our staff.
The Foreign Secretary will be aware that the Foreign Affairs Committee visited Iran two years ago, and we were greatly assisted in our visit by several locally engaged staff. Will he send a message, through whatever channels he has, to our people in Iran that the FAC greatly appreciates the work they have done for us and that our thoughts are with them at this time?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. It is important that so many Members now recognise that some 10,000 of the 16,000 Foreign Office staff are locally engaged, increasingly in positions connected with political reporting and economic analysis. The nine staff who were arrested on Saturday constitute the locally employed element of our political and economic section in the embassy in Tehran. I am sure that my hon. Friend’s thoughts and good wishes will be important to them, but there is a more general principle here: these staff operate for diplomatic purposes, and they should be given full respect for that role.
As the Foreign Secretary correctly says, it is a matter for the people of Iran to choose their own Government, but it is also a matter for the rest of the world that President Ahmadinejad exports anti-Semitism, exports fundamentalist terrorism, that he may, if he gets nuclear weapons, export some of those, and that he also exports regional instability. We must be much firmer and actually call this gentleman for what he is.
I take my right hon. Friend’s comment in the spirit in which it was intended. There has been disgust not just across this House but across the international community at the anti-Semitic remarks President Ahmadinejad has made in recent weeks and years. However, one thing that has become clear in the last few weeks in respect of other aspects of my right hon. Friend’s question is that all power does not reside in the presidential office in Tehran: the role of the supreme leader is absolutely critical, not least on the nuclear file. It is therefore very important that we not only make clear our own views, but also understand the different layers of governance that exist in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
May I place on record my support for the Government’s position on the British embassy staff arrested by the Iranian authorities, and reinforce the Foreign Secretary’s message that Britain has been restrained and measured in response to the unrest since the Iranian elections? Given such sensitivities and the uncertainties over the future of internal Iranian politics, will the Foreign Secretary reassure the House that beyond the reasonable reaction to the unacceptable Iranian actions that we have seen, Her Majesty’s Government will refuse to be provoked by the supreme leader, President Ahmadinejad and anyone else in the Iranian conservative leadership, and instead recognise that silence, patience and restraint at such a time can be the most powerful of diplomatic weapons?
First, I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the preliminary part of his remarks. I am not sure that I can sign up to “silence”, as that may be going a bit far in the conduct of foreign policy, but I certainly think we should be firm but not macho in the way we go about it, and that is what I shall try to do.
It is of course utterly unacceptable intimidation that Iran continues to detain four locally engaged staff from our embassy, and in making that clear the Foreign Secretary has the united support of the House. This transparent ruse by Iran to portray what is a crisis of the credibility of its own Government, using violence against their own people, as a dispute with the United Kingdom is totally unjustified and will deceive, and should deceive, no one. We also support the proportionate steps the Government have taken in response to this, and strongly welcome the supportive stance of the other EU Foreign Ministers. When the Foreign Secretary spoke yesterday to Mr. Mottaki, the Iranian Foreign Minister, did Mr. Mottaki repeat the assertion by the Iranian Foreign Ministry that there was no wish to damage or downgrade relations with the United Kingdom, and if so, how did he square that with the continued detention of four of our staff?
Foreign Minister Mottaki was clear that he wanted to raise the level of engagement not only with this country but with other European countries. It is a matter of record that it is not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran which goes around arresting people, but I made it very clear, and Mr. Mottaki understood and responded, that we did expect the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to engage actively in securing the release of the remaining staff. We want to take that process forward, and that is what is going on at the moment.
Let us look ahead on this matter. Given the failure in the past to agree meaningful European sanctions with real bite on Iran on the issue of its nuclear programme—that has been illustrated by the fact that oil and gas sanctions announced by the Prime Minister 18 months ago were never implemented—is it not vital to start work across the European Union during the rest of this year on the serious economic penalties that ought to follow if Iran does not enter into negotiations on its nuclear programme by the end of the year? Will the Foreign Secretary take the opportunity to send a strong message to other European capitals that although we all want to see a positive Iranian response to President Obama, if no meaningful progress is made by the end of the year, it will be necessary for the EU to take a dramatically hardened stance and demonstrate the will that has eluded it in the past?
I genuinely say to the right hon. Gentleman that I am disappointed by the first half of his question. He said that no meaningful sanctions with bite were being imposed by the European Union, but for the record I should point out that the sanctions imposed by the EU as a result of Iran’s flouting of the United Nations Security Council go beyond, and well beyond in a number of respects, the requirements of the Security Council. To portray the situation as one where there is a lonely voice on the Opposition Benches calling for tough sanctions in respect of the Iranian nuclear programme—[Interruption.]—and similar voices on the Government Benches against those of 26 recalcitrant European colleagues says more about his attitude towards his European colleagues than it does about the reality of the situation. This is not a matter where he needs to bring his Europhobia to bear, because there is a strong and united view among a number of countries in Europe on it and there is unanimous support for the actions that have been taken by the European Union. We will need to go further; private work needs to be done on the when and the how, but I should emphasise the word “private”.
As one who visited Iran during a period of great tension, when we had nobody at our embassy and the American embassy was similarly closed—this was prior to the release of Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan—may I gently urge my right hon. Friend, despite the fact that I welcome everything he had to say, to accept that there is a difference between rhetoric and diplomacy?
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend’s long-standing interest in these issues and the humanitarian perspective that he brings to all our discussions. I agree that, of course, there is a difference between rhetoric and diplomacy. In this case, we have tried to be absolutely clear about things because, whether in respect of rhetoric or diplomacy, clarity helps. In this case, there is a clear and united demand from across the House and the country, from across Europe, and from the United States and others that these hard-working diplomatic staff, who are of Iranian origin and have Iranian citizenship, and who are doing an important job in a completely proper way, should be released and allowed to get on with their work as soon as possible.
Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the repression in Iran is already having consequences far beyond the borders of that country and has dealt a body blow to Iran’s aspirations to be seen as the champion of Islam in the middle east? Has not President Ahmadinejad been revealed, not as a popular President who is governing with the consent of the people of Iran, but as a local despot who is sustained in power merely by the work of the militia and the police?
Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s question gives me a chance to point out the important independent role that has been played in Iran by the BBC Farsi service. Since its inception last year, it has established itself as an authoritative and independent reporter on that nation’s affairs, and it has a very wide following in Iran. It is important to say that although it receives public money, it receives no public instruction as to how it should behave or what it should report. Crucially, in response to his question, I should point out that it has given an unvarnished view of the sort of violence that has been meted out by state authorities in Iran since the election. That has contrasted most strikingly with the passion of the debate that took place before the election day, which was a credit to Iran.
EU Regional Aid Programmes
Delivery of the EU structural and cohesion fund programmes was discussed at the General Affairs and External Relations Council on 15 June. We are awaiting detailed proposals from the European Commission on an amendment to the structural funds regulation to allow accelerated funding, as suggested in its communication of 3 June on employment.
Notwithstanding the Minister’s response, and given the uncertainty about and the cuts to the Learning and Skills Council, the Higher Education Funding Council and the regional development agencies budgets in the UK, what reassurance can the Minister give the EU Council and deprived UK regions, such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, that those convergence programmes will not suffer from the lack of UK match funding?
I can make an absolute guarantee that not a single extra penny needed for match funding in the UK would be brought forward by this proposal, which has not yet been outlined in full detail by the European Commission. There would not be a single penny missing in relation to the European social fund, which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, has already delivered significant extra benefits in Cornwall through the EMBARK programme and Workforce Cornwall. I hope that he will not be touting round the myth that the proposal would bring in extra money—every penny of match funding has already been provided.
Tibet
The Foreign Secretary last raised the status of Tibet with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang during his visit to the UK in February during the UK-China summit. He called for substantive dialogue between the Chinese authorities and the Dalai Lama’s representatives to address the underlying issues in Tibet.
Will the Minister urge his Chinese counterpart to end the outdated rhetoric of hostility towards the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan supporters? Will he tell him that that autonomy is a genuine and workable concept within an overall China, that it is not independence, as the hardliners pretend, and that it can help to provide an important degree of self-determination and can protect the unique Tibetan culture? Will the Minister take practical steps, such as offering to mediate, to help resolve this long-standing injustice?
First, may I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his long-standing interest and commitment on this very important issue? It is possibly early days for me to start mediating in such an historic dispute, but it is absolutely clear that we believe that the only way forward is for the Chinese authorities to resume bilateral discussions with the Dalai Lama’s envoys. It is worth noting that it has always been the Dalai Lama’s position not to advocate independence but to advocate autonomy. We believe that that is now consistent with the British position and that this window of opportunity should be used for the benefit of Tibet.
The UK Government have rightly promoted the idea of dialogue, as the Minister has just set out. Is not the reality that over many years the Chinese have engaged in dialogue but have never given any ground, even of a limited nature? What action are the Government taking to co-ordinate a response with other European Union countries, the United States and other allies to put pressure on the Chinese authorities to be a little less intransigent and to recognise the basic human rights of Tibet?
Our position has recently become aligned, for the first time, with that of the European Union. There is a clear, strong and united position, and the European Union uses its dialogue with China constantly to raise the question of Tibet. For example, during the last round of our bilateral human rights dialogue we called for due process in Tibet and full transparency to allow unhindered access for diplomats and journalists. We also called for reform of the use of the death penalty to limit the scope of its application. Now that our position, for the first time, is aligned with that of the European Union, I believe that we have the best possible opportunity to influence the Chinese to do the right thing by Tibet.
Sri Lanka
Following the recent end to military operations, Sri Lanka has an historic opportunity to resolve the underlying causes of the conflict and to ensure a lasting peace. We have made clear our view that that can be best achieved through an inclusive political solution based on respect, equality and the rule of law, which addresses the legitimate grievances of all Sri Lankan communities, including the Tamil population.
My hon. Friend will be aware that one of the continuing conflicts concerns the events that happened in the last weeks and days of the conflict in the north of the island and whether or not criminal actions took place. Will my hon. Friend redouble his efforts to persuade the Sri Lankan Government that they need to produce a report on those issues if they are to carry the peace process forward?
It is important to put it on record that our immediate concern is for the safety of the more than 280,000 people who fled the fighting and are now being held in camps for internally displaced persons. That has to be our immediate concern, and we have allocated £12.5 million of humanitarian assistance to help Sri Lanka address those issues. In addition, we have been at the forefront in calling through the EU for an independent investigation into any violations. We have also supported the UN Secretary-General in his agreement with the President of Sri Lanka to conduct an appropriate investigation into any violations that have taken place. It is really important that we send the message today that we expect the President of Sri Lanka to convert that rhetoric into action.
The Minister will be aware that this country, as well as having a significant Tamil population, also has many people from the Sinhalese area. What steps is he taking with the high commissioner in this country to ensure that there are harmonious relations between Sri Lankans living here in the UK?
The best solution is to have a political dialogue that leads to peace and stability in Sri Lanka. One difficulty for the Tamil population and all minority communities has been to ensure that the Sri Lankans honour their commitment to enter into serious political discourse. We are very exercised about that, as we must put historical enmities behind us and start to build more inclusive relationships with Sri Lanka.
Middle East
The UK continues to support a two-state solution in the middle east. We urge the parties involved and the Arab world to continue to build on the Arab peace initiative as the best basis for establishing long-term regional peace. We urge Israel to implement a complete freeze on settlement construction in line with its roadmap commitments, and we call on all Palestinians to be prepared to engage in peaceful negotiations with Israel. Facilitating peace in the middle east will remain a top priority for this Government, alongside developing the institutions of a Palestinian state.
Eric Illsley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and may I offer you my belated congratulations? Will my right hon. Friend maintain a commitment to persuading the Israeli Government to accept the idea of a Palestinian state? Does he accept, however, that if that state is too bound in by conditions and a commitment to retain settlements it will be absolutely unacceptable to the Palestinian authorities and the international community?
I maintain that commitment very strongly. The Government’s position is very clear: a two-state solution must be based more or less on the 1967 borders, Jerusalem should be the capital of both Israel and Palestine, and there needs to be a fair settlement of the refugee questions. That is at the heart of securing any stability, never mind security or justice, for Palestinians—and, I argue, for Israelis too. That is why it will remain at the heart of our policy.
In the past, whatever we thought of the regime running Iran, the EU3 plus 3 countries recognised that it ruled by some form of consent. In the light of the recent elections, does the Foreign Secretary believe that the new president—or President Ahmadinejad—rules by consent? If not, how can we begin negotiations to solve problems to do with the middle east or the nuclear issue?
As I said earlier, there is no way that we are able to count the ballots, and we are not in a position to say whether President Ahmadinejad got 63 per cent. of the vote. Debate remains intense in Iran, and we are watching the process extremely carefully. We will have to address questions about the Government of Iran, and I understand that the inauguration of a new president is scheduled for 26 July. Over the coming three weeks, we will work intensively with our partners to ensure that there is a united international position in respect of dealings with the Iranian Government.
As soon as this Question Time is over, will my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary contact his Israeli counterpart about the civilian ship, the Spirit of Humanity, aboard which is a constituent of mine? Its cargo of medical and humanitarian supplies was thoroughly inspected by the port authorities before it left Larnaca yesterday, but the vessel is now surrounded by Israeli warships in international waters. The Israeli forces have disabled the ship’s equipment, have threatened to fire on the ship and have now boarded it. Will he insist to the Israeli authorities that they desist immediately from these blatant violations of international law?
I shall certainly follow up my right hon. Friend’s question; he mentioned the issue to me on the way in to the Chamber. If the contact has not been made already, it will be made as soon as Question Time is over. It is obviously vital that all states respect international law, including the law of the sea. It is also important to say that we deplore the interference by the Israeli navy in the activities of Gazan fishermen, which has been brought to my attention on previous occasions. Resolution 1860 was clear about the basis of peaceful progress in respect of Gaza, and we are determined to uphold all of its aspects.
Can the Foreign Secretary indicate when he last discussed the middle east with President Barack Obama of the United States? He will agree that the United States probably stands a greater chance of exercising influence in the middle east than any other major power in the world. It is important that we create a stable government in both Palestine and Israel.
The hon. Gentleman is right that the United States has a pivotal role in promoting a peace process and a peace plan for the middle east. I think he will agree with me that the determination of the Obama Administration to engage on this issue from day one has been a welcome contrast to the rather belated interest in the middle east which has been shown by previous Administrations. Before 20 January, the European countries unanimously asked for that engagement, and since then the stance of the US Administration has been clear, principled and forceful. I welcome that wholeheartedly.
While I agree with my right hon. Friend that at last we have an American President who recognises the suffering and the plight of the Palestinian people, is it not unfortunate that this wretched Israeli Administration continue to build illegal settlements in defiance of international law? What action is going to be taken by the leading powers over what Israel is doing?
The position of the Government on settlements is clear—settlements are illegal under international law and a major blockage to peace in the middle east on the basis of a two-state solution. Reports are coming through that the Israeli Ministry Of Defence yesterday granted permission for 50 new housing units at the Adam settlement, which we completely deplore. This is the worst possible time for new settlements to be initiated or for construction to be started. We are at a vital moment as the new American Administration come to a decision about how they will prosecute their commitment to a two-state solution, and the call for a settlement freeze is clear and wholehearted.
Does the Foreign Secretary agree that it will be hard to build trust and peace in the middle east while hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are still without sanitation, adequate medicine or the materials that they desperately need to begin reconstruction? What action are the British Government taking to find ways to allow supplies into Gaza in order to end what the International Committee of the Red Cross described a couple of days ago as an
“unending cycle of deprivation and despair”?
I am very glad that the hon. Gentleman continues to draw attention to the Gaza issue, because so do we. The danger is that Gaza gets left behind in discussions of a peace plan or peace process. On Friday at the G8 meeting, I made a point of saying that the UK believed that we could not pursue a Gaza-last policy, that practical help in Gaza was essential—our £46 million of aid is just a part of that—and that adherence to the call of the UN Security Council resolution for an immediate opening of the crossings is in the interests of all right-minded people in thinking through how we can build any kind of solution or trust, to repeat the word that the hon. Gentleman used, in the middle east.
My right hon. Friend has been very clear about the Government’s position on Israeli settlements. President Obama, in his Cairo address, made it clear that Israeli settlements on the west bank have to stop. On 26 June, the G8 too was entirely clear that Israeli settlements on the west bank have to stop, but they are still carrying on, so perhaps the key question is: what can the international community do to ensure that Israel implements in practice its obligations under international agreements?
That is indeed a key question—or the key question. Defence Minister Barak is in Washington or New York today for talks with former Senator Mitchell. That is a key part of the engagement between the United States and Israel in preparation for further development of the American peace plan. We should see how those talks go, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that a settlement freeze is now universally recognised as absolutely key to progress.
Helmand Province
The provincial reconstruction team’s mission in Helmand is to help the Afghan Government to deliver effective governance and security. The number of UK civilian staff working on a joint civilian-military operation has more than doubled since 2008 to more than 80, and all of them are delivering tangible results for the people of Helmand. The PRT has helped to built nearly 2,000 wells, benefiting more than 400,000 people. It has contributed to 160 district infrastructure projects, reaching more than 300,000 families, and provided paid work for nearly 19,000 people.
In the Opposition day debate on Iraq last week, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), a former Secretary of State for International Development, admitted that she deliberately instructed her Department to have nothing to do with the Ministry of Defence or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the drawing up of reconstruction plans once the war fighting had stopped in March 2003. With no plan, chaos ensued for many years. We are now in our seventh year in Afghanistan. As US assistance is required in Helmand province, it seems that there are still lessons to be learned from Iraq. Is it not time there was a major overhaul of how the MOD, the FCO and the Department for International Development conduct modern stabilisation operations, as outlined in recommendation 16 in a powerful Institute for Public Policy Research report issued today?
That is indeed a good IPPR report, which fully endorses the idea of a joint civilian-military operation in Afghanistan. That has been pioneered by the DFID-FCO-MOD liaison in Helmand province. Of course, as I have discussed with the hon. Gentleman on a number of occasions across the Dispatch Box, we should always seek to learn lessons and improve the operation, but I hope that he will agree that the shared leadership across the traditional civilian-military divide in our operation in Helmand is indeed the right way forward. I hope that he will also agree that the bravery of the civilian aid workers and diplomats, alongside that of the military, has made a difference. As for whether there is further to go, of course there is, and we will certainly look at the IPPR report and other ideas—including those of the hon. Gentleman, because he has experience in this respect—in order to take the matter forward.
Reconstruction cannot happen unless we have security. Security requires a national military and a national police force. Is the Secretary of State satisfied with the progress that we have made in supporting and building up the Afghan national police force in Helmand?
No—or rather, I am satisfied that we have made an awful lot of effort, but I am not satisfied with overall progress, for obvious reasons. My hon. Friend will know from the debates that we have had in this House and elsewhere that the development of a trusted Afghan police force is perhaps the major challenge, or certainly one of the major challenges, that we face. The appointment of some of the new district governors under Governor Mangal in Helmand is making a sincere and real difference in that province, but to claim that things are better than patchy would be an exaggeration. The issue is certainly a priority that we intend to pursue.
Many hon. Members think that the Foreign Secretary’s comments about progress in Helmand province are optimistic. Recently, a lot more effort has been made in that area, but NGOs, hon. Members, and military and civilian experts believe that it is ludicrous that less than 10 per cent. of British aid to Afghanistan goes to Helmand province. I draw the Foreign Secretary’s attention to an article by an Army officer published in the most recent issue of the British Army Review, entitled “A Comprehensive Failure: British Civil-Military Strategy in Helmand Province”. We are catching up very slowly indeed. I am afraid to say that although there has been a loss of British military personnel, and there are threats to the lives of brave British civilians, the British Government have so far failed to pull together a comprehensive strategy. I am afraid, Foreign Secretary, that it has been a failure.
I think that the denigration of the efforts of the people on the ground, who have, as the IPPR report says, led the way on improving civilian-military stabilisation efforts is beneath the hon. Gentleman. The truth is that we pay our development aid through the Afghan Government, according to the best practice of international development around the world. We are not seeking to establish a British county in Helmand. We are supporting indigenous efforts, led by Governor Mangal, to build reconstruction as well as security in that province. As for the founding facts that I mentioned, facts are neither optimistic nor pessimistic. I offered no optimism or pessimism. I recited facts about the number of people who have been helped by the efforts of the provincial reconstruction team. I also said to the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), who has taken a long-standing interest in this matter, that there are a number of areas in which we all need to do better, led by the Afghan authorities, and that is what we are determined to do.
Sri Lanka
We remain concerned at continuing reports of abductions, disappearances, violence and intimidation against the media, all of which appear to affect Tamil communities disproportionately. We raise these issues regularly in international forums and with the Government of Sri Lanka and call upon them to take decisive action to tackle human rights abuses.
Does the Minister agree that after 25 years of bloody conflict in Sri Lanka, any reasonable Government would reach out to the defeated community, not incarcerate about 300,000 Tamils, many of them children and the elderly, in squalid and inhumane detention camps? What are the Government doing to improve humanitarian conditions in those camps? More important in the longer term, what are the Government doing to persuade the Sri Lankan Government to close down the camps entirely and allow those innocent people to return to their homes and families?
Since last year we have made sure that a total of £12.5 million of humanitarian assistance has gone specifically to deal with the displaced civilians. We have made it clear that we want the UN and humanitarian agencies to have full access to those civilians. But as the hon. Gentleman said, the long-term solution is political. On the political direction that the president of Sri Lanka has indicated towards a new inclusive Sri Lanka, we have to see step-by-step evidence of action. There have been encouraging words since the conflict was brought to a close, but confidence-building measures on the ground are now needed to demonstrate that the Government of Sri Lanka are serious about a new inclusive country where Tamils and other minorities feel that they have an authentic voice and equal status.
I thank the Minister for what he just said. Does he agree that the continued incarceration of large numbers of Tamil people in refugee camps is a form of imprisonment, and that denying the right to return home is illegal under international law? Will he make it clear to the Sri Lankan Government that they must not try to resettle the Tamil people outside their traditional homelands, villages and towns, in order to bring about some degree of stability in the future?
My hon. Friend is right. The first test of the good intentions and political will of the Government of Sri Lanka is how they treat the displaced civilians. It is imperative that those people return home as soon as possible and that they are given the opportunity to begin to rebuild their lives. That will be the greatest evidence that things are changing for people on the ground in that country.
Lisbon Agenda
The Lisbon agenda was not discussed at the recent General Affairs Council. However, the incoming Swedish presidency and the forthcoming Spanish presidency have indicated their intention to progress work on the EU’s next strategy for sustainable jobs and growth as a successor to the current strategy, which expires in 2010.
As the Lisbon agenda is supposed to be about economic competitiveness, why are the Government consenting to proposals for a pan-European financial regulator which could threaten the competitiveness of the City of London?
I think that the hon. Lady wrote that question before the Council meeting, when it was made clear that there would be no fiscal implications for the UK and that we would be able to maintain our competitiveness. Most of the City has welcomed the fact that we need to make sure that across the whole European Union there is a proper system of risk management so that we can compete with the rest of the world.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Lisbon agenda is about setting up the mechanism whereby Europe can effectively tackle the problems of the international economy, of trade and of the environment by bringing together mainstream groups from every country? That is the way forward, rather than opting out to the fringe—lunatic and otherwise—which is the Opposition’s policy.
My hon. Friend makes a fair point. The most important point, surely, is that we know that, as a country, we do not have a hermetically sealed economy. Our economy is reliant on trade with other countries throughout the European Union, and if we are not to undermine that trade, we have to ensure that there are strong economies throughout the whole continent. That is precisely what the European Council is doing.
Given today’s remarkable legal judgment in Germany to suspend ratification, it is a great shame that the original question was not about the Lisbon treaty. But as it is not, I shall observe that the Lisbon agenda was intended to make the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010—and that with one year to go, there is clearly a lot still to do. Will the Minister assure us that there will be no weakening of the British position on our critical opt-out from the working time directive, which is now used by 15 EU countries and directly affects some 3 million people in this country alone?
As the hon. Gentleman did not ask about Germany’s Constitutional Court judgment today—because you, Mr. Speaker, would not have allowed him to do so under this question—I shall not answer today that, of course, that is a matter for Germany, and not for the United Kingdom to reply to. However, I can say to him that of course we need to ensure that our opt-outs stand firm, and that is precisely what we intend to do.
Topical Questions
I hope that the House will join me in welcoming the UN Secretary-General’s determination to visit Burma this week. The political and human rights situation in the country is dire and demands the world’s attention. Ban Ki-moon’s personal engagement underscores the concern of the international community. It presents an opportunity for the military Government to respond to those concerns by releasing Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners, and by beginning a credible and inclusive dialogue that leads to political reconciliation and a new start for Burma.
I certainly wish to associate myself with the Foreign Secretary’s remarks, but may I take his attention back to Iran, and in particular to the situation facing the seven Baha’i spiritual leaders who have been in detention for more than a year and are apparently to stand trial on 11 July, whose lawyers are reported to have suffered intimidation, and who do not yet know the nature or the number of charges against them? Will the Foreign Secretary bring pressure to bear from this country and others to ensure that their trial conforms to the principles of natural justice?
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. We have long spoken up about the treatment of the Baha’i minority; they were featured in the Foreign Office’s human rights report, and he is right to draw attention to the importance of the events on 11 July and beyond.
It is a cruel irony that the regime should have tried to schedule the next date of the trial for this Thursday—the day that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon goes to Burma. Our best hope is to support his mission and to be absolutely clear that there is unanimous support for it from the international community. We very much hope that either he will come back with progress or the Security Council will return to the issue.
I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was going to cite our support for Pakistan; if he was in fear of radicalisation, I would have one answer. In respect of India, he will know that British aid now amounts to about £240 million over this spending review period, but it is on a declining trend, and by 2011 will have stopped, not because of the Indian nuclear programme but because India is becoming a richer country. It is clear from international development legislation since 1997 that development aid should be directed according to poverty, and that is the basis on which India is pulling itself away from aid, according to its own wealth-generating potential.
What discussions has my right hon. Friend had with his US counterparts on the BBC’s allegations of prisoner abuse at Bagram air base? Is it not a fact that two British prisoners have either been held there in the past or are being held there now? Will my right hon. Friend take some action on that important issue?
Obviously, this is a US issue, not a UK issue. All detainees taken under British control are governed by our memorandum of understanding with the Afghan authorities, which requires the passing of detainees to those authorities. I think that the US Administration themselves have made clear their determination to get to the bottom of the issue of detainee treatment at Bagram. A review by the US authorities is currently under way, and we look forward to its being concluded as soon as possible.
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I raised precisely this issue with Foreign Minister Lieberman when he came to London six or seven weeks ago. I understood that there had been some progress, but on the basis of the question that the hon. Gentleman has asked, I shall be happy to write to him as soon as possible to give him the latest position. He is absolutely right to say that the vehicles are needed for humanitarian delivery purposes. They are essential, they are from the British taxpayer, and there is no reason why they should not be taken out of their compound and delivered as soon as possible.
Neither the Palestinian people nor the middle east peace process are well served by divisions among the Palestinian voices. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the failure to respond to the humanitarian crisis and the desperate need for reconstruction in Gaza are doing exactly what is not in the interests of the Israeli Government either—fuelling militancy and creating disunity among the Palestinian voices? Will he therefore redouble his efforts to bring pressure to bear on Israel to allow humanitarian and reconstruction aid into that living prison?
I am happy to redouble my redoubled efforts. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the closure of the crossing serves no one except those who want to say that there can be no peaceful resolution. I think that she would also agree, however, that the divisions among the Palestinians themselves are an important impediment that needs to be overcome. That is why we strongly support the Egyptian-led reconciliation process, in which I know that she has taken an interest.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has drawn attention to the excellent work of the Foreign Policy Centre, especially in this regard. The number of children executed in Iran was rightly highlighted in the Foreign Office’s human rights report. Not only does this run directly contrary to all sorts of humanitarian considerations, but Iran is a signatory to the international covenant on civil and political rights; that at least, if nothing else, should guarantee proper safety for the children.
Will the Foreign Secretary update the House on the situation with regard to the Turks and Caicos Islands? Notwithstanding the serious problems that have arisen there, does he agree that it would be far better for Her Majesty’s Government to work with the new democratic Government than to take the draconian step of returning the islands to colonial rule, which would be unpopular not only in TCI but right across the wider Caribbean?
It is important that we make sure that there is no corruption in the Turks and Caicos Islands. I pay tribute to the report by the Foreign Affairs Committee on this matter, which pointed us to the process that has led, first, to an interim report, and secondly to a final report, which we hope to publish soon. It would be wholly inappropriate for us to take no action whatsoever with regard to very serious issues that have been highlighted by the commissioner.
I certainly think that it is time that the Foreign Secretary reviewed the exchange that the hon. Gentleman had with the former Prime Minister two years ago and then updated him on our reflections on it. One has to be slightly careful about saying that the comprehensive peace agreement has completely failed, because that is what is holding the situation together, to the extent that it is held together at all.
The Minister of State from the Sudanese Government was in Trieste with me last Friday, and one thing that the UK Government have prioritised is the maintenance, development and implementation of the CPA, which is the only basis for legitimate government in Sudan. However, I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that in no way should the UK Government support vile regimes, and will we certainly look into that.
Order. We have just over five minutes to go and I want to accommodate as many hon. Members as possible, so I am now looking for short questions and economical answers.
When I was in Afghanistan with the European Security and Defence Assembly slightly more than three weeks ago, the commanders in the international security assistance force made it clear to me that in many ways there was a common view between the Iranian Government and ISAF on how to deal with the Taliban. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is a very important issue, and an area of some common ground?
Iran certainly has a very strong interest in counter-narcotics work there. Until I have more details of what my hon. Friend thinks the Iranians said to ISAF, I think I should restrain my comments on that, but Iran certainly has the potential to contribute to stability in Afghanistan, and we should certainly work with it on that prospect.
Last week, the Foreign Secretary repeated the Prime Minister’s claim that the Iraq inquiry had not been set up to establish civil or criminal liability. Does that mean that the Government propose to grant legal immunity to any witness who gives evidence to the inquiry—and if so, by what means?
I remember no discussion of legal immunity in our debate last week. We have a clear mandate for Sir John Chilcot to pursue a wide-ranging inquiry. He will do so, and I hope that he will publish in the not-too-distant future his views on how he is going to conduct his inquiry, covering all the issues that were raised in the debate last week. That is the right next step.
In view of the Secretary of State’s view, now shared by the US and clearly restated a few moments ago, that settlements are the absolute key to progress, and in view of Israel’s repeated refusal to institute a freeze on settlement building, does the Minister agree that the stalemate can be broken only if a sanction of some kind is imposed on the Israeli Government for their defiance of international law?
We have made it clear that, as my hon. Friend says, settlements are illegal and a major impediment to peace. We are encouraged by the fact that President Obama’s speech in Cairo was seen as such a significant development, and we regard Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response as a step forward, although only a small one. At this stage in such a delicate process, the question of sanctions may be best put on hold. However, our feelings about settlements are clear: settlements are illegal, and they are getting in the way of the peace process.
Regarding the seven Baha’i leaders detained in Iran, may I ask the Foreign Secretary whether he will meet me, as the chair of the all-party Baha’i group, and a delegation of Baha’is, to understand the issues and see what representations might respectfully be made to secure their release?
I am happy to arrange a ministerial meeting with one of my colleagues on that important issue.
The Foreign Secretary has registered his concern about the announcement yesterday of the Israeli Defence Ministry’s plans in respect of Adam. Is he further concerned that the overall master plan is for 1,450 units there and involves the immediate relocation of 50 hard-line settler families from Migron? Beyond the screensaver diplomacy and the backing vocals for George Mitchell in the House, what clear, strong message will go to the Israeli Government, and what reliable and credible message will go to the Palestinian Authority?
I think that Senator Mitchell’s efforts are far more than screensaver diplomacy, because they are backed by the President of the United States and have the wholehearted support of the European Union, never mind the Quartet, along with a battery of UN Security Council resolutions. That is why people are now talking about a middle east peace plan, not just a process—or another process—that fails to deliver. I share the hon. Gentleman’s sense of urgency and frustration about the issue, but I believe that there is now a more united international effort than has existed previously. It needs to be brought to fruition.
The excellent charity Kidz In Kampz, which is based in my constituency, reports increasing difficulty in delivering aid on the Burma-Thailand border because of political turmoil. As well as putting pressure on Burma, what discussions has the Foreign Secretary held with the Thai authorities in trying to read that difficult situation?
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He knows that in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, the UK was the second largest donor to humanitarian help in Burma. We think that that was the right thing to do. I was not aware of the particular case that he raises, but I spoke—not recently but some time ago—to the Thai Foreign Minister, and I shall be happy to get an update from our embassy in Thailand about the latest Thai effort. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that Thailand has an important role to play.
The deployment of British troops in Helmand province in 2006 was once described as being as futile as the charge of the Light Brigade. At that time seven soldiers had died; now the figure is 169—far more than died in the charge of the Light Brigade. What has happened in that impossible war to justify the loss of 169 brave British lives?
My hon. Friend is right to pay tribute to the bravery, intelligence and skill of our servicemen and women in Helmand. They have made a huge difference in that province, which was previously ungoverned space. As I said earlier, there is still a long way to go, but the help that people are getting, the security forces that have been established, and the role that Governor Mangal has played in political leadership for that province would not exist without the efforts of our troops and their supporters. The further intensive activity as a result of American efforts in neighbouring provinces means that the next few months will be important in Helmand, as well as in the rest of Afghanistan. Voter registration has happened for 85 per cent. of the population of Helmand, which would have been impossible before 2006.
21st Century Schools
May I take this opportunity to welcome you, Mr. Speaker, to your position and congratulate you on your elevation?
Over the past 12 years, school standards have risen significantly in our country, and our education system has changed beyond recognition. The number of secondary schools with at least 30 per cent. of pupils failing to achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths, has fallen from over half in 1997 to just one in seven schools today. We now have more than 40,000 more teachers, backed up by more than 200,000 more support staff. We now also have 200 national leaders of education, compared with none in 1997.
Our best state schools now match the best schools in the private sector and anywhere in the world. The reason is that we have rebuilt the school system on a foundation of sustained record investment, matched by tough accountability. That is why we can now go further and transform our school system to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Our country faces an economic imperative, because every young person now needs skills and qualifications to succeed, and a moral imperative, because every child and young person has potential and can do well with the right help and support. It is to meet those twin imperatives that I am today publishing our 21st century schools White Paper, based on new guarantees for pupils and parents; a significant devolution of power and responsibility to our school leaders, matched by strengthened school accountability; and an uncompromising approach to school improvement, because we want every child to succeed and we will never give up on any child.
First, we will now legislate for our pupil guarantee, to ensure: that all young people get a broad and balanced curriculum and high-quality qualifications, whether their strengths are practical, academic or both; that every secondary pupil has a personal tutor; that all pupils get five hours of PE and sport every week and access to cultural activities; that gifted and talented pupils get written confirmation of the extra challenge and support that they will receive; that all pupils with additional needs get extra help, with 4,000 extra dyslexia teachers; and that all pupils in years 3 to 6 who are falling behind in English or maths get one-to-one tuition to help them to get back on track. We will now extend the offer of one-to-one or small-group tuition to all pupils at the start of secondary school who were behind at the end of primary school. Following the report of the expert group on assessment, we will now introduce a new progress check at the end of year 7, so that parents can be confident that their child has made up the lost ground.
Our new parents’ guarantee will ensure that all parents get regular online information about their child’s progress, behaviour and attendance. It will also ensure access to their child’s personal tutor and fair school admissions in line with the admissions code, as well as ensuring that parents’ views will be listened to and reported in the school report card, so that all parents know what other parents think when choosing a school. Where parents are unhappy with the choice of schools on offer to them, local authorities will have to listen to and respond to their concerns, based on an annual survey of parents.
Because all parents want their children to learn at an orderly school, where they are safe from bullying and lessons are not disrupted by bad behaviour, we will now legislate to strengthen home-school agreements, so that all pupils and parents will accept the school’s rules when they apply for a school place and will be expected to sign up to renew their commitment every year; schools will have stronger powers to enforce discipline through intensive support, parenting contracts and parenting orders; and parents will have the right to complain and expect action if schools fail to act to enforce the home-school agreement.
Building on the success of the literacy and numeracy hours of the national strategies, which will continue in all schools, with Ofsted continuing to inspect them as now, we will devolve power and funding to school leaders to decide, with ring-fenced funding, what support they need, school by school, to drive up standards further. We will also ensure that schools can get the support that they need from other services through children’s trust boards and encourage multi-agency teams based in schools. The new chair of our independent bureaucracy watchdog will review any unnecessary obstacles that get in the way of delivery. Building on the success of our national leaders in education and academies programmes, we will now act so that our best head teachers can run more than one school, with better pay for executive heads. We will accredit high-performing schools, colleges and universities to run chains of schools in not-for-profit accredited schools groups, with the first providers up and running by January. Already nine schools, one multi-academy sponsor, four colleges and four universities, including today Nottingham university, have come forward, and I am today setting aside funds over the next years to support their growth.
We will match this transformation in school leadership with a transformation in school accountability. School league tables are easy to read, but because they present a narrow view of performance, based solely on the attainment of the average pupil, they cannot provide the full picture that parents need. Our new school report card will include full information on school attainment, but will go beyond that. It will set out clearly for parents how the school is improving standards and how well it is helping those pupils who fall behind to catch up and stretching the most able. The school report card will also report on discipline, attendance, sport, healthy eating and partnership working, and set out what parents and pupils think of the school. We will begin pilots of our school report card this September, but although we will consult further, I am now convinced that if parents, newspapers and websites are to make fair, clear and easy-to-understand comparisons between schools, our school report card will need to include a single, overall grade.
As a world-class schools system needs a world-class work force, we are making teaching a masters-level profession, and we will now introduce a new licence to teach, similar to that used by other high-status professionals such as doctors and lawyers. Teachers will need to keep their practice up to date to renew their licence, and they will be given a new entitlement for continued professional development. We will start with newly qualified teachers beginning their training this September, those returning to teaching from September 2010 and all supply teachers shortly afterwards. We will make governing bodies slimmer and more highly skilled, and require all chairs to undergo specific training.
The primary responsibility for school improvement lies with head teachers and governing bodies, including their chairs, but where progress is too slow and performance does not improve, local authorities have a responsibility to act. Since we set out our national challenge and our coasting schools challenge, local authorities have drawn up improvement plans and we have already announced 55 new academies and 27 national challenge trusts. Today, I am giving the go-ahead to two new academies, in Halton and in Redcar and Cleveland, and confirming funding agreements for two further academies in Nottingham and Hertfordshire—all replacing national challenge schools.
Some argue that where underperformance is entrenched, where locally led change is not working and where excuses are being made, the right approach is to stand back, to let schools wither and slowly decline, and to allow the children and young people in those schools to pay the price. I disagree. I believe that the Government have a responsibility to step in and demand improvement. I will not shirk that responsibility.
Following Ofsted’s December 2008 assessment of Milton Keynes, which found children’s services there to be inadequate, with serious weaknesses in secondary school attainment and improvement, we commissioned an independent performance review. The review concluded that, despite some progress, urgent improvement was still required. The Children’s Minister has today written to the council in Milton Keynes, directing it under section 497A of the Education Act 1996 immediately to appoint Mr. Peter Kemp to chair an independent improvement board that will report directly to Ministers, and to submit and agree an improvement plan.
The Schools Minister and I are concerned about the rate of progress in Leicester, where we issued an improvement notice last June. So I am today asking Sir Mike Tomlinson, the chair of our national challenge expert advisers, to provide us with a progress report in September. On the basis of his report on Leicester and of this summer’s results, we will consider whether further action is needed.
I am also asking our expert advisers today to work with Blackpool and Gloucestershire—areas that need to make more progress—to identify what more needs to be done to deliver the national challenge and to report back to me on progress in September. If this year’s exam results reveal serious weaknesses in those areas, or in any other area of the country, I will do whatever it takes to secure the progress of children and young people.
With this White Paper, we match continued investment with reform and higher expectations, so that we can meet the economic imperative by ensuring that every young person gets the qualifications they need, and so that we can meet our moral imperative by ensuring that every child can succeed, whatever barriers they face. I commend this statement to the House.
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. This is high summer, the season when the BBC’s screens are filled with repeats. It has nothing original to offer, so it serves up old material that flopped on first appearance simply to fill the airwaves. As it is with the BBC, so it is with the Secretary of State. No wonder this document is printed on recycled paper. Indeed, the White Paper is about as original, fresh and innovative as the Secretary of State’s performances on the BBC’s “Today” programme.
May I ask the Secretary of State why he is today offering one-to-one catch-up tuition, personal tutors for all pupils, and tuition groups for those in secondary schools as though those proposals were new and exciting, when in June 2007, the Prime Minister promised one-to-one catch-up tuition, personal tutors for all pupils, and tuition groups for those in secondary schools? And he has still failed to deliver. I know that the Secretary of State relishes his role as the Government’s attack puppy, and his special vocation as the Prime Minister’s “mini-me”, but when will he realise that simply repeating the same old nonsense over and over again ad nauseam has not exactly helped the Prime Minister to new heights of popularity, and it will not help him?
In the White Paper, the Secretary of State pledges to guarantee a whole series of high-falutin’ promises on better discipline and higher standards, and says that he will legislate to ensure that every school delivers its legal obligation. Is it not the case, however, that every time this Government have introduced a law saying that something wonderful must be delivered, it is only because they have demonstrably failed to deliver that goal in the last 12 years? We have a new law saying that child poverty must be abolished by 2020, because the Government have failed to hit their target of halving child poverty by 2010. We also have a new law compelling public bodies to promote equality, because this Government have presided over a catastrophic drop in social mobility and a widening gap has opened up between the poorest and the rest.
Now we have new laws to guarantee to every child better discipline, even though school discipline is running out of control, with 425,000 pupils suspended last year, 200,000 of them for violence, and with 100,000 teachers having left the profession in disgust. We also have new laws to guarantee every child higher standards, even though we are falling down the PISA—programme for international student assessment— international league tables for achievement and the gap between independent and state schools is widening.
Is it not the case that we do not need new laws, new entitlements and new guarantees? We need a new Government. All the good ideas in this White Paper are Tory ideas. Let us take enforceable home-school contracts. When the idea was put forward, the Secretary of State said:
“I do not think a commitment to helping children to read and behave well should be put in a contract”.
His junior said:
“The Home School Agreement should not be a contract forced on parents”.
But today we have enforceable home-school contracts with penalties for recalcitrant parents—Tory ideas winning the argument.
I very much regret that we have not had more influence on the Secretary of State. We have been calling for less bureaucracy for teachers, for example, but in this document there are just four brief paragraphs on cutting red tape, with just two suggestions—a new cross-disciplinary review and a new quango. I ask why, on parental choice, the Secretary of State has nothing worth while to say. When parents are denied a good choice of school, he proposes a survey, then an opinion poll, then a consultation, then a plan and then further consultation. By the time all that happens, the children denied a good choice of school will be drawing their pension. This Secretary of State has never seen a bureaucracy he did not want to protect and entrench in its complacency.
I hope that there is one other area on which the Government will U-turn—their proposals for school report cards. We have outlined plans for sharper accountability, with tests for which one cannot cram and proper robust and reliable league tables. Today, however, the Government propose abolishing league tables altogether and replacing them with fuzzy measurements of perception, well-being and partnership working. Parents will be left in the dark about which schools are failing.
Is it not the case that this Secretary of State has run out of ideas, run out of money and run out of time? Should he not make way for a party ready to reform, act on discipline, back parental choice and focus remorselessly, at last, on higher standards for all?
I was waiting to hear the alternative policy programme from the shadow Education Secretary, but there was nothing on offer—just the normal well- rehearsed speech, well written in advance; I guess that if one is charging £1,250 an hour, the script has to be well written. The fact is that we have set out one-to-one commitments and we are now delivering 300,000 more places next year. It is this Government who are taking forward the commitment to one-to-one teaching.
As for discipline, we introduced parenting contracts and parenting orders; we have had more than 50,000 parenting contracts and more than 8,000 parenting orders to enforce discipline—and because it has worked, we are now going to extend it and make it more effective, so we can deliver what parents want. They want their children’s lessons not to be disrupted by bad discipline so that children can get on and learn and teachers can get on and teach. That is exactly what we are going to do.
We are making it very clear that we are going to reduce bureaucracy where it gets in the way, while at the same time we are going to extend parental choice and allow a greater parental voice. As for the school report card and the idea that we are taking information away, the people who want to reduce accountability and the reliability of information, and who are proposing or pretending to abolish key stage 2 tests, are the Conservatives, not the Labour party.
I looked at other representations regarding the White Paper. I considered whether we should hold back for a further year in primary school children who failed to make the grade, but I decided that that would be a bad idea, and I therefore rejected it. I considered whether pupils who failed the year 7 test should be sent back to primary school, as proposed by the Conservative party, but I rejected that idea. I considered whether we should abolish key stage 2 tests, and decided that we should not, because it would be a bad idea.
Most of all, I considered the Swedish model and the idea that the way to deliver school improvement is to try, by diverting £4.5 billion from school building budgets, to open one new school a day for the next 10 years—the proposal from the Conservative party. I have to say that I looked at that with interest, but at the weekend, I read in The Sunday Times that according to “insiders” in the Conservative party, the policy was “in disarray”, and that a senior Conservative had said:
“I have not met anyone who understands the policy and don’t understand how we have a hope of explaining it on the doorstep”.
The Conservative party is hoping that no one understands it, because if people did understand it they would understand the chaos and the cuts that would ensue.
The last time the hon. Gentleman and I faced each other across the Dispatch Box, it was my job that was supposedly in doubt. I have to say that I think it is his job that is in doubt now. His colleagues are whispering behind him, and his policy is in disarray. It is our party that will deliver for every child and every school in our country, and that is why ours is the party that is leading the charge for higher standards in the future.
I welcome you to your new responsibilities, Mr. Speaker. I also thank the Secretary of State for allowing me advance sight of the statement and the White Paper.
We welcome the licence to teach and the principle of the school report card—provided that it is not diluted by a fuzzy focus on issues of partnership, which I think would detract from its ability to hold schools more effectively to account—but I want to ask the Secretary of State about the two issues that give us the greatest cause for concern. I refer to the issue of how all the proposals are to be funded, and the issue of what I thought was supposed to be the Prime Minister’s big idea yesterday: the idea of moving from a system of targets to one of entitlements.
We saw this morning how the White Paper had been spun by the Government across the media. The BBC website, for instance, speaks of
“legally enforceable rights to schemes such as one-to-one tuition”.
Yesterday we heard about the right of exit to the private health sector that would be given to people who were not seen rapidly as NHS patients. However, I am not sure what has happened to that idea of entitlements. The Secretary of State’s statement made no mention of parental entitlements, and as for the paper that the Prime Minister issued yesterday, not only has it nothing to say about people’s rights to leave the NHS and obtain private treatment if their entitlements are not being delivered, but on the issue of enforcement of entitlements to one-to-one tuition, it states that
“we will not legislate”
for
“redress… through the courts.”
That appears directly to contradict the spin that we were given this morning.
Perhaps the Secretary of State can explain—in the context of education and, if he wishes, in wider contexts as well—whether the idea of entitlement is meaningful and will give extra power to consumers of public services, or whether it is a bit of spin. If it is not a bit of spin, how will parents denied access to one-to-one tuition for their children exercise their right to ensure that it is received?
Our other major concern is, of course, the extent to which the Secretary of State’s proposals can be funded. He has promised one-to-one tuition for what could turn out to be 20 per cent. of the seven to 11-year-old cohort—the youngsters who are falling below national standards. Is the money really there to deliver that? The Government promised a year ago that they would deliver one-to-one tuition, and they promised 30,000 places, but we now know that they delivered only 3,500.
The Secretary of State has been notably active—more active, perhaps, than the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the last couple of weeks—in talking about the Government’s public expenditure plans. However, he has apparently been unwilling to accept that his own budget’s real level of expenditure will decline between this year and next year, or that, despite his efforts generously to give away part of his capital budget for home building, the Building Schools for the Future programme will be entirely undeliverable in its existing form against a background of 50 per cent. cuts in capital expenditure across all areas of Government. If we are really expected to believe that some of the aspirations in the White Paper will be fulfilled, will the Secretary of State tell us how on earth they will be funded in the light of the cuts that would have to be made on the basis of existing public expenditure plans?
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s interest in these matters and for the more serious way in which he has addressed the statement and the White Paper. I welcome his support for the idea of the report card, and I hope he agrees with me that it will strengthen accountability and provide more information that parents actually want in order for them to understand the progress of every child in the school.
On partnership, it is important that this issue does not make the report card fuzzy, but we also know that it is only by schools working together that we can deliver good behaviour and strong discipline. Also, as I have announced today, it is schools working together in federations that is driving up standards. I think that when the hon. Gentleman looks at the detail, he will be reassured on this matter.
On targets and entitlements, we have announced that on the basis of this White Paper in the next Session we will legislate to make the pupil and parent guarantee statutory. That means that it will be set out in law. The analogy is the admissions code. We will make sure that in the first instance the parental right to complain is to the school through the governing body. There will then be an independent appeals mechanism, in most cases to the local government ombudsman, but in some cases to the school adjudicator. If they find against a school, the Secretary of State has power to intervene. This is a legal entitlement, so judicial review is, of course, available as a backstop, but we are not seeking to make this legalistic. We want to make sure that the existing complaints procedures that we are putting in place will work effectively. I think we can make this work for both the pupil and the parent guarantee.
On funding, in the financial year 2010-11 we will spend more than £300 million on delivering one-to-one or small group tuition for 300,000 children, and we are currently training 100,000 teachers to teach that one-to-one tuition. The funding is there.
We have also set out a September guarantee. That will mean that this September every young person leaving school will be guaranteed a place in school or college, or an apprenticeship. I can now make that September guarantee only because I have made some difficult choices to shift £650 million from parts of my budgets and individual agencies to fund the 55,000 places that I need to meet it. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman supports that guarantee, but I hope that he and his party can make it clear that they do. What I do know is that other parties in this House will not match that September guarantee. The reason why is that if they make efficiency savings, the first call on resources is not young people getting school, college and apprenticeship places; it is an inheritance tax cut that will go to the 3,000 richest estates and cost billions and billions of pounds.
That is the choice in politics; that is the funding issue. I hope the hon. Gentleman will support me. Tough choices are needed to invest in the future of our country, our children and our young people, not simply to give tax cuts to a small number of millionaires. That is the choice in values, that is the choice in policy, and that is the choice for the future of our country.
rose—
Order. Twenty-nine Members are seeking to catch my eye and I am keen to accommodate as many of them as possible, but I am looking to each hon. Member to ask one brief supplementary question and to the Secretary of State to offer the House a pithy reply.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s reaffirmation of the central role of the literacy and numeracy strategy. In reaffirming that, and in devolving the substantial funding for support and advice, will he agree to kite-mark or accredit those organisations or bodies that will be providing support, in order not to drift back into the complete mess that we had before 1997?
The fact is that the reason why we have made such great progress in numeracy and literacy is the foundations that were laid by my right hon. Friend in the early years of this Government after 1997. He is right to say that the innovation of the literacy and numeracy hours were critical, and the role that the national strategies played was vital. I think we have won that argument. I think we can now make sure that schools themselves choose how to commission support, but we will still deliver that literacy and numeracy. We will deliver those hours, and I will make sure that schools are buying from quality providers that are accredited, in order that I can give my right hon. Friend the assurance he seeks.
The Education Secretary says that he is going to step in to demand improvement where schools are failing or coasting. Is it not also time that he recognised that where schools are succeeding or improving he should get out and he should intervene less, and that such schools will thrive when they are left to their own devices?
If the hon. Gentleman had listened to my statement, he would have heard me say that this White Paper devolves substantial power from the centre to individual head teachers so that they can make their own decisions on how to commission support. However, either we let the market work and children suffer when schools fail or we intervene, and I am determined to intervene because I do not agree with the philosophy that defines the Conservatives’ approach.
Will my right hon. Friend agree to come before the Select Committee at an early date to talk about this statement and the White Paper? Perhaps he will also agree to a pre-legislative inquiry before we have legislation. Will he bear in mind the fact that it does nobody any good to believe that nothing has been proved in education in this country over the past 12 years? Will he be very careful about putting too much—
Order. I apologise, but I did say very clearly that Members should ask one brief supplementary question.
If you will allow me, Mr. Speaker, I should say that this statement builds upon the fundamental reform, which was the Education and Inspections Act 2006. It was substantially improved by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) and the work of his Committee, so I believe that my Ministers and I will benefit from the scrutiny and interrogation that we will receive when we appear before his Committee in the coming weeks.
In his statement, the Secretary of State talked about gifted and talented pupils and the support that they will be given as a result of this White Paper. Can he tell us the current state of the gifted and talented programme that the Government brought in?
The answer is that 11 years ago the programme did not exist and now it is flourishing. We will ensure that every parent of every child who is gifted and talented receives written confirmation of the support that they will receive, because we want to stretch every pupil, including those with talents and gifts.
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s remarks about a review of secondary education in Gloucestershire, because some of us have been calling for such a review for years. Many schools, particularly those in the comprehensive sector, have been let down because of the local obsession in Gloucestershire with purely the grammar school sector. That obsession has led to the comprehensive schools being completely ignored, to there being no trusts and no academies and to the trebling of funding for primary schools in rural areas with sparse populations rather than for schools that face challenging circumstances in areas such as my own, which have proximity to those comprehensives. Will he ensure that that is considered as part of this review?
I welcome my hon. Friend’s support. The fact is that that local authority performs well in many ways, but we need to address some worrying issues to do with the national challenge and underperforming schools. I have asked Sir Graham Badman to produce a report and to report back to me in September. We will carefully consider all the points made, and I shall ensure that the points that my hon. Friend raises are included. If we need to act to ensure that not only some schools but all schools achieve, we will ensure that the action is taken.
Mr. Speaker, do you think that the Secretary of State regrets addressing the nation this morning on the “Today” programme, because it has meant that very little was added in his statement and it went completely against your advice to Ministers?
Anyone who heard the “Today” programme interview would have found that there was not a single question on education policy and therefore not a single answer on that matter either. The interview was almost entirely about the Conservative party’s inheritance tax cuts and how it was going to pay for them. Today, I have announced proposals in respect of the expert group and the test in year 7 and on the licence to teach, and I have proposed the details of the pupil and parent guarantee, all of which are new to this House. There have been no leaks from my Department, and I have been conscious at every stage to ensure that I have conformed with Mr. Speaker’s guidance.
On accountability and the school report card, the Secretary of State recognises that measures of progress are more effective than simple raw scores in assessing a school’s achievement. Does he agree, however, that the current measure of progress—the value-added score—is still unintelligible to most parents, and could he simplify it in the new school report card?
I look forward to the scrutiny that we will receive from the Select Committee. When my hon. Friend examines the detailed prospectus of the report card that we published today, he will see that how we measure progress and, in particular, how we contextualise to take advantage of deprivation is crucial. We must get it right in the report card, and I look forward to his expertise being shone upon this.
I am sure that the Secretary of State is sincere when he says that he will now act so that our best head teachers can run more than one school. Will he or the Schools Minister visit my constituency to see the work of the inspirational Mr. Jonathan Tippett, who has transformed three schools and who runs all three of them. Unfortunately, Tory-controlled Essex county council plans to shut two of them. Will the Secretary of State visit Colchester?
The last time the hon. Gentleman raised that point was in Prime Minister’s questions, when he managed to secure a meeting with me, through the Prime Minister. I think we should have the meeting first, and we will consider visits subsequently.
Over the past 12 years, I have repeatedly raised my concerns about teaching methods. The critical difference between success and failure in schools is to do with teaching methods and classroom cultures. How will my right hon. Friend address that and, once and for all, determine how we secure the best teaching methods in all our schools?
I am going to build on the reforms that have meant that we have the best generation of teachers we have ever had. I will empower school leaders to ensure that they get the best teaching practice into their schools and I will introduce a new licence to teach, which will mean that over time every teacher will be reaccredited to ensure that they are keeping up to date with best practice. We will match that with personal development and training so that every teacher can be world-class.
If parents in my constituency find that their children’s statutory rights to one-to-one teaching are not fulfilled, can they sue and whom do they sue?
I think I answered that question a moment ago. In the first instance, the parents will complain to the school. There is then an independent complaints procedure. If the independent complaints procedure shows that the children are entitled to one-to-one support and are not getting it, the school should address that immediately. If it does not, parents can appeal to me. In the final analysis, it can go to judicial review, but I am sure that we will get it sorted out before we get to that stage.
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s suggestion that local authorities have a responsibility to act. How will he assist them and make them act in Hove where we have a shortfall of more than 100 places, which means that parents have to take three buses to a local school? How will he ensure that Brighton and Hove Tory council acts with the urgency that parents and children need?
It is obviously vital that local authorities respond to those shortages of places and respond to the views of parents. It is their job to ensure that they have the right number of school places. I brought forward schools capital from 2010-11 to 2009-10 so that there was more money for local authorities to spend. It was a great disappointment to me that a large number of Conservative authorities refused to take up that offer of more spending now, and that included Brighton.
All these announcements come with a huge price tag. The last time encouraging more 16 to 18-year-olds to stay on in sixth form came with a price tag, it was not budgeted for, as I was told by the Secretary of State. Are all these innovations fully budgeted for?
The point is that the hon. Lady is right. When it became clear in March that we had a shortfall in our budget for places for 16 to 18-year-olds, I found £650 million of efficiency savings so that I could pay for 55,000 more places. Despite my seven letters to her Front Benchers, she cannot get that commitment matched by them. I am spending the money on apprenticeship places; the Opposition would spend it on inheritance tax cuts. That is the difference, and that is why she should be so concerned.
The Building Schools for the Future programme is one of the best routes to school improvement, but it relies on local authorities delivering it. My local education authority, Hammersmith and Fulham, is in chaos. I am a governor of an outstanding sixth-form college, William Morris, which has been refused permission to move to a new site, which it says has cost £70 million. Will he ask Partnerships for Schools to look at the debacle in Hammersmith and Fulham and make it improve most of its plans?
I was in my hon. Friend’s borough this morning and I saw a school that was making real progress and working with another school. I understand his concerns. Local leadership should ensure that the BSF commitments are delivered, although some authorities in this country are anticipating the £4.5 billion cut promised by the Opposition and are therefore not making plans. I will ensure that the Schools Minister meets my hon. Friend to ensure that we can move this forward as soon as possible.
I am concerned that the Secretary of State’s remarks this afternoon about Gloucestershire will have a demotivating effect on hard-working teachers up and down Gloucestershire. Will he confirm that the national challenge schools that he has mentioned this afternoon are less than a handful out of 42 schools, that Gloucestershire is the 15th lowest spending authority for education and that, in his own words this afternoon, it produces some very good results?
The difference between us is that the hon. Gentleman is willing to dismiss the handful of schools that are not succeeding, and I am not. I want every school to succeed and I will require local authorities to take the actions and use the investment to ensure that that happens. If local authorities are not making sufficient progress one can either say, “Well, the rest are doing fine,” or one can step in and intervene. I am willing to intervene, but the Opposition are not, and that is what would let children and parents down.
I welcome the Badman review of education in Gloucestershire, which is long overdue, but will my right hon. Friend ensure that Mr. Badman takes evidence from local representatives and from head teachers and chairs of governors? In that way, he will get to the bottom of what is happening in Gloucestershire, and beyond the superficiality too often found in the news that we hear.
I will make sure that Mr. Graham Badman does that. I think that I inadvertently knighted him a moment ago, but we will make sure that he talks to all the national challenge schools in the area. Of course it is true that many schools with great leadership are making real progress in the national challenge and will get through the 30 per cent. threshold, but I want to make sure that that happens for every school and every child in every area. When we have concerns, it is right that we bring them to the House and act to make sure that all local authorities take their responsibilities seriously. That is our approach to school improvement.
Not all areas of the country have two-tier education systems. Some, such as Bedfordshire, have a three-tier system. Has the Secretary of State taken full account of that, especially with regard to testing at year 7?
In the small number of areas that have three tiers of education, we will make sure that the accountability system is tailored to meet their needs and that catch-up tuition is introduced in a sensible way. I know that there is a debate in Bedfordshire about whether it is sensible to move to a two-tier system. That decision should be made locally, and it is not for me to impose it or dictate it from the centre. We will make sure that our support for parents and pupils meets the needs of all, regardless of whether they are in a two-tier or a three-tier system.
Even the strongest supporter of the comprehensive education system, which is what I am, cannot deny that over the decades it has not served the gifted and talented pupils in state schools well. Further to the question from the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr. Timpson), will the Secretary of State confirm that there will be adequate resourcing for the confirmatory statement on the challenge and support that gifted and talented students will receive? There is a good deal of evidence that we still lack a common definition of who those students are, or even common information about them.
I have said in the guarantee that all gifted and talented students will get written confirmation of the support that they need and deserve. We have the funding to ensure that children will get that support if they are gifted and talented. I can make that commitment for this side of the House, but I do not think that the Opposition can match it. They know that, were there to be a Conservative Government, the cuts would start to fall on the this Department on day two.
How does the Secretary of State reconcile what he has said about Gloucestershire in his statement and in some of his answers to questions with the fact that a few weeks ago his own Department described the local education authority’s management of the national challenge as exemplary? Indeed, in a letter today that he sent personally, the right hon. Gentleman said that the officers on the council had provided “excellent” support and development opportunities for national challenge schools.
I know the director of children’s services, Ms Jo Davidson, very well. She has done a lot of work with us on the child and adolescent mental health agencies review. The council’s officers have engaged with the national challenge very well, but that does not mean that we are not concerned about the lack of sufficient progress in schools below the threshold, or about the lack of leadership, or about the structural change that we think may be necessary. The right thing for me to do is to send in Mr. Graham Badman to give us a report. We should not be complacent: we should get the report done and then see whether we need to do more.
I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement that he has appointed Sir Mike Tomlinson to undertake a progress report on Leicester. Although considerable progress has been made there, a number of secondary schools still fall below an acceptable standard. Will my right hon. Friend encourage Sir Mike to talk not just to the local authority but to the other education professionals locally who have considerable expertise and a real commitment to a collaborative approach to raising standards in the city?
The local authority has a range of choices; it can consider academies or national challenge trusts. We will make it easier to use one of the accredited schools groups, which we are now going to support. There is a range of choices for Leicester, but one choice that is not available is not to act when it is clear that a school is not making progress and is stuck below the 30 per cent. threshold. I will make sure that my hon. Friend speaks to the school improvement experts, the head teachers and parents. What we cannot have are excuses. We want to know what the plan is to ensure that we deliver for every child in Leicester.
The Secretary of State knows a lot about private schools because he went to one, although he does not always put it on his CV. I was wondering whether he could tell us about the notable omission from his statement, which was his Prime Minister’s promise some time ago that his Government would match state school spending to the average of private school spending. Is that just another Labour failure to match their promises?
I was proud to speak at the speech day of my old school, Nottingham high school, which is an excellent school doing good things in Nottingham working with other schools in the city. It is right that we do our best to meet that pledge to see year by year the amount that we spend in state schools moving towards the private school benchmark. What we are doing with one-to-one support is all about that, but I tell the House that it will not happen if the education Department is No.1 in line for the cuts to pay for the reversal of the national insurance rise, the reversal of the top rate of tax and an inheritance tax cut that is uncosted and unpaid for and will cost billions of pounds. The idea that—
Order. I think that the Secretary of State’s message on inheritance tax has been heard loudly and clearly, and it does not benefit from repetition.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s intervention in Milton Keynes because, although educational performance has improved, it has not improved fast enough. Can he assure me that the improvement board will look particularly at the underperformance of children from minority ethnic families and working-class families and of looked-after children, who have fallen far too far behind the average in Milton Keynes?
I will do so, and I will make sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children and my hon. Friend the Schools Minister speak to my hon. Friend. We do not take decisions to move to formal intervention lightly. We had an independent report prepared first. There was progress, but I am afraid that it was not sufficient and we decided that intervention was needed, with the board reporting directly to Ministers. The issues that my hon. Friend raises are at the centre of our concerns. Many children are not making progress, and we want to address that. That is what the improvement board will do, and we will make sure that my hon. Friend is fully consulted.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, his September guarantee and his commitment to education, which is clear to everyone. Will he step in to stop Essex county council closing one of Castle Point’s six secondary schools, given that we have waiting lists for our secondary schools, thousands more houses promised to be built—against the borough’s wishes—and the leaving age for compulsory education increased from 16 to 18?
As the hon. Gentleman—or am I allowed to call him my hon. Friend? [Interruption.] Well, he is certainly not the Opposition’s hon. Friend. As the hon. Gentleman declares, there are some causes for concern in Essex. My hon. Friend the Schools Minister has rashly decided to offer a meeting to Essex Members of Parliament to discuss these matters. Perhaps they should have the meeting first, and then we can follow up afterwards.
Ann Cryer.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and congratulations.
Will my right hon. Friend comment on what impact the White Paper will have on the children in my constituency? As he knows, I have three primary schools where 95 per cent. of the children entering at four have no English whatever. There are arguments to be had about why they are in that situation, but that is how it is. What will help those children? These are not failing schools; they have buckets of value added, but we still have the problem of children really struggling because they enter school at four with no English. What will help them?
At the centre of the White Paper is the idea of schools working with schools, parents and other children’s services to break down all barriers to progress, whether those barriers are in the classroom or outside it. Our vision of schools working with children’s services, and taking an interest in the progress of pupils before they get to school by working with Sure Start and children’s centres, is vital, particularly in areas such as the one that my hon. Friend represents. Programmes such as Every Child a Talker, which are about getting children to start communicating and speaking English at the ages of two and three, are particularly important for her constituency, and I am happy to meet her to discuss that further.
Both in this Chamber and on the wireless this morning, the Secretary of State studiously avoided detailing the hard, tough choices that he has made to raise £600 million from within his Department. Will he undertake to place in the House of Commons Library as soon as possible a detailed breakdown of the internal budgets or initiatives that were cut to fund that £600 million?
I am very happy to have that debate. We announced on Budget day that we would require a 1 per cent. efficiency saving from all schools and colleges offering 16-to-18 provision in order to provide extra places. We are putting £650 million more into 16-to-18 funding, so that we can deliver that guarantee. That is matching efficiency with more resources to get more outcomes. One can do that only if one is willing to put in the resources. If parties cannot match the guarantee, they cannot deliver the places. That is the difference between the parties.
I welcome the idea of continuous improvement for teachers through the Government’s masters-level programme, and the idea of teachers keeping their practice up to date. Does my right hon. Friend recognise that the operators of Ofsted, who frequently lack insight and experience, and many of whom have not been in a classroom for 20 years or more, need a rigorous—very rigorous—period of training, so that they can understand what is happening in the classroom, in order to give a proper report to us about the classroom practices that they see?
Of course Ofsted is independent of my Department and reports directly to Parliament, so it is not really for me to provide that scrutiny; it is for Parliament to do so. However, I agree with my hon. Friend: of course inspectors must have the highest standards of integrity and training. That is a matter for the director general of Ofsted, and I am sure that she is absolutely committed to ensuring that, because it is vital to our school accountability.
The Secretary of State spoke in his statement about the moral imperative for every child to get the best possible education. How can he square that with the fact that, notwithstanding his April announcement, one of the best-performing schools in my constituency, Mascalls school, has had its sixth form frozen, despite the fact that 50 more pupils want to go there? Will he agree to meet me and the head teacher of that school to see whether the issue can be resolved before the end of term?
To be honest, I am happy to meet any hon. Member who would like to discuss their September guarantee funding. I would quite like to discuss it with the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who refuses to make a commitment on the subject. I have written to him seven times; perhaps face-to-face meetings would be more effective, although I rather doubt it. I am happy to look at the details of the case raised by the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). There is £650 million more, and it would surprise me if not a penny was going to his local school or sixth-form college, but if that is the case, we will look into the matter and see why that is so. I have the means to deliver more funding for more places this September, unlike the hon. Member for Surrey Heath.
How much autonomy will head teachers have to enforce parental obligations under the home-school contracts, or will they be second-guessed by local education authorities?
The responsibility rests with head teachers to deliver discipline in schools. The home-school agreement is all about clear responsibilities for the pupil, the parent and the head teacher. In the past, head teachers have often felt that parents were not properly committed to the home-school agreement, and head teachers did not have powers to enforce that agreement. In the White Paper, I am setting out how we will strengthen the powers that enable head teachers to act. They have the powers to act, but we will strengthen them further. I think that parents will expect head teachers in schools to act, so that we can tackle the issue of discipline.
Points of Order
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. One of the very welcome announcements that you made when you first took the Chair was that Ministers had to make important announcements to this House first. The Secretary of State announced his change on home-school contracts and parenting orders in the pages of the Sunday Mirror. He made announcements about chains and federations in briefings to newspapers yesterday, and announcements on the legal guarantee for parents and pupils were briefed to broadcasters this morning. What action will you take to ensure that the rights of this House are protected, and that the Secretary of State does not continue to flout your rulings and the rules of this House?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. A number of the matters that have featured in the exchanges today have been the subject of political debate over a considerable period. I attended closely to what the Secretary of State said today, and also to earlier media coverage of the gamut of issues that have been addressed today. I have not found evidence that there has been prior briefing, which I think is the term that the hon. Gentleman used. It is very important that Ministers who come to make statements to the House give the statement first to the House and do not divulge things in advance to the media. I shall be watching closely to ensure compliance with the ruling that I gave last week, but I have not yet identified a breach.
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that yesterday the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) raised a point of order relating to my conduct. I do not believe that was a matter for the House, as it concerned my role as a prospective parliamentary candidate. However, I did not have the opportunity at that time, not having noticed the subject, to correct what I believe was an entirely inaccurate statement, and I would like to do that for the record.
Order. No, I do not think I can allow the hon. Gentleman to do that.
Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to resume his seat. I am grateful to him for doing so. I heard the point of order from the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) yesterday, and I heard the response of the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter). I hope he will understand when I say that I do not want a continuing and essentially political debate to take place through the device or contrivance of a point of order. I feel that I have heard quite enough on the matter from both hon. Gentlemen who are parties to the dispute, and I do not think the House will benefit from any further utterances on the matter today or, probably, for some time.
Further to the earlier point of order, Mr. Speaker. The House will have welcomed your remarks to my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), following your welcome ruling that announcements should be made first to the House. The Home Secretary released a written statement on ID cards at 3.45 this afternoon. At 1.45 pm journalists were briefed at the Home Office about the contents. Indeed, I was informed about the contents by some of those journalists before any of us in the House had seen the statement. Quite apart from the fact that that should have been an oral statement, it is a flagrant breach of your ruling. I am sure I can offer you the support of many in the House in your efforts to stop Ministers behaving badly towards you and towards the House.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for his courtesy in providing me with advance notice of it. The Table Office has found no evidence that a written ministerial statement that was laid in the Library at 3.45 pm, as the hon. Gentleman says, was made available to the media any earlier than that. However, if it were to be established that that is in fact what happened, I would certainly expect the Minister responsible to report to me and to the House.
Order. I hope the hon. Gentleman is not trying by another door to reheat an old product.
Perish the thought, Mr. Speaker. I am not trying to pursue that matter. I understand your ruling, but can you tell me how I can get a correction to an accusation of dishonesty by me on to the record?
The hon. Gentleman is an extremely experienced political campaigner. He will be familiar with the opportunities that exist for him in the media, including his local media, to put robustly on the record his version of events. I have a hunch that he will not long delay doing just that.
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We have been lucky today to be able to welcome to the House of Commons some of our armed forces. Many of us think that is important in showing support to them. Is it possible that that can be recorded in the Official Report?
The hon. Gentleman’s legendary parliamentary dexterity has enabled him to do just that.
Hydrofluorocarbons Limitation
Motion for leave to introduce a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for limiting the use of hydrofluorocarbons in certain premises; and for connected purposes.
This Bill will end the use of hydrofluorocarbons—HFCs—in the refrigeration units of large supermarkets. I seek to introduce it because urgent action is needed to end the devastating impact of HFCs on global warming, and because supermarkets are responsible for more than half of all HFC emissions.
Before I set out my case, I must stress that I do not seek to impose additional financial burdens on small retailers, which we all recognise as small, corner convenience stores. I should expect smaller retailers to be required to introduce equipment that does not add to global warming when their old units need to be replaced. There are already many environmentally friendly alternatives for smaller supermarkets, and they generally use different refrigeration technology from the larger stores. Small stores tend to use what is called “plug and play equipment”, which does not involve large centralised systems, is often much less likely to leak and increasingly uses low-global-warming alternatives, such as hydrocarbons, which also offer improved energy efficiency. Those alternative carbon-based systems are neither more expensive to purchase nor more expensive to run.
The Bill seeks to deal with emissions from larger stores. Hydrofluorocarbons, are part of a group of gases known as F gases. F gases, according to Greenpeace, can be up to 20,000 times more harmful in terms of global warming than carbon dioxide. HFCs were introduced into widespread use under the Montreal protocol in the 1990s to replace chlorofluorocarbons—CFCs—and end the depletion of the ozone layer that their widespread use caused. HFCs do not harm the ozone layer, but they are powerful global warming gases.
In 2005, stationary refrigeration was the biggest source of F gas emissions in the UK, accounting for almost 27 per cent. within the sector. HFC emissions from supermarkets account for more than half the total emissions, and direct emissions from leaking refrigerant gases can account for up to one third of a supermarket chain’s carbon footprint. The phasing out of HFC use in the supermarket sector by 2015 has the potential to save 175 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent between now and 2050, which is more than one quarter of the UK’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2005, the amount of HFC emissions leaking from supermarket refrigeration was estimated to be equivalent to 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. To put that into perspective, I should say that that equates to one person flying in a plane from London to New York more than 2.5 million times; to the production of 10 billion plastic bags; to one billion car trips to the supermarket over an average distance of 7.5 miles; to the annual carbon foot print of 200,000 people; or, to driving round the circumference of the earth 300,000 times—if that were possible.
The issue of HFC emissions by supermarkets was highlighted in a report called “Chilling Facts” from the Environmental Investigation Agency earlier this year, and I commend the agency for its work to highlight this important issue. The report confirmed that supermarkets are the biggest source of HFCs in the UK. It investigated the progress that had been made by supermarkets that signed up in 2007 to reducing emissions of HFCs, and the agency asked 11 of the large high street supermarkets what they were doing to reduce the climate change impacts of their refrigeration. The results did not make for encouraging reading. The best-performing supermarket had succeeded in introducing climate-friendly refrigerants in only three out of 620 stores. For others, the figure was four out of 1,700 stores, and for one supermarket, it was one out of 2,250 stores.
My intention today, however, is not to name and shame any single supermarket. There is widespread agreement, from the campaigners and the supermarkets themselves, that action is necessary, and my Bill aims to bring everyone together to secure an agreement to end the use of HFCs in refrigeration units. In response to the publication of the EIA report, supermarket representatives indicated a willingness to make more progress in this area. They said that they wanted the Government to regulate to create a level playing field for their industry, suggesting that that would allow the large supermarkets to plan in the knowledge that their competitors would be required to do the same. This is a highly competitive market in which supermarket giants are constantly seeking to exploit any advantages over one another. The Government should take the industry at its word and legislate for a level playing field in relation to emissions of HFCs.
The UK Government are committed to an 80 per cent. reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050. Today, HFCs equal 1.5 per cent. of total greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. However, if emissions continue to grow at about 3 per cent. per year, then while we make efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by 2050 HFCs will constitute 12 per cent. of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
The Bill does not seek to introduce a complete phase-out of HFCs, but that is an attractive option for climate protection. A phase-out would be based on production and consumption of HFCs. A total HFC phase-out would cover all types of HFCs. Based on 3 per cent. annual growth from 2006, a phase-out schedule would save almost 500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent between now and 2050—more than three quarters of the UK’s current total annual greenhouse gas emissions. The fast phasing out of HFCs in supermarkets would save about one quarter of the UK’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions in that period.
In 2007, the value of the food market as a whole was estimated at £72.8 billion, with supermarkets accounting for more than half of these grocery sales. In April, Tesco said it had rung up sales of £1 billion a week, with annual pre-tax profits of more than £3 billion for the first time in its history—up 8.8 per cent. In May, The Guardian reported that Asda had unveiled a market-leading 8.4 per cent. increase in first quarter sales, and that Sainsbury’s had delivered profits of £543 million on sales of £20.4 billion. This sector, even in these difficult economic times, could sustain the costs of changing from HFCs to climate-friendly carbon alternatives.
The time to act is now. We are going to experience the most harmful impact on HFCs in the next 20 years, and the earlier we act to reduce their use, the greater the impact of our actions. Urgency is not just about the end users. Action now would send a message to manufacturers that it is time to start investing in new forms of coolants for refrigeration that do not accelerate global warming. That would prevent the production of more of these harmful gases and avoid their having to be stored and eventually disposed of in safety.
I know that my Bill is unlikely to progress in the time remaining in this parliamentary Session. However, let me stress to the Minister that the supermarkets themselves are seeking regulation for a level playing field, and supporting this Bill could offer the opportunity to get an agreement on the way forward: something that is urgently needed. If the Government do not act by supporting this Bill, the responsibility will remain for them to act, and they must do so quickly.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Clive Efford, John Austin, Ms Karen Buck, Mr. Andrew Dismore, Mr. Peter Ainsworth, Steve Webb, Norman Baker, Peter Bottomley, Mr. Michael Meacher, Mr. David Drew, Jim Dowd and Andrew George present the Bill.
Clive Efford accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 July and to be printed (Bill 127).
Parliamentary Standards Bill
[Relevant Documents: Memorandum from the Audit Committees on the Parliamentary Standards Bill, and written evidence received by the Justice Committee on Constitutional Reform and Renewal, HC 791-i.]
[1st Allocated Day]
Considered in Committee
[Sylvia Heal in the Chair]
The Committee will be aware of the considerable pressures of time today and tomorrow. Yesterday, some 40 additional amendments and new clauses were tabled. In view of the speed with which the House is being asked to proceed with this Bill, the Chairman of Ways and Means was prepared to select the majority of them, even though they are starred on today’s amendment paper. One result is that there are four additional groups, raising significant and distinct points, to be dealt with today.
Hon. Members will see that a measure of restraint will be very much in their interests and will allow us to deal with as many issues as possible. For example, I would hope that there might be little or even no debate on clause 1 stand part, as all its provisions arise in subsequent groups of amendments. I hope, too, that the Committee will resist the temptation to rerun the Second Reading debate that we had yesterday, and instead will focus closely on the substance of each group of amendments.
Finally, might I point out two printing errors on the first page of the amendment paper? In amendment 50, the word “third” should be omitted, and amendment 52 should refer to line 23 on page 11, not line 3.
Clause 1
Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority etc
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Clause 1 sets out the basic structure and architecture of the new regime: the new bodies—the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations, which are detailed in schedules 1 and 2—and a special Committee of this House to oversee the work of IPSA. I went into further detail yesterday in my Second Reading speech, as did others. Of course, I stand ready to respond to any questions that are raised about the clause.
In the interest of the brevity that you have called for, Mrs. Heal, the need for which we quite appreciate, I merely point out that the very name of the Bill and the new authority are not a perfect description of what they will do. It would have been much better if they had been called something like the parliamentary payments authority and the parliamentary payments Bill. We have a proliferation of the use of the words “standard” and “standards”, but this is really about money—money paid to a Member of Parliament by an allowances system and by any outside interests. The name is not perfect, and I hope that it will not be misused in our public prints in future.
I shall obey your injunctions, Mrs. Heal, and not make a long speech, or even a proper speech at all. What you said to the Committee a few minutes ago underlined the serious nature of the Government taking a Bill of constitutional significance through the House at the gallop and without time properly to consider and reflect.
The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) made was extremely good, and it is a pity that we do not have the opportunity to discuss a different name. I very much hope that the Government will reflect on what was said yesterday during a debate that pointed out the widespread concerns in all parts of the House about what they are doing and the speed with which they are doing it. I hope that this afternoon and tomorrow, in this indecent haste, the Government will respond with a degree of sensitivity to the points that colleagues and I will make to try to make a very, very bad Bill just a little bit better.
I strongly object to the time limit on the Bill. Some of us withdrew from the debate yesterday, conscious that many hon. Members were trying to catch the Chair’s attention in a very full day’s debate. We would have liked more opportunity so that we, too, could have spoken about the big underlying principles. Of course, I accept your injunction, Mrs. Heal, because I want as much of the detail as possible to be examined in the Committee stage, which is too short.
However, I cannot let clause 1 go without asking the Minister on duty why the complex and expensive bureaucracy will be better than the current bureaucracy. Why is it thought superior to beefing up, amending or improving the current system? We should have some idea of what salaries will be paid, and some budgets for the complicated authority. We should know how it will be superior to the system of recent years in carrying out payment and audit functions.
The Government have not made the case for the new authority. There was little detail in the remarks yesterday about the sort of people it would comprise, the cost, and how the job would be done differently from the way in which our staff currently undertake it. More reassurance is needed for current staff so that they know what the terms and conditions of transfer are likely to be, who will be transferred and so on. As an employer, we owe some sort of duty to our staff, who must feel rather concerned about the peremptory discussions. Has the Secretary of State properly consulted the staff concerned? What has he told them about what their future holds? Is there any sort of guarantee that they will be transferred and get jobs, or is the idea to put all the jobs out to tender and have new people? Are different sorts of people from the current staff being sought, or is it intended to transfer as many as possible, but make them go through some kind of competitive process? We have a right to know those things. I accept your instruction, Mrs. Heal, but we really need two or three hours to debate those issues.
I, too, would like to place on record my concerns about the management of the Bill. It is proper to reflect on the fact that many hon. Members would be present for today’s debate but for being members of the Select Committee on Justice, which will meet in 13 minutes to take evidence from the Clerk of the House on the aspects of the Bill that cover privilege. That highlights the inadequate way in which the measure is being tackled.
The Liberal Democrats do not take issue with the principle of contracting out the functions of the Fees Office. It is a necessary part of restoring public confidence in the House and its operation. However, as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) said, several issues of substantial and practical concern arise from that. There is little about it on the face of the Bill and, if the debate is truncated, it would appear that we are simply to take matters on trust. I am disinclined to take a great deal from the Government on trust, in view of my experience as a Member since 2001.
As I said yesterday, we have yet another fisher in a fairly small pond, and what we do is all without prejudice to the possible conclusions of the Kelly commission, which we will doubtless learn this autumn. I hope that, once we know those conclusions, it will be possible to review the number of actors because piecemeal development, which responds to each individual crisis as it arises, leaves us with a far from satisfactory landscape.
I support the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) made. As a member of the Committee on Standards on Public Life, I get correspondence about matters with which the Committee on Standards and Privileges is dealing because of the public’s confusion about those two bodies. To add another body with the word “standards” in the title is just asking for trouble. I just suggest that the Secretary of State think that over and perhaps come up with a name that refers to payments or something different. The whole purpose of the exercise is supposed to be to try to make the thing more transparent and understandable, but it is actually making it more confusing.
I would like to draw the House’s attention to clause 1(2), which states that schedule 1 provides for the new body’s
“administration functions to be carried out by its chief executive in accordance with paragraph 17 of that Schedule”.
The Secretary of State will know where I am going with this—at least I think he will—because paragraph 17 of schedule 1 refers not just to administrative functions, but to regulation functions. I invite hon. Members to glance at page 13 of the Bill in order to follow what I am about to say.
Paragraph 17 distinguishes those two functions from one another, so that, “So far as possible”—whatever that means—
“the…administration functions and…regulation functions must be carried out separately”.
That must happen
“so that one set of functions”—
by the way, the word “functions” means powers and duties—
“does not adversely affect the carrying out of the other.”
Paragraph 18 of schedule 2 gives the meanings of “administration functions” and “regulation functions”, but I have to say—I say this as gently as possible—that it is utterly disingenuous. I know the Justice Secretary well enough to be surprised that he has allowed the drafting of the Bill not to refer to the regulatory functions in clause 1(2), but they are hugely important, for the reasons that I am about to give.
Paragraph 18 of schedule 1 says that the new body’s administration functions are
“its functions under…section 2 (payment of MPs’ salaries)…section 3(1) (payment of MPs’ allowances)”
and
“section 4 (dealing with allowances claims)”.
That raises a raft of issues, which I do not need to go into now. The paragraph continues:
“and the function of maintaining and publishing the register under section 5.”
Paragraph 18(2) says that the regulation functions of the body are
“its functions under…section 3(3)…(preparing and revising MPs’ allowances scheme)…section 5 (preparing and revising MPs’ financial interests rules),”
and, in paragraph 18(2)(c), “determining procedures for investigations”.
I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green)—or, indeed, any other hon. Member—might be interested in that provision, in relation to the question of the entry by the police into this House, on which I have spoken on many occasions. I have also got into some severe altercations about that with the Attorney-General, who alleges that it is for the courts to decide such matters, not the House of Commons. You will forgive me, Mrs. Heal, if I make it abundantly clear that I still totally and utterly repudiate the reasoning in her memorandum. I believe that that was the first occasion on which a memorandum from the Attorney-General was placed in the Library, at my insistence—and, to give her credit, the Leader of the House agreed to ensure that it was put there.
The issues are profound, because they relate to article IX of the Bill of Rights, in respect of which I have tabled a new clause, which I am glad to see that you have selected for debate tomorrow, Mrs. Heal. I therefore do not need to go into that in detail now, but I do need to go into the supremacy of Parliament, which relates to new clause 7. New clauses 7 and 8 deal with the supremacy of Parliament and article IX of the Bill of Rights, which relates to the internal regulation of the proceedings of this House by this House. That is where the Bill gets into deep trouble. I shall not go into that now, although not because it is out of order—it is not—but because I prefer to reserve my arguments for the new clauses tomorrow, on which I shall have a certain amount to say.
Indeed, although my hon. Friend might well be warned as well, because whereas those matters can be taken with jocularity in certain circumstances, they can lead to arrest of the kind that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford was under, and many other matters, which I will deal with when we come to those new clauses tomorrow.
It was not the seriousness of the issue that I was reflecting on, but rather the anticipated length of my hon. Friend’s speech.
Indeed. I am glad to be able to say that, in Committee, it is appropriate for us to go into these matters. If my hon. Friend believes that we can deal with the whole history of the House and its power to determine its own internal proceedings simply by referring to a few jottings on the back of an envelope, I am afraid that he has a lesson or two to learn.
To return to my hon. Friend’s point about clause 1, he drew our attention to the fact that IPSA will be both a regulatory body and an administrative body. Does he foresee any difficulty with that, given that its regulatory functions will primarily involve its regulating its own administrative functions? Is not that a rather unusual arrangement?
Perhaps the provision is set out in this way so that, as far as possible, the functions can be treated separately. This is typical of any hybrid arrangement, however; one is never quite sure which is the tail and which is the head. I am afraid that that is exactly where we are on this matter.
Clause 8 contains a whole stack of provisions relating to directions and recommendations. One of the most unsatisfactory aspects of the Bill—in addition to the length of time that we have in which to discuss it—is the impact that it will have on our ability to run our own affairs and the extent to which that will be taken away from us. I said this to the Prime Minister when he came to talk about so-called constitutional renewal and reform. He raised the manner in which we were going to deal with matters of this kind. I pointed out to him that he had just returned from the beaches in Normandy, where people had fought and died—as my own father did—so that we could maintain our democracy in this House. I said that they had not fought and died in Normandy to achieve what the Government now seem to want and what the Attorney-General stated in her memorandum that she wanted—namely, that the proceedings and privileges of this House, which are derived from the people exercising their freedom of choice and voting for us by putting a simple cross on a ballot, should be taken away and given to the judicial supremacy of the courts either in this country or in Strasbourg or Luxembourg. That matter remains on the agenda, and I shall return to it tomorrow when we discuss the new clauses.
We need an overarching way of saving the rights of this House, on behalf of the electorate who vote for us. It is their Parliament, not ours. I do not believe that it is the Government’s Parliament either, and they have not the slightest right to take away from the people of this country the right to govern themselves.
The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) and a number of other right hon. and hon. Members asked about the name of the new authority. It will be called the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, but it is a rose by any other name, and it is certainly a very fine rose. As I said yesterday, the other place might well wish to latch on to these arrangements, and it seemed to us that the body ought to have a fairly generic title.
I pointed out yesterday that most of the contents of the code of conduct and guidance are concerned with financial interests, as are the central parts of the Bill. We spent a lot of time arguing about the name for the new body, but the proposed title certainly seemed to be acceptable to our party leaders. The word “independent” was added as a result of our cross-party talks, to emphasise that it will be independent of Parliament. We all know why we are here, and why we are having to go through this process. It is rather less a result of some serious abuses of the allowance system by one or two individuals, and more to do with a failure of the system, which we allowed to develop and for which we are all responsible.
I will, of course, reflect on what the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) said. I have already made it clear from outside the House that we are ready to accept a number of amendments. Where I am in doubt, I will listen to the arguments, but I can tell the House now that we will certainly accept a number of amendments tabled in the names of the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) and my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell)—and some others.
Was there any discussion this morning about moving a Government motion to amend the programme motion to enable us to spend as much time as we want this evening by removing the 10 o’clock limit? There was a statement and an enormous number of amendments were added only yesterday, so did the Government consider that option?
There were discussions, but in the event, it was judged appropriate to keep within the time scale. From my perspective, we are seeking to proceed by consensus and to make as much progress as we can. I also remind the Committee about the judgments made less than three weeks ago across the parties—
Across the Front Benches.
It may have been the Front Benchers, as the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) says, but that is the way we work within the parties and it is how the system operates. There was a general agreement—I am not saying it was universal—that we needed to make swift progress, so I hope that that answers the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who criticises us on account of the speed of the process. I wish that many things had not happened; I wish that the scheme commended by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House almost this time last year had been voted on and approved by the House. Many Members in their places today did vote for it, as did I; others did not, and I think that their repentance has been very painful and that the whole House and its reputation has suffered from it. Expenses are not dominating the news today, but they were for six weeks, and they undermined the reputation of this House, so it is crucial—in my judgment and, I think, that of the House as a whole—that we act swiftly.
The budgets have yet to be drawn up, but they will be. Our judgment is that the total cost of this scheme and what will be administered—namely, the content of the allowance scheme—will not be more than current costs. Indeed, it may well be less in some respects, as any new system is likely to be simpler than the one it replaces.
I do not demur from what the right hon. Gentleman says about a general consensus emerging a few weeks ago among party leaders and others about having an arm’s-length body to deal with financial aspects, allowances and so forth. All that is to the good. What was not agreed—and is not agreed—is the idea of bringing in a statutory code of conduct and, worse still, impinging on our rights and, even more importantly, the rights of our constituents as within the Bill of Rights. At that stage, nobody foresaw the attack on the basic freedoms of our constituents and on our basic freedoms, including, crucially, our freedom of speech.
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he is tilting at windmills.
Who is Don Quixote?
Not me.
The issue particularly exercising the Clerk and Members was clause 6, which I have dealt with. [Interruption.] Well, we can deal with that when we come to clause 10. As I recall, it is the nationalist parties that were keen to ensure that offences were written directly into the Bill, so there is the consequent issue about how to adduce evidence.
The Lord Chancellor knows very well that I endorse all that the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) said a moment ago, and we rehearsed much of this yesterday. What will happen if Sir Christopher Kelly, who is being constrained, trammelled and confined—
And insulted.
That, too. What happens if Sir Christopher and his committee decide that they do not want to take this approach? Given that the Government have said that they will accept the committee’s report, what will happen?
As I explained yesterday, the Kelly committee is dealing with the content of the allowance system—[Hon. Members: “No.”] With great respect, that is the central part of what it is doing. It is looking at the whole system of allowances and what its content should be. This Bill is about how any system of allowances should be administered and about setting up a register of financial interests outside the House that should take over certain functions of the Fees Office and the registrar and some aspects of the investigations that are currently undertaken by the commissioner here. The outside body would also make judgments in cases of abuse. All of those follow, as night follows day, from the acceptance on both sides of the House that we should have an Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.
I must correct the Justice Secretary. He just said that the Kelly inquiry is only conducting a review of the narrow issue of the content of the allowances, but on 23 March the Prime Minister wrote to Sir Christopher referring to
“the opportunity to consider the full picture.”
There is no constraint there. The Prime Minister explicitly asked the committee to consider everything. Therefore, it is entirely wrong that through this Bill we are pre-empting and constraining a committee that was set up to consider what the Prime Minister calls “the full picture”.
I do not accept that. We are not pre-empting what Sir Christopher Kelly is doing. The fact of the Kelly inquiry was well known to all three party leaders. For these purposes, I am not putting words into the mouths of the leaders of the nationalist parties, but the three main party leaders are on the record as welcoming the establishment of an Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, notwithstanding and in the full knowledge that the Kelly inquiry was under way. That is the truth—
Why, then, when I and several colleagues went to see Sir Christopher Kelly, did he specifically ask us what our thoughts were about external regulation? Why did he welcome me writing him a supplementary letter about external regulation that addressed all these issues? Was he acting outside his remit?
The hon. Gentleman will have to ask Sir Christopher Kelly why he asked those questions. It would be impertinent of me to suggest a reason, and such matters are for a chairman of an inquiry to determine. I provide this reassurance, not least to the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) and the hon. Member for South Staffordshire, that if there were to be—although I do not anticipate this for a moment—aspects of Sir Christopher Kelly’s proposals that the House wished to accept, but they were wholly inconsistent or incompatible with the legislation, we would have to amend the legislation—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] I am trying to be helpful by saying that that is what we would have to do. There will almost certainly be a vehicle to enable that to happen.
The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) cannot have it both ways. He has complained that this Bill is being treated as urgent, but it is urgent. With urgent legislation it is usual to say—as I did this time last year about anonymised evidence—that the House will have a chance to consider it again at a time of less urgency. The impending general election will take place by next June, so I do not make that explicit promise, but I do make the explicit promise that if there are aspects of the recommendations from Sir Christopher that the House wishes to implement, but cannot because of this legislation—a very distant prospect—we will have to amend the legislation. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stone asks why it cannot be done now. I am not clairvoyant, and that would require me to anticipate Sir Christopher Kelly’s recommendations.
Will the Secretary of State give way?
No. I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman, and we must make progress.
As always, I listened with great care to the speech of the hon. Member for Stone. I thought for a moment that I would be able to record the fact that it was the first speech that I had heard him make in the House for many years in which he did not mention Europe. However, it followed a consistent pattern. Wherever the hon. Gentleman’s speeches start, they end with Europe.
I commend clause 1 to the Committee.
Question put:—
The Committee proceeded to a Division; but no Member being willing to act as Teller, the Chairman of Ways and Means declared that the Ayes had it.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1
Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority
I beg to move amendment 61, page 10, line 12, leave out subsection (2).
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 50, page 10, line 24, leave out from ‘by’ to ‘the’.
Amendment 51, line 26, leave out from ‘by’ to ‘the’ in line 27.
Amendment 52, page 11, line 23, leave out sub-paragraph (5).
Amendment 54, in schedule 2, page 17, line 28, leave out from ‘by’ to ‘the’.
Amendment 62, page 17, line 33, at end insert—
‘(3A) The person must be a person who holds or has held high judicial office (within the meaning of Part 3 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 (c.4)).’.
Amendment 55, page 18, line 15, leave out sub-paragraph (3).
The purpose of the amendment is simply to ask the promoter of the Bill what the judge, or ex-judge, who is appointed to IPSA will be for, and whether we are appointing him to the right role.
In principle, I have always been in favour of there being someone with juridical experience to help to adjudicate matters of fact, evidence and the interpretation of rules when enforcing those rules on Members of Parliament and dealing with complaints. That is lacking from our present arrangements. However, I fail to understand why it is a good thing to make the judge a member of IPSA. If he were acting purely for the House and independently of potential judicial review, he would be contributing something very positive, but he will be acting as a de facto legal adviser to IPSA in respect of any judicial review of its activities and functions of regulation and enforcement. I propose in other amendments that the construction of the Bill should be insulated from judicial review. I will not refer to them now, but they effectively propose that all proceedings of IPSA and the commissioner should be regarded as proceedings in Parliament under article 9 of the Bill of Rights so that they are themselves privileged and whatever they deal with within Parliament is not therefore subject to adjudication and review by the courts.
In that capacity, I propose that if we are going to have someone as eminent as, let us say, a former Lord of Appeal involved in these processes, he should be the commissioner and not a member of IPSA. He should be involved with the investigations, the adjudication of rules, the consideration of evidence and the establishment of facts in a fair and impartial way, which is what a judge is trained in being skilled at, rather than just a member of this quango.
I just leave that question on the table for the Lord Chancellor to consider. I welcome the idea of a judge having a role in the process, but it should be on the investigation side, and not just as a member of a quango.
I am grateful to you, Sir Alan, for selecting my starred amendments in your position as Chairman of this Committee. That is, perhaps, a recognition of the fact that we are all in a tremendous rush and it is an abuse of the procedures of this House that a constitutional Bill of this importance is being treated as an emergency. The Government have an emergency, but the constitution does not, and it is wholly wrong that we are having to table complex amendments and have them considered extremely quickly.
None of the amendments I have tabled is in any sense a recognition that this Bill can be adequately improved. I think it is irretrievably a bad Bill, which is why I voted against it. However, in accordance with the spirit that Committees are supposed to have, I have tabled some amendments to try to correct some of the grosser abuses and to question the Government about their proposals.
Amendments 50 and 51 remove the requirement that the chair of IPSA must be appointed by Her Majesty the Queen. I have also included other members of IPSA in another amendment, because I am puzzled about why these need to be royal appointments. Therefore, I have this question for the Justice Secretary: what additional rights and status does this give them? Is it intended to elevate the importance of IPSA? That is hardly necessary, as it is already the supreme quango, at the pinnacle of the quango state; so I want to know what it is that royal appointment brings.
Perhaps it is so that five Members can be arrested at some stage.
My hon. Friend makes an historical illusion, which is relevant because a part of our history—certainly of the history of this place—is an attempt to keep royal power at bay; so, again, it is rather puzzling that we are importing into this Bill, quite unnecessarily in my view, a system of royal appointment.
I suspect that the truth is that this is a kind of proxy for the Executive. They want to appoint the chair and members of this new quango. So my question to the Secretary of State is: what does this bring to the party? If it has no effect, why are we doing it? If it does have an effect, what is it? I certainly believe that this House is perfectly capable of making these appointments, if they are necessary, without having the additional rigmarole of making them Crown appointments.
I am grateful to the First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means for correcting the misprint on the amendment paper, because Amendment 52 deals with line 23, not line 3. Such misprints are rare, and I think that this was another example of the fact that this is rushed legislation. The amendment leaves out part of paragraph 5 that deals with the removal from office of members of IPSA. The Bill says that such a removal may be carried out by Her Majesty the Queen—I think she has quite enough to do without having that duty as well—and that any such removal must be done
“on an address of both Houses”.
I am not sure why both Houses need to be involved, because I understood that this Bill was about this House. Why are we importing into the Bill the requirement that the Leader of the House of Lords should also table a motion in another place to bring about such a removal? Is this because, as I suspect, IPSA is in due course to cover the whole of Parliament, not just this House?
My amendment 52 would alter the procedure within this House and would mean that the motion for an address could not only be moved by the Leader of the House. To put it another way, my amendment would remove the requirement that such an address can be moved only by the Leader of the House and by the Leader of the House of Lords in another place. My amendment seeks to remove that requirement because I am worried that only the Government can do this. I think it is much better to leave the matter open, so that other Members—perhaps the Speaker—can, if the rules allow it, move such an address to make those removals should they be required.
Finally, I come to my amendment 53, which relates to funding.
Order. May I just say to the right hon. Gentleman that his amendment 53 was not selected, so it is not in order to refer to it at this stage?
I shall therefore merely make the point in passing, because it is relevant to the schedule as a whole. I shall ask this in an interrogative way, rather than to make a point, and perhaps the Justice Secretary would refer to it. Why is it that any repayments obtained by this new quango from Members, perhaps in respect of matters paid in error, should not benefit the taxpayer, but instead should be used to fund other activities and functions of the quango? I leave that hanging and I direct the main force of my remarks towards the amendments that you generously selected, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Deputy Speaker, I rise briefly to—
Order. May I just make a correction for the Committee’s benefit, because this error is being repeated? We are in Committee of the whole House, so the form of address is either Mr. Chairman or Sir Alan.
I am extremely sorry, Sir Alan, and I hope that you will forgive me. I rise to support the amendment to which my right hon. Friend has just spoken. I do so because he highlighted a very important aspect of this Bill when he talked about the royal appointment, because, as we all know, royal appointments are prime ministerial appointments. In making those comments, my right hon. Friend indicated why we are here today. We are here today because of the Prime Minister, who, in a fit of pique and panic, has introduced an extremely bad Bill to Parliament. I have often been criticised, in my constituency and elsewhere, for sometimes working too closely with Members of other parties. I have taken great pride in that and I still do. It is with great reluctance that I have come to the conclusion that the Prime Minister of this country at the moment is not a good public servant of this country—
Order. It troubles me to have to intervene once again on the hon. Gentleman, but having listened to what he has said so far I do not detect how it fits with the narrow amendment we are discussing.
It fits, if I may so suggest, Sir Alan, because the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) wishes to delete the reference to royal appointment. I have made the point that a royal appointment is, in effect, a prime ministerial appointment. This very bad Bill has been foisted on us by the Prime Minister in a spirit of vindictiveness, malice and uncharitableness. He is a Prime Minister who wishes to tear down some of the institutions of this country, of which Parliament—
Order. The hon. Gentleman is giving me trouble this afternoon. I reacted instantly to the use of the word “malice” and I think that that is over the borderline of what should really be permissible when ascribed to a right hon. Member.
At your instruction, Sir Alan, I will withdraw “malice” but I shall leave “uncharitableness”. I believe that we are where we are today because of the Prime Minister’s determination to foist on us an instrument that is destructive of this Parliament and its Members’ rights, including yours, Sir Alan.
I shall rest my case there, because I do not wish to make a long speech. I say what I say with a considerable degree of reluctance, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells is right to insist that the reference to the royal appointment should be deleted, because for “royal” one has to read “prime ministerial”, and that takes away the power of Parliament to regulate its own affairs and makes us dance to the tune of the chief executive—something that no free Parliament should ever do.
May I ask the Secretary of State one or two questions that arise from the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin)? They relate to the sub-paragraph of the schedule—paragraph 1(2)—that deals with the need to have a member of the judiciary, past or present, on IPSA.
It seems a matter of concern that we should be permitting an arrangement whereby a current member of the senior judiciary becomes involved in what will, in many respects, be an acutely political environment. IPSA, of course, will no doubt do its best to act in a dispassionate and judicial way, but the subject matter of its deliberations must by its very nature be acutely political. Indeed, that subject matter will not just be capital “p” political, but party political. We need to be extremely careful about drawing current members of the judiciary into the arena. Perhaps, on better consideration, if we are to have a person of judicial experience on the body, it should be a retired judge and not a sitting judge. However, I do think that some legal experience is sometimes helpful.
I appreciate that not all Members of Parliament always agree, and I also understand that the Lord Chancellor takes a different view from mine on the construction of certain parts of the Bill, particularly in relation to clause 9 and how we define dishonesty. We can perhaps discuss that tomorrow, when I shall do my best to correct him.
I confess that, perhaps naively, I took sub-paragraph (2) to mean that it was intended that a person who held judicial office at the time of his appointment to IPSA would relinquish that office. If that is not clear, it should be made clear. I hope that that is the Government’s intention and that, if necessary, they will table a Government amendment to clarify matters. In addition, does my hon. and learned Friend agree that a person with experience of high juridical office would be more objective and less likely to be infected by party political matters than, say, a former civil servant?
That is one of the skills of being a judge. I have no doubt that any current judges who had the misfortune to be appointed to this body would do their best to apply their judicial skills, but that is not the point. Judges must be separated from politics, and seen to be so. We do not have a written constitution in this country, but whether those who prefer a written constitution like it or not, we do have a separation of powers. Importing current judges on to political bodies of this nature would be a mistake.
The other point that flows from the amendment is that there are statutory limits on the numbers of people who may serve as judges in the High Court, the Court of Appeal or the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords. It is not widely known—and even where it is known, it is often ignored—that those people are already fairly fully employed. Taking a serving judge off the current bench of senior judges would simply add delay to the existing criminal and civil jurisdictions, and place additional work on the backs of the current judiciary at a time when they have plenty to do already. There are only two logical conclusions: either that sub-paragraph (2) be deleted, as advocated in amendment 61, or that membership of IPSA should be restricted to retired or former senior judges.
I want to say a few words about the amendments, and the Opposition’s view of these matters. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) has tabled two amendments that are important in that they give proper consideration to the issue of judicial appointments, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) has explained. There seems to be good reason for having someone of legal experience on IPSA, but I also think that the point made by my hon. and learned Friend is correct. I find it very difficult to imagine how a person in high judicial office, with some time in post still to run, would want to spend his or her later years on the judicial bench—or the years after leaving it—as a member or the chairman of IPSA. It strikes me as a job that, although it may have some interest, is unlikely to match the interest generated by working on the bench.
Does my hon. and learned Friend believe that a judge’s enthusiasm for serving on this body will be enhanced by the possibility, which the Justice Secretary has confirmed, that it may be scrapped at a later date if Sir Christopher Kelly turns out to dislike it?
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I would not have thought that the uncertainties about the structure of IPSA would encourage people of sensible disposition who wish to be of public service to apply to join it. I do not wish to stray from the amendment, but we touched on one of the unfortunate aspects of the matter yesterday when we noted the degree of incoherence in how we have proceeded with this legislation. Even the bits that we support—I shall say more about them in a moment—seem to us deficient, as we cannot see the entire structure because we do not have Sir Christopher Kelly’s report.
There are good arguments for saying that IPSA should have a person with legal experience serving on it. If that is to be a retired High Court judge, so be it, but the point has been made that a person who has an active career in the judiciary should not be included in the list, and I rather think that that was not what the Secretary of State intended.
The main point that I was seeking to make was that if we are to have someone with such experience, he should be on the investigation and prosecuting side, not on the administration and function side. That was the main point of my tabling this pair of amendments. I wonder whether my hon. and learned Friend has a view on that?
There again, having someone of legal experience on the investigatory side may be desirable—clearly not a serving High Court judge or someone who is likely to go back on the bench. There are arguments that someone of legal experience would be valuable. I happen to think that legal experience would be valuable in either role. I shall be interested to hear from the Secretary of State what he has to say on the subject.
There are two slightly different roles. One is clearly investigatory and involves making sure that due process of law is followed, so judicial experience is relevant, especially in view of the comments made by the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) about the human rights compatibility of the new statute. Equally, there may well be some scope for judicial experience within IPSA, if for no other reason than that if one gets the right person it will help inject common sense and may be of assistance in justifying decisions to the public independently of the House. For those reasons, I shall be interested to hear what the Secretary of State has to say.
The second set of amendments has been tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) on the question of royal appointments. There is something slightly strange here. On the one hand, the Bill makes it clear that the appointment is made by this House voting on a motion, but is ratified by the Queen. On the other, later in the Bill, the person who is appointed is described as not being a Crown servant. I find a slight incompatibility between an appointment that derives from the monarch and the appointee not being a Crown servant. I shall be interested to hear from the Secretary of State exactly what the legal status of that person will be.
Is it not a fundamental point of parliamentary privilege established since the civil war that no Crown servant should have any jurisdiction over this House?
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The difficulty that the House has, and we have to face up to it, is that either IPSA is our creature in the sense that it is ultimately answerable to us, or it is not. As I said on Second Reading, I have grave anxieties about the widening of the scope of IPSA’s operation, especially to issues of MPs’ conduct. That is in a sense a separate issue that we will have to consider tomorrow, although it will colour my view about the entirety of the legislation.
If the purpose of establishing IPSA is to set up a system for setting our salaries and allowances and ensuring that they are properly paid and that we repay what might have been misclaimed, the arguments for creating a body that is seen to be entirely independent of the House become strong. I have to say that we have got ourselves into our difficulties in part because we have in-house allocation of our allowances and we ultimately control them.
I am sympathetic to the Government’s aim, as I made clear at the outset, of having our salaries and allowances set outside this place entirely. If we are to achieve that, it must follow that IPSA cannot be seen to be our creature. If it is appointed on the basis of motions in the House, it will remain so. That is the point where I have sympathy with the Government’s position. That sympathy begins to erode when I see how the Government have provided for IPSA to have other functions and, above all, for the commissioner to have other functions which I believe intrude into areas of conduct, affect the Bill of Rights and our privileges, and are much more controversial.
The question that I would like the Secretary of State to answer is: in view of what the Bill says—namely, that the appointment is made by motion of this House but is ratified by the Crown—what is the status of the person who is thus appointed if they are not a Crown servant? On the face of it, it seems rather an anomalous position.
This has been a useful debate, and I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen for having raised issues. Let me deal with them in turn. The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) asked, first, whether it was appropriate for there to be a place on the authority for somebody who has held high judicial office; secondly, whether it is acceptable, in any circumstances, to hold out the possibility of that person being a current holder of high judicial office; and, thirdly, whether it would be more appropriate for somebody in that position to be the person selected to be commissioner.
On whether it would be very useful for there to be one person on the authority who has high judicial experience, certainly there was not much argument in the inter-party talks, although I accept that they were not a substitute for debate in this House; of course they were not. My view is that given the nature of the functions of the authority, somebody with high judicial experience could be extremely helpful in helping to guide the authority. There is no direct parallel, but I have certainly witnessed at close hand the work that former members of the Court of Appeal have done as commissioners for the interception of communications, for surveillance and for the intelligence services. They do a job that is partly administrative and partly adjudicatory, and they do it with huge skill, perspicacity and authority. We are trying to set up an authoritative body that is at arm’s length from the House, and that does not leave us open to the criticism that we are judging ourselves, so having someone with that authority on the body would be very helpful.
I say to the hon. Member for North Essex that the authority will have two functions, which are set out in one of the clauses. One of the functions is to run the administrative system—that is, to administer the allowances and so on. The execution of that system will be a matter for the chief executive. Alongside that, but quite separately, there is the function of adjudicating on complaints that are brought to the body by the commissioner. In certain circumstances, the body will deal with the complaints; in other circumstances—if it judges the complaints to be more serious—it will refer them to this House. Again, when it comes to ensuring that there is an acceptable process that meets the requirements of natural justice and of article 6 of the European convention on human rights, it would be helpful to have somebody on IPSA with the authority of high judicial experience.
On the hon. Gentleman’s second point, he is quite right to suggest that it is improbable, not to say impossible, that somebody who is currently serving as a senior judge could or should accept appointment to IPSA. The only circumstances that I can conceive in which the current wording would be relevant are those in which someone who is coming to the end of their term of office, and is about to retire, wishes to apply for the IPSA job. He or she might be appointed to it while still holding high judicial office, but would not take the job on until they had finished their term of office. However, if I may, I will take away the issue of the current drafting and think about it.
On the third point, which was about whether it would be more appropriate for the commissioner to be somebody who had held high judicial office, there is nothing to stop somebody who has judicial experience from applying for the post. It is important that a member of the authority should have held high judicial office, but I can think of others who have had good judicial experience who could easily fulfil the work of the commissioner.
There has been a succession of very able Parliamentary Commissioners for Standards, but no holder of that office has had juridical experience, and that is a disadvantage. Surely the Bill is an opportunity to make sure that an improvement is made in the new arrangements.
I am a member of the legal profession and have great affection for it. I have made plenty of jokes along the lines that only a lawyer should apply for any job I can think of. I know there is approbation for that on at least part of the Opposition Front Bench. However, just as we have fine qualities, there are others with equally good qualities.
Could the Government think a little more carefully about another problem? They are in danger of leading themselves into yet further difficulties. The Secretary of State has now accepted that it would be unwise for a serving member of the judiciary to fulfil the function, but the Government’s policy seems to be continually to reduce the retiring age of judges, presumably on the basis that above that age they are unfit, through senility or exhaustion, to serve as judges. If they are required to retire at increasingly early ages as judges, why are they then fit to perform the proposed function?
The basic reduction in the age of retirement for the judiciary was made by the right hon. and noble Lord Mackay in 1995. It was his proposal to reduce the retirement age from 75 to 70. I have no proposals to reduce it still further, and I would be reluctant to do so. As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows, many members of the senior and less senior judiciary are very capable of carrying out further functions after they have retired.
Let me deal with the points made by the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory). I do not accept—and there is no provenance for this—that if an appointment is made by the Speaker, by virtue of that fact it is a creature of the Executive. Many, many appointments are made which have nothing whatever to do with the Executive. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who is not in his place, said to me that he had been appointed by Her Majesty to two positions, neither of which have anything to do with the Executive.
We considered whether, as is standard in respect of the Comptroller and Auditor General, for example, there was something to be said for the appointment to be formally recommended by the Prime Minister, but we ruled that out rather quickly so that the recommendation should go direct from the Speaker. As was made clear by the ceremony last Monday, in which I took part, the Speaker, who is elected to serve the House, has to have his or her appointment approved by Her Majesty, but that never goes near the Executive, nor should it. I hope I can provide reassurance on that.
The purpose of ensuring that if there is discontent with the individual or individuals, they can be removed only on an address of both Houses, is to bring that into line with the arrangements for the removal of members of the High Court and above, to give them assurance that they are independent. That makes sense, but I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s objections to only the Leader of the House or the Leader of the other place being able to put that motion before the House. I acknowledge that that provision should not be in the Bill, so I will seek the approval of the House for amendment 52.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment made: 52, in schedule 1, page 11, line 23, leave out sub-paragraph (5).—(Mr. Heathcoat-Amory.)
I beg to move amendment 3, page 15, line 41, leave out from ‘After’ to end of line and insert
‘the Committee has reviewed the estimate and made any modifications, the Speaker’.
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 4, page 16, line 28, after ‘and’, insert ‘the Speaker must’.
Amendment 5, page 16, line 30, leave out ‘On laying’ and insert ‘When the Speaker lays’.
Amendment 1, in clause 3, page 2, line 18, leave out ‘IPSA’ and insert ‘Speaker’.
Amendment 2, in clause 5, page 3, line 25, leave out ‘IPSA’ and insert ‘Speaker’.
These are technical amendments, and the need for them may reflect the haste with which the Bill has been drafted. Paragraph 25 of schedule 1 provides for IPSA to lay its annual report before Parliament. Papers may be laid on the Table only by a Member or an Officer of the House, so in practice someone will have to lay the annual report and other papers on behalf of IPSA. Of course, IPSA is independent of the Government, so it would not be right for the papers to be laid by a Minister of the Crown. The Government may assume that the Clerk of the House will lay them, but the legislation should not rest on assumptions, and, to the extent that there are precedents for this, they are not very good. It will be for the House authorities to decide whether any Act, drafted in the current terms of the Bill, provides sufficient clarity and authority for papers to be laid on behalf of IPSA.
It would be much better to specify the laying authority in the Bill, and the Speaker, as Chairman of the Committee established by virtue of clause 1, is the appropriate person to lay the papers both on behalf of that Committee and, indeed, of IPSA. He already lays papers on behalf of similar independent bodies, such as the Electoral Commission. If the Government do not agree, they should at least make it clear in the Bill who will lay those papers.
I am very grateful for the opportunity to make a contribution with you in the Chair, Sir Alan; it is a very rare opportunity for us all. I simply second the comments of the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young). His amendment would place the focus back on the Speaker, and, as we have just chosen a new Speaker, it is appropriate that he have that role. I seek to be persuasive, and I invite the Secretary of State to agree to the amendment.
Such is the eloquence of the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) and my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) that I am very happy to accept the amendment. It makes eminent sense and shows the value of this kind of process.
Amendment 3 agreed to.
Amendments made: 4, in schedule 1, page 16, line 28, after ‘and’, insert ‘the Speaker must’.
Amendment 5, page 16, line 30, leave out ‘On laying’ and insert ‘When the Speaker lays’.—(Sir George Young.)
Schedule 1, as amended, agreed to.
On a point of order, Sir Alan. What happens to amendments 1 and 2?
They come later. The hon. Gentleman should not be concerned; we shall arrive at them in due course.
Schedule 2
Commissioner for parliamentary investigations
Question proposed, That the schedule be the Second schedule to the Bill.
Schedule 2 creates a new Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations, but it leaves in place the existing Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. After the legislation comes into force, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards will, for an as yet unspecified period, retain responsibility for the register of Members’ staff, the register of journalists and the register of all-party groups; for advising the House on its code of conduct; and for considering complaints that a Member has breached the code, unless the complaint relates wholly to the Members’ allowances scheme or to the rules on Members’ financial interests.
Of course, complaints do not always fit neatly into one category or another, however; it is perfectly possible for a complaint against a Member to fall into two. The advantage to the public and to the House of the current arrangements is that we have a one-stop shop for complaints about Members: the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Under the Bill, however, we will close that one-stop shop. Not only will some complaints be potentially open to investigation by both commissioners, but the conduct of the two investigations into the same complaint may be carried out according to different procedures, and the resolution of the two complaints may be made according to different criteria.
Last night, the Deputy Leader of the House told the House in her winding-up speech:
“Any future change to the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards would be made only with the agreement of the Speaker and after an affirmative vote by the House, following consultation with both the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the Committee”—
my Committee, the Standards and Privileges Committee—
“that the right hon. Gentleman chairs.”—[Official Report, 29 June 2009; Vol. 495, c. 126-27.]
In view of the potential for confusion, I wonder whether I can press the Minister to say a bit more today about how she sees the relationship between those two commissioners prior to such changes that may bring to an end the existence of one. How exactly will we avoid all the dangers of duplication, overlap and inconsistency of approach which are inherent in two commissioners being in office at the same time?
I endorse everything that my right hon. Friend has just said. There will inevitably be duplication in the transition period, but then the question is, what happens beyond any transitional period? Either we get rid of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, whom we have in this House, in which case the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations must inevitably acquire the powers of regulation over those matters that are solely within the House’s remit; or we recognise the basic problem that the Government created a Bill that was initially designed to regulate our conduct in its entirety, they backed off after the overwhelming outcry about the House’s independence being completely lost in the process, and they have been unable to follow the matter through to its logical conclusion, which is that the role of the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations is redundant. We should look for a proper system whereby IPSA, if it considers rules on claiming allowances and salaries to have been transgressed—although that is rather unlikely in the case of parliamentary salaries—makes any reference that it needs to make to the existing structure.
That is the problem, and my right hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the fact that the issue appears to be a fertile area for conflict. Conflict will occur not just when we decide on the current structures today; we are laying the ground for future conflict when the House considers whatever the final structures should be.
Taking into account what our right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) said about the potential for conflict over the interpretation of the law and the facts, might not one pragmatic solution be to have one person doing both jobs? It is a bodge, but this Bill is a bodge.
My hon. and learned Friend makes an interesting and sensible point. The only difficulty is that we have just debated the fact that the chain of answerability of the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is different: one derives directly from the House; the other quite deliberately—certainly in terms of IPSA—goes somewhere else.
The measure has not been properly thought through, and there is a real constitutional incoherence about the way the Government have dealt with the issue. The problem will not go away just because we decide to ignore it.
Is not the overwhelming and logical conclusion to the argument of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) that IPSA should be no more and no less than an independent fees office?
My hon. Friend refers to the body that many thought was going to be created. There are very good arguments for having a wholly independent body administering our salaries and allowances. That would free Members of Parliament from a burden which, frankly, we were showing ourselves very ill used to discharging, and which meant that we were coming in for a great deal of public criticism; in many cases, MPs did not want to go through the business of doing it because it attracted public opprobrium whatever decisions they came to.
Those are really good and compelling arguments. The Government have muddied the waters. When the Prime Minister made his pronouncements on television, which did not appear to relate to having taken any prior advice, he indicated that this structure would have supervision of our conduct without thinking through the constitutional implications. Although he has since rowed back—under a great deal of pressure, I suspect, from several quarters—there has been an unwillingness to follow that through to its logical conclusion. I urge the Secretary of State—who is, after all, responsible for the rule of law in this country, for trying to maintain some clarity, and for protecting our constitution—not to create what appears to be a dog’s breakfast. I will be interested to hear how he thinks these two things can, in practice, be reconciled when it is abundantly clear that if we breach the rules on parliamentary allowances, we bring ourselves directly in line for criticism in terms of our status as Members of this House. Having some clarity would help everybody.
The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) has raised an important issue that we discussed to some degree in the cross-party talks. It may be helpful if I tell the Committee what is in the Government’s mind. I resist the claim by the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) that we have been unwilling to follow through the consequences of our proposals to their logical conclusion. We are not discussing clause 11 at the moment, but that clause—Opposition Members will recall its provenance—was put into the Bill to try to deal with precisely this issue.
First, let me deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), who asked whether this body should have been an independent fees office, in his phrase, and nothing more. We are indeed establishing an independent fees office, but there are certain consequences that follow from that. One of the key consequences involves who then supervises that independent fees office. If we approve the principle of an independent fees office, as the House plainly has—I remind Members that the principle of the Bill was approved by a majority of 290; the vote was 291 to one—we must also approve the principle that the people who supervise it must be independent of this House. Otherwise, we would get into the absurd position of having a fees office that was allegedly independent, but when there was a complaint about its operation— whether it came from a member of the public, a Member of this House or a member of staff, and whether it concerned its administration or how it was adjudicating on individual Members’ allowances and claims—that complaint would fall to be adjudicated solely by this House. If there were then a question about whether the new independent fees office was being properly run, again it would fall to the House to deal with it. We would not be setting up what we sought to set up at all, but a charade.
That is why we thought that we should set up the structure that is essentially provided for in schedules 1 and 2. The authority has two branches to its work, one of which is administrative. There is a chief executive, or chief officer, appointed by the authority, but it is the chief officer, not the authority, who is the accounting officer, and he or she is directly responsible for the administration and good financial conduct of the authority and its expenditure of money. On the other side, there is a commissioner who is there to investigate complaints, which may well be about the operation of the chief executive and his or her staff. I suggest to the Committee that that is an essential part of any process to establish what the hon. Member for Gainsborough describes as an independent fees office. There is an argument for saying that the commissioner should be wholly hived off, but the commissioner is pretty nearly wholly hived off.
The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire asked whether we would have two sets of investigations falling over each other with two sets of procedures. If one reads the Green Book, one can see that it is overwhelmingly concerned with Members’ conduct in terms of their financial interests and allowances. That will fall almost exclusively to the new authority and the new commissioner. However, there will continue to be some work for the existing commissioner and some investigations that will go directly to the Standards and Privileges Committee, not through the authority as well.
The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) asked whether it might be sensible to have one person who was able to do both jobs. Yes, it might be; the double-hatting of functions is perfectly normal in many situations. That is why clause 11, which we will come to in due course, provides for two sets of things. First, subsection (1) states:
“The Speaker, after consulting the Commissioner and the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges, may agree with the”
authority that it
“is to carry out any registration function specified in the agreement”
that it is not already carrying out. The registration functions in the Bill will be functions relating to Members, not necessarily to Members’ spouses or staff, nor, for example, to the press lobby, which is currently separate. If that is agreed, then subject to the provisions in subsection (8), those functions would go to the authority.
Secondly, subsection (4) states:
“The Speaker, after consulting the IPSA and the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges, may agree with the Commissioner that the Commissioner is to carry out any relevant function specified in the agreement (whether relating to a matter arising before or after the agreement is made or the date this Act is passed).”
Therefore, the existing functions could be passed over. The other safeguard for the House is that that could happen only if the agreement were approved by a resolution of the House.
The Secretary of State makes a compelling argument for having a reviewer of IPSA decisions in relation to any mistakes that might be made by IPSA or complaints about individual Members’ claims in terms of their having been overpaid or paid for something to which they were not entitled. I have no difficulty with that. The difficulty that arises, which is inherent in the enforcement provisions in clause 8 that we will have to consider tomorrow, is what happens when one sets up a system whereby IPSA or the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations—it is not quite clear how they interrelate in this context—makes recommendations to the Standards and Privileges Committee about what it should do to Members of Parliament who have, in IPSA’s view, transgressed on a financial matter. For reasons that I made clear in my closing remarks yesterday, I think that is very dangerous territory for the independence of this House. That is why my original comment is valid. The Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations is a leftover from a structure that was put together by the Prime Minister at a time when he wanted to put this House entirely under independent regulation from outside.
The hon. and learned Gentleman’s imagination is running away with him. I promise him that that is not the case.
A few moments ago the Secretary of State made a perfectly fair point about the need for complaints about the independent fees office, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) described it, to be dealt with by someone independent. However, according to schedule 2 the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations will essentially be chosen by, or with the agreement of, the Speaker, and the Speaker cannot nominate a candidate without the agreement of the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. Who will make up that Committee but Members of Parliament? The Secretary of State is building into his so-called independent system a snake and a ladder that go straight back to Parliament, so the appearance of independence is destroyed.
The hon. and learned Gentleman raises an important point, but someone has to appoint both the members of the authority and the commissioner. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan)—if I might have his attention for a moment—and other members of the cross-party group will confirm that we considered alternative methods for the appointment of the commissioner. One was for it to be effectively in the hands of the civil service commissioners, so that we would simply be presented with a person whom we would endorse but have no ownership of, as it were. That did not find favour with the hon. Gentleman or anybody else on the cross-party group, or indeed with me.
There is a balance to be struck. The House can set up an independent authority and appoint independent individuals, which is consistent with our responsibilities, or it can somehow lose its sense of responsibility and outsource decisions to another body completely. I happen to think—I may be wrong—that we have got the correct structure and the right balance.
I am confident in saying that because, for instance, I have been part of the process to appoint members of the Electoral Commission. That has been done on an all-party basis, with the assistance of the civil service commissioners, but by this House. No one suggests that members of the commission, or its recently appointed chair, are not independent of the House, even though they are appointed by it. No one suggests that although the new Information Commissioner is endorsed by the House, he is not independent of it. We are perfectly capable of making judgments about the qualities of individuals and having protections to ensure their independence.
Finally, all the people appointed under schedules 1 and 2 will have tenure unless they are removed by an address to Her Majesty generated by any Member of the House.
On any view, the commissioner will have considerable authority over right hon. and hon. Members, or at least his decisions will have an impact on them. The selection of the commissioner is therefore a matter of considerable importance and should be subject to constraint and oversight. It is clear from paragraph 1(3) and (4) of the schedule that the drafters of the Bill had that in mind. I note that the person in question will have to be selected by the Speaker, and I note from sub-paragraph (4) that:
“The Speaker must not select a candidate without the agreement of the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.”
I hope that you will allow a debate on schedule 3, Sir Alan, because one is therefore driven to consider the composition of that committee.
I notice that in reality, the Executive could have considerable authority over the selection of the committee that is specified in schedule 3. Obviously the Speaker is independent of the Executive, but the Leader of the House is not. The five members of the committee who are MPs but not Ministers, who are to be appointed by the House of Commons, may well be chosen as a result of a Whips’ operation.
We could therefore find that the composition of the committee, which will no doubt sit under the chairmanship of Mr. Speaker, is shaped by the Executive of the day, operating through the Whips when the House comes to decide its membership. I regard that as a thoroughly undesirable state of affairs, and it means that the safeguard on the appointment of the commissioner that we are providing under sub-paragraphs (3) and (4) is much less real than one perhaps thinks. I hope that you might allow a short debate on schedule 3, Sir Alan, so that that point can be reinforced and so that we can make the further point that the House should have greater independence when it comes to decide on the nature of the authority.
Schedule 2 deals with the role of the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations. We will get on to questions of privilege later under clause 7, but I simply wish to put it on record that on my analysis of the commissioner’s function, the schedule and clause 7 do not appear to preclude the involvement of the police. The use of the word “may” in that context, irrespective of whether the word “shall” should have been used, gives rise to the question whether there will be parallel functions. I hope that the Secretary of State will take account of that in his consideration of clause 7 later, because although I believe it is intended that the commissioner will have the function—apparently the sole function—of investigating, I am by no means convinced that that will be the result of how the Bill is drafted.
I wish to support the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young). We are devising a new system on the hoof in this very fast piece of legislation, but I beg the Secretary of State to have something that is clear and that we and our electorate can understand.
We had quite a few problems over the years, until we solved them recently, with the fact that certain things had to be declared to the Electoral Commission and certain things to the registrar of interests here. Some Members fell foul of that system without any personal culpability, because they had not completely understood it. It was very confusing, but that was acknowledged and we have now put it right. We are in danger of creating another system that will be even more confusing.
My right hon. Friend rightly pointed to the activities of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and I know of no one who has seriously criticised the current commissioner or his predecessor, Sir Philip Mawer, who was an enormously dedicated public servant and gave great time and tremendous integrity to his task. He served the House, and through it the country, very well indeed. I have no reason to suppose that the current commissioner is any different. I rather infer from my right hon. Friend’s remarks that he has a similar regard for him.
indicated assent.
My right hon. Friend indicates that he does. Now we are going to have another commissioner. The clearly logical situation would be to do as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) suggested, but the Secretary of State indicated that there would be a potential conflict of interest in that. We have to address that point, because the public need to know who “the commissioner” is. They will not understand the nuances and the differences between one commissioner and the other.
I am sorry to go back to this point, but we are in this mess because we are legislating on the hoof and with such precipitate and unnecessary speed. On 18 June—less than two weeks ago—I asked the Leader of the House whether IPSA would be solely concerned with the financial aspects, and she replied in the affirmative. Even though the Secretary of State graciously withdrew clause 6 yesterday, we still have an exceptionally badly drafted and unsatisfactory Bill. It has caused widespread concern throughout the House, irrespective of party—the minority parties are as concerned and exercised by it as any others.
We compound the problem by having two commissioners, and the confusion makes it difficult for people who wish to level genuine complaints—I do not mean those who wish to make frivolous and vexatious complaints; goodness knows, there are enough of them. The Secretary of State obliquely suggested that it might be possible for one person to wear two hats, and I urge him to consider the matter further so that when the Bill goes to another place, where Members have more time and, frankly, more expertise, they can perhaps reach a reasonably satisfactory conclusion, which does away with the confusion and creates the clarity that must be the prerequisite of such legislation.
Before I call the next hon. Member, I need to make a confession to the House and seek indulgence. In the euphoria that we perhaps felt when the Secretary of State accepted amendment 52 in the name of the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), I failed to notice that amendment 55 makes exactly the same point. It requires the leave of the House for me to put that amendment immediately before I put the Question on the schedule. That is clearly logical and would save tidying up later. Do I have the House’s approval? [Hon. Members: “Yes.”] That is what we will therefore do. I offer my humble apologies for not spotting that earlier.
I want to place on record my concerns, some of which mirror those that Opposition Members have expressed, about the creation of the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations and providing for it in the Bill. The public think that it is to do with stopping the scandals about expenses, which have caused so much concern. Instead, we are creating something that has a slightly Cromwellian air. Cromwell was keen on commissioners in place of Members of Parliament. A Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations sounds rather sinister. What exactly will that person investigate?
If we combine the earlier aspects of the Bill with the new rule book that has just been presented to us, it will be jolly hard for any Member of Parliament to write a book again. Those who consider doing that will have to log all the hours they spend thinking about, preparing and writing the book. When such matters are reported to the new IPSA, or “Guardian Council” as I prefer to call it, constituents will ask, “What on earth is this man doing writing a book? He should be in the constituency working on all our cases. We need a parliamentary investigation. Oh good, we have a Commission for Parliamentary Investigations. Let’s get him on the job.” I exaggerate slightly.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who is a much better, more honest and keener parliamentarian than I will ever be—I know from working with him as a Minister how seriously he takes the House—is trying to get something on to the statute book in response to one of the periodical “fits of morality”, to quote Lord Macaulay, through which our nation is going.
I ask my right hon. Friend to ascertain whether the old expression “festina lente” applies. In my 15 years as a Labour Member of Parliament, who would like an elected second House, I never thought that I would say, as I say tonight, that I hope that the other place takes time and considers the matter carefully. The concern is cross party—many of us are talking about the matter in the Tea Room and in the corridors. That includes those who are not present because we have many other unfortunate and pressing issues to tackle. For example, I have to deal with massive steel redundancies in my constituency.
I speak simply out of deep concern that we are legislating in haste and without clarity, and creating an incredibly powerful office that can interfere substantially with what Members of Parliament do. Members of Parliament can be eccentric—I note that the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway), who was once a great supporter of Saddam Hussein, now supports, according to reports that I have read, President Ahmadinejad and is acting as his spokesman in Britain.
Order. The right hon. Gentleman must take care when criticising another hon. Member, certainly when it is done without notice.
I was simply reporting what the website said. If it is a criticism, let the cap fit.
In the House, we have always had our eccentrics—people who are isolated in their party and from public opinion. However, they were always protected by the invincible shield of having been elected by their constituents in a free vote in a specific locality. Nothing could take that away from them.
Indeed. At the beginning of 1939, the Conservative party actively tried to deselect Churchill. Winston Churchill had to conduct a surgery; he had to go to his constituency and find out where Chingford or Chigwell—whatever it is called—was.
I apologise to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith).
Winston Churchill’s private and business affairs were extremely shady in the 1930s, and he would certainly have fallen foul of the new commission.
Order. We should try to return the debate to the narrow confines of the schedule.
Under the new rules, not only in the Bill, but in the Green Book that has been waved around, the notion that anybody could find time to write a book while serving as a Member of Parliament has gone out of the window. I do not know whether that is healthy. Many of us feel that we should spend more time reading books; one or two of us are mad enough to try to write one, but there will be little time to do that under the new proposals.
I appreciate that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is trying to get things right and I accept that he is sincere. He is a great parliamentarian—one day, he may even become a Back Bencher again, though that is difficult to imagine. He would be a good Back Bencher and, if he were to become one, he would not want to be hobbled by the Cromwellian commissioner that he proposes.
I largely agree with what the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) has just said, particularly his early remarks about the haste with which the Bill has been cobbled together. As I said a moment ago, it is a bodge. Bodged Bills tend to lead to bad law and tears before bedtime. I assure you, Sir Alan, that there will be tears before bedtime if the measure gets on to the statute book as it is drafted.
I want to say something nice about the Secretary of State for Justice. I hope that it will not accelerate his return to the Back Benches—I said that with my fingers crossed. The Government’s Lord Chancellors have appointed members of the judiciary, and not one can be accused of being a political creature. That applies to the current Lord Chancellor and his predecessors as Labour Lord Chancellors. They have performed their functions as party politicians who happen to be Lord Chancellor in an exemplary fashion when making appointments to the judiciary. They even managed to do that with the appointment of a former Labour Solicitor-General, who is now a member of the High Court bench. He performs his judicial functions entirely properly and utterly separately from any previous political allegiance that he may have had.
That said, however, it is fair to say that it would in theory be possible for a Speaker, advised by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, to appoint somebody as the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations who could carry out his functions in an entirely dispassionate and disinterested way. However, my concern is not so much about the actuality, but about the appearance, because we will not get the confidence of the British public—and certainly not in the current book-burning storm that we seem to be facing—if they think that there has been a parliamentary stitch-up. I happen to think that Parliament ought to be big enough and self-confident enough to manage its own affairs and to discipline its malefactors, as we have done in the past, without feeling ashamed. However, I suspect that the political climate is rather different now and that we now have to have a Bill such as this one. However, if we are to have such a Bill, let us get it right instead of rushing it through and making mistakes that are either unforeseen or foreseeable, but which are none the less mistakes.
The Justice Secretary is trying to persuade us that it is important for the independent fees office, as described by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), to be disciplined—or governed or looked after—by an independent functionary. Yet we also see, and not just in schedule 2, which we are discussing, but in other parts of the Bill, various references—[Interruption]—including 20 references to the powers of the Speaker to do things, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) reminds me. We are persuading ourselves that the machinery that the Bill creates is one of independence. However, every time one looks at a clause or a subsection, one sees that the Bill does not produce machinery that is independent of the House of Commons or Parliament, still less of the Executive; rather, it produces one that remains in their grip. I happen to think that that is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is no good for the Government to proclaim that the Bill sets up an independent machinery when we see the fingerprints of the Speaker’s office and the Executive on more or less every clause.
When my hon. and learned Friend says that the machinery is in the grip of Parliament, what I think he means to say is that it is in the grip of the Executive, and that is what is truly dangerous.
I agree. It has long been my view that while we have an Executive who sit in Parliament, they should not sit on Parliament. We have become too supine as Members of Parliament. I hope that, in recognising the public anger about expenses and so forth, we will none the less remember that we were elected to represent our constituents in a self-confident and independent way, and not to be bullied by either the Executive or other outside interests that wish to knock us off our stride.
Of course Members of Parliament make mistakes. Some may have committed serious mistakes and will have to answer to the law for them. However, I cannot understand an argument that says that we are setting up an independent machinery when one sees, for example, references to the Speaker in paragraphs 1(2), (3) and (4) of schedule 2, references to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which is made up of Members of Parliament, or references in paragraph 4 of schedule 2 to the removal of the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations being brought about only on a motion put down by the Leader of the Commons—Hon. Members: They’ve conceded that.
indicated assent.
Well, I am delighted to hear that, because—[Interruption.] I am so grateful for the attendance of that person over there, whoever he is. None the less, my point in relation to those other aspects of schedule 2 remains. I apologise if I misunderstood the nature of the amendments of my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) in relation to the motion made by the Leader of the House, but that function will now be performed by the Speaker—is that right?
I have no idea.
Well, there we are—it appears that none of us has an idea, but perhaps we ought to. I return to what the right hon. Member for Rotherham said at the beginning of his remarks. If we rush the Bill through without having thought about it thoroughly, we will end up disappointing not only ourselves, but those outside.
Having listened to this debate on schedule 2, I think that we are clearly on a journey with the destination unknown. Where we are now is that we have a one-stop shop. We have one Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, one code of conduct and one route for complaints. The original proposition from the Prime Minister was for the whole thing—finance and non-finance—to be contracted out to an outside body. That proposition met with criticism, for all the reasons that the Secretary of State knows, so it has now been divided into two aspects: financial and non-financial. The finance bit goes out to IPSA, which will be subject to the new commissioner. However, a bit of the code remains with the House of Commons and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.
In his remarks, the Secretary of State helpfully pointed to some provisions in clause 11 that enable us to move on from what we all regard as a rather unsatisfactory position, with two routes for complaints. If the Bill goes through, the commissioner whom we are discussing under schedule 2 could, if everybody agreed, perform the function of dealing with non-financial complaints and reporting not to IPSA, but straight to the Standards and Privileges Committee. If we ended up at that destination, we would have one commissioner who would perform two functions. In other words, there would be a one-stop shop.
There would still be some untidiness, however, in that the rules for one route of complaints might be different from those for another route, and the destination might be different. However, if we end up there, it would be helpful to have some consultation about that at some point, because there are people involved. It would also help to have a time scale. How long will we have two Parliamentary Commissioners for Standards running alongside each other, one reporting to us and the other reporting to IPSA? I have no difficulty with schedule 2, but there is a residual untidiness, although there are also some possible solutions, which the legislation may facilitate.
I should make it clear—I might not have done this earlier—that I can see that there might be some merit in having the commissioner for investigations performing the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Indeed, there has been criticism in the past about the extent to which parliamentary commissioners have been subject to improper pressure from within this House, and that proposal might help to resolve that problem. However, is not the nub of the issue that if we are to have that conjoined role, the powers of enforcement in clause 8 and the relationship of the commissioner vis-à-vis the Standards and Privileges Committee will have to be identical? Otherwise, we will start running into some very difficult areas indeed.
My hon. and learned Friend is quite right, which underlines the need for some serious consultation if we are to come up with a solution that meets all the points that have been raised, including his concerns and mine about exposing those decisions that currently rest with the House to review in the courts, which is not something that I would wish for.
Does that point not underline the good sense of taking time in the other place to get the Bill absolutely right?
I agree with my hon. Friend.
We have had a useful debate that has outlined some potential solutions, albeit ones that have ramifications that need to be thought through. However, it was helpful to hear from the Secretary of State that he is not unfamiliar with the issues raised by the approach adopted by the Government. I hope that he will be sympathetic to some of the solutions that have been explored.
This has been a useful debate, and I should like to respond to it, if I may. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) talked about a Cromwellian commission, and I understand his anxiety, which is shared across the House, that we might lurch from a system of inadequate regulation—which has exposed the reputation of the House and of the vast majority of honourable and honest Members to being besmirched—to the other extreme of over-regulation. Parenthetically, may I add that my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House and I also understand the concerns about the interpretation of the guidance on so-called second incomes?
May I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham that the rules or code that the commissioner would be hoping to enforce could come into effect only by approval of the House on an affirmative vote? The authority will propose the rules or code, but clause 5(6) is absolutely explicit:
“The rules (or revision) do not come into effect until they are approved by a resolution of the House of Commons.”
My reading of that—in accordance with the ordinary procedures on affirmative resolutions—is that the House would have no power to amend. Indeed, once the rules were in place, I do not think that the House would have any power to revoke them.
It is certainly the case, as with any affirmative resolution, that the rules would be either accepted or rejected. However, there would be a process of consultation beforehand. I give notice to the House that, when we reach clause 5, I will accept amendments to subsection (4) to extend the list of those who have to be consulted. There will be an iterative process between the authority and the House. In any event, if 95 per cent. of the proposals are acceptable and 5 per cent. are not, it will be for the House to decide.
Once the rules are in place, who will be able to get rid of them? Will it be only IPSA, or will the House also be able to do so?
The right hon. and learned Gentleman raises an interesting point. Under the structure of the Bill at the moment, only IPSA could do so, but I will take the matter away. I had not thought of this before, but there might need to be provision in the Bill for the rules periodically to be reviewed and voted on by the House. I will take that matter away; it is an important point.
The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) raised several points. We have talked about whether it would be possible to appoint people who are independent and capable of exercising authority over us when we ourselves make the appointments. I think that that is possible. The hon. and learned Gentleman was complimentary about the way in which my predecessors as Lord Chancellor and I have supervised the system of judicial appointments, and I think that we can achieve the appointments in question because we have experience of doing so. I must also tell him that the Executive’s fingerprints are nowhere to be found on the scheme proposed in the Bill. It is true that they were, in some of the earlier drafts, but we made sure that they were removed.
I shall turn to the very helpful points raised by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young). Clause 11 was drafted in response to points that he made in the cross-party talks. If it is the wish of the House, we could double-hat the commissioner. One person could perform two sets of parallel functions. Once the House has approved the scheme and the Bill, I undertake to ensure that detailed consultations are entered into on how we might achieve that.
I acknowledge, in relation to the staff in the Fees Office and to the commissioner and the staff who will work alongside the commissioner, that we are dealing with individual human beings who have been doing the best job they can. Personally, I have very high regard for Mr. John Lyon, who worked with me as an official in the Home Office and in the Ministry of Justice before he came here.
Clause 8(6), which we will come to tomorrow, contains a provision for a protocol setting out the interrelationships between the authority, the commissioner, the Committee on Standards and Privileges and—in respect of criminal prosecutions—the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. We have included the provision as a result of discussions in the cross-party group to ensure that there were clear dividing lines—in the best sense of the term—between the different functions.
Amendment made: 55, in schedule 2, page 18, line 15, leave out sub-paragraph (3).—(Mr. Heathcoat-Amory.)
Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 3
Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority
Question proposed, That the schedule be the Third schedule to the Bill.
I indicated in the previous debate that I would like to have a short debate on schedule 3. The composition of the Speaker’s Committee for IPSA is obviously a matter of some importance, because the committee will be consulted on a number of significant issues and policies. One is therefore entitled to look at its composition. Of course it will have among its members Mr. Speaker, which is a very good thing, but it will also have the Leader of the House of Commons. One has to recognise that the Leaders of the House of Commons are not infrequently extremely partisan. They used not to be, when I first came into the House, but increasingly, instead of being representatives of the House of Commons as they used to be, they have become very partisan.
I notice that there will be no ex officio members of the committee, other than my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who at the moment chairs the Committee on Standards and Privileges; I am pleased that that post has been recognised in this regard. I would like there to be a nominated representative from the other political parties. I see considerable merit in the shadow Leader of the House or the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats or another minority party being an ex officio member of the committee. In that way, one could be reasonably sure that the views of the House would be fairly represented in the committee.
It is true that paragraph 1(d) provides for
“five members of the House of Commons who are not Ministers”
to be among the membership, but, as I have repeatedly pointed out, the Whips often control the votes. The Executive, through their Whips, could thus fashion the composition of the committee. I do not want that. I do not trust the Executive. Over the past 12 years, we have seen the power of the Executive over this House increase, and right hon. and hon. Members should do their utmost to prevent any more erosion. This is part of the process. When the composition of the committee is considered further in another place, serious thought should be given to the appointment of Members who represent other parties, who should sit on the committee by right. In that way, the Executive would not be able to fashion the committee through the Whips Office, because that would be an erosion of parliamentary sovereignty.
It might help if I explain the basis on which we propose the Speaker’s Committee. We took into consideration the parallel experience of the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. I have served on that committee—as Leader of the House, I think, and certainly as Justice Secretary.
I understand the anxiety of the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) about these committees being taken over by the Executive, but the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission is chaired by the hon. Member for Gosport (Sir Peter Viggers) and is operated on a very collaborative basis. If we are talking about a Public Bill Committee on a contentious piece of legislation, then, yes, of course the Whips will influence the Committee of Selection, but for this kind of Committee, the individuals selected to serve on it do so because of their commitment to this House and, in this case, to the Electoral Commission—and it has worked extremely well. I have no reason to think that that should not also be the case here.
I do not accept what the right hon. and learned Gentleman says about Leaders of the House, and I am not just speaking for myself, but for other Leaders of the House. As I have witnessed, they have stood up for the interests of the House not just here, but inside Government—repeatedly and assiduously—as well.
We are always open to suggestions for improvement, but paragraph 1 of schedule 3 provides that of eight members, only one can be a Minister of the Crown—it would be the Leader of the House. I will give further consideration to the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s suggestion to have some requirement to ensure a balance between the parties.
Question put and agreed to.
Schedule 3 agreed to.
Clause 2
MPs’ salaries
I beg to move amendment 69, page 1, line 17, at end add ‘of 3 July 2008.’
The amendment would take further the implementation of the recommendations of Sir John Baker. It would remove the requirement for the House to pass further resolutions in order to amend MPs’ pay, which would become entirely a matter of statute. Although it incorporates the resolutions passed on 3 July 2008, I am advised that it involves no issues of retrospection. It retains the flexibility built into the Baker recommendations of a review by the Senior Salaries Review Board at the start of each Parliament.
My reason for tabling the amendment is clear enough. Along with allowances, the pay of MPs has been a source of enormous controversy almost every time the House has considered it. To the public, it looks like MPs voting themselves a pay rise from taxpayers’ pockets; it looks like trotters in the trough. There is always a pressing reason, too, for the Government to wish to vary an SSRB recommendation, which can cause even more controversy and require even bigger adjustments to be made later.
That was partly why Sir John Baker was given the task of devising a system
“to make recommendations for a mechanism for independently determining the pay and pensions of MPs which does not involve MPs voting on their own pay”.
His report recommended annual uprating in line with public sector average earnings, with a review by the SSRB each Parliament, but that still left the difficulty of the need for a resolution of the House and the scope for Parliament to vary its conclusions in it.
The intention of the provision is to remove that scope. In doing so, it seeks to fulfil the policy objective of the democracy task force, chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), in which my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) was also involved, which concluded that pay awards should be placed in the hands of an independent body by statute.
It is curious—it can be a product only of the undue haste that comes when a Government convince themselves that they need what they have described as “emergency legislation”—that the Bill does not already contain a provision of this type. It is particularly odd that clause 2 perpetuates the setting of pay by resolution, when it has so manifestly caused so much difficulty for everybody in the past.
Even so, it is not primarily to avoid controversy that I feel that the amendment is necessary. It is necessary primarily because, as I suggested a few moments ago, the current arrangements are still wrong in principle: nobody should set their own pay—not even MPs, and the public might say especially MPs. I think that the public are right about that. Other democracies have addressed this issue and mostly have put it right by removing the right of MPs, or their elected representatives, to set their own pay. An appendix to the Baker review sets out a wide range of other countries that have taken steps similar to what I am suggesting today.
Neither does the amendment represent an effort to secure increases in pay by the back door. I am not a supporter of a sharp pay adjustment for MPs; I think that there is a vocational element to the job, which should be reflected in the pay that we receive. If one takes that view, however, it also means that the full costs borne by MPs in the performance of their duties should be met by allowances, however unpopular that may be to the public. That is why Sir Christopher Kelly’s investigation will be so important and why the way in which he presents his report, however difficult, will be crucial for the future of the allowances system.
This is emergency legislation and it, including the amendment, will need to be reviewed. I think that that will be best done by a sunset clause, which I have not yet had an opportunity to table, but I hope will be tabled in the other place—[Interruption.] I am pleased to hear that a sunset clause has been tabled by my colleagues. The arrangements in my small amendment would be able to be reviewed on that basis, prior to the expiry of the sunset clause.
I believe that a review will eventually be needed for a number of reasons. I have already alluded to the first—that the amendment will need to be considered in the light of Sir Christopher Kelly’s recommendations. Secondly, the weighted index built into the Baker proposal may, for some unforeseen reason, become distorted. That has happened in the past, which has required making changes to indexation.
Thirdly, pensions are not fully dealt with by Sir John Baker, on his own admission, and we would be incorporating what he has said on pensions. As it happens, I have long favoured an end to the final salary scheme for MPs, starting with new entrants, and its replacement by a defined contribution scheme. In view of what is happening in the private sector right across the country, I believe that that is the only way forward.
Fourthly, I am not absolutely sure that the indexation scheme being proposed by Sir John Baker as the basis for law by resolution is necessarily the best one. I would have favoured UK average earnings rather than public sector earnings as the basis, which would include the private sector. With a linkage to public sector earnings, it could be argued that MPs would receive disproportionate protection in a downswing, as now. Vice versa, of course, we would benefit disproportionately when UK Inc. is doing particularly well. These are all issues to which we can return when the sunset clause, which I hope is built into the Bill, takes effect.
My final reason for suggesting an eventual review is that even if this amendment were made, there would still be some discretion left to Parliament through the vote on estimates. The only technical way of removing pay completely from the grasp of the House of Commons would be to pay MPs from the Consolidated Fund in the same way as the Speaker or judges, for example, are paid. The Government would then be unable to control the remuneration through votes on estimates, but that is a bigger issue and is not for now; it can be clarified as part of a later review.
In the meantime, the amendment will do at least something to restore public trust by removing the opportunity for MPs to vote on their pay, which is, along with allowances, one of the big issues that have triggered a sense of loss of trust between MPs and the people who put us here. The amendment would ensure that pay is dealt with in accordance with the spirit of Sir John’s recommendations and with the intentions of the Government as set out yesterday, with those of the democracy task force, on which I served, and also with the wishes of my own Front-Bench team. I very much hope that the Government will feel able to support the amendment.
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) on tabling the amendment. It has considerable merit, being both ingenious and uncontentious. It contains a lot of sense and I hope that the Government will see fit to accept it.
The purpose of the Bill is to set up an independent Fees Office designed to administer and set allowances. In its current proposed form, it is designed to administer—that is to say, pay—salaries. In the long term, we want to ensure that everything that is paid to Members of Parliament, be it pensions, salary or allowances, is determined by an outside body rather than by ourselves. As the Bill stands, it goes only some way towards doing that, but the amendment would take us a marginal step further in the direction of having an outside body determine our salary. Crucially—and sensibly, at this awkward time—as well as removing Members from the process, it would prevent the Executive from inevitably attempting to intervene to reject the recommendation of the SSRB or to amend it. As such, it would introduce a measure of automaticity into the way in which our pay is adjusted and prevent the contentious political shenanigans that bedevil this issue.
The two resolutions in question are the one that was passed on 3 July last year and the accompanying money resolution. The amendment would entrench the adjudication of any increases that follow. It would link our pay to a package of comparators, including public service workers—in the NHS, school teachers, the armed forces and the civil service, including HMRC—and it would also introduce an annual review. In making that link, it would not only remove many of the contentious arguments about how much we should be paid, but prevent the political intervention that normally follows.
We should be realistic and accept that the regime set up by the amendment would be an interim measure. The Bill does not allow for the external assessment and setting of our pay, so the amendment would be in place until the primary legislation was amended. If in future we were to bolt on to this Bill a broader responsibility to consider the entire pay and rations of Members of Parliament, and potentially Ministers, this interim regime would be replaced by giving IPSA responsibility for setting our pay, allowances and pension.
The amendment would set up an effective, depoliticising and interim regime that would do much to improve the basis on which our pay is set, and as such it is entirely in the spirit of the Bill. I urge the Committee to support the amendment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) used the word “automaticity” about our pay: I take an entirely different view, of course. It has been a historic function of a self-governing Parliament to set its own pay and be responsible and accountable to those who send us here. I remember the voices of Enoch Powell and Michael Foot arguing that very point: what we do will ultimately always be judged by the electorate. We should not have some independent outside authority setting our pay.
We have had many comparators over the year, and we know who they are. It is true that the Government, in the exigencies of the economic situation, say that it is not an appropriate time to increase pay, but in my mixed constituency—it is not a wealthy one—the amount that we currently receive is not greatly challenged. The whole point of the Bill is to address those issues that are seriously challenged—the construction of an expenses system that was beyond the understanding of most of us who have been here for 30 years. We had no idea that furniture could be bought—that had been added on to the system.
The amendment would turn away from something very fundamental to the purpose of this House. We are the central authority and the representatives of the people. That is why we have the concept of the sovereignty of Parliament. In all my years here, I have argued that the sovereignty of Parliament is a shorthand for the sovereignty of the people. We have become some sort of sleek agency that outsources and has specialists coming in to tell us what is appropriate. At the end of the day, the House can still vote down all the recommendations that are put to it. If it does so at the behest of the Government Whips, that is a matter of judgment.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) yesterday made reference to the American system, which experiences the same difficulties. In the US, they have an even greater impediment than we do. As I understand it, the salaries of federal employees cannot be greater than those of the elected representatives. If we put our salaries up to £120,000, we would fear a revolt in the homelands, because people would think that that was excessive. We tend, therefore, to be very timorous, and that is the dilemma that elected members in the US faced. They could not hire people to work in the federal service because they had so suppressed their own wages. That happened under Reagan, and eventually something had to be done about the representatives’ salaries. After investigation and adjudication, they came to the conclusion that they should not set the rate for themselves, but set it at the end of a session. So in this country we would set the rate at the end of a Parliament not for the existing Members, but for those who form the next Parliament. Some of those who set that pay would stand at the election, and would therefore face the critical judgment of the electors as to whether the rate was excessive.
We should not be swept away by fads or crazes, or set every quango in existence over us. We are representative of something far greater than ourselves. This is Parliament. It is 800 years old. It came about because we were trying to restrain the authority of the monarch. Now we want to make this place subservient again. It is suggested that we would be better validated if a quango authorised our affairs. No: we should take the responsibility. We should face our electorate, and I suggest that it should be done at the end of a Parliament in order to benefit the next Parliament. That is why there is not universal consensus on my hon. Friend’s proposal. The automat—I cannot even say it; it sounds like a launderette—the automaticity is ghastly.
It is fantastic.
My hon. Friend says that it is fantastic. That tells us what is happening to Front Benchers.
As a Front Bencher, I am now not sure whether I want to speak after all.
The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) gave a passionate exposition of the sovereignty of Parliament, but nothing in the amendment alters that. Given that Parliament can pass statute, the statute that we are attempting to pass tonight can be revisited by Parliament at any time, and given that we have that sovereignty, we can decide that it is in the current interests of Parliament and the body politic for the judgment to be passed to an external authority to be implemented by that external authority. We are perfectly entitled to make that decision and, because we have sovereignty, to do it in the way that has been proposed.
I believe that the amendment builds on the public trust that is being sought through the creation of an agency to deal with our expenses and allowances, and given that salaries are so intertwined with expenses and allowances, it seems to me to be an important step forward. The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) pointed out that there would subsequently be a sunset clause debate, which means that it will be possible to revisit any imperfections in any of the legislation that is being rushed through now if the Government accept the sunset clause. However, I think that at this stage we should focus on the financial aspects of the Bill, and that the Government should respond positively to the amendment.
I was impressed, to a degree, by some of the arguments presented by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), but I am not fully persuaded that we should tie the reference in clause 2(1) to a single set of resolutions of the House. After all, a number of Members who seem to support the amendment said earlier that part of their problem with the Bill was that it would pre-empt the Kelly review. Many said that Kelly would examine issues much wider than the issue of the allowances scheme. It is true that some of the questions that Kelly has asked and some of the answers that have been submitted touch on considerations relating to such matters as salaries, and on how there might be a recalibration between the two.
May I point out to the hon. Gentleman that pay is specifically excluded from the terms of reference set by Sir Christopher Kelly for his review?
Pay, in terms of salary, is excluded, but treatment of some of the issues is not. We need only examine some of the submissions to Kelly to see that there have been suggestions that the way in which some matters are treated should be recalibrated, whether they are treated as being presumed to have been built into and covered by salaries or by allowances. For instance, a number of the submissions have touched on whether there should be a subsistence allowance. Some people say that salaries should be reviewed to ensure that such costs are taken fully into account. Some have even suggested that second homes should be presumed to be covered by salaries rather than allowances, and that salaries should be reviewed accordingly.
If, as some have said, Kelly should be allowed to return to look at the whole picture, we cannot have it both ways. We cannot say that we cannot tie ourselves or Kelly in the Bill. My fear is that, while the amendment might not tie Kelly, it might tie us in the future, and that we may be freer without it.
May I respectfully point out that even if Sir Christopher Kelly and his committee made recommendations about salaries, the Bill in its present form would not give IPSA the power to do anything about them? The amendment would provide an anchor, or foundation, for the salary issue, on which Sir Christopher Kelly’s recommendations on allowances could fit, along with the recommendations of the Senior Salaries Review Body. If we needed to do anything about salaries in the future, there would need to be an amendment to this primary legislation in any event, which could amend my hon. Friend’s proposal and do something about salaries at the same time.
But that would mean our agreeing that the legislation was purely temporary. I know that some have favoured a sunset clause elsewhere in the Bill, but I do not think it necessary for us to be confined in this part to a single day’s resolutions rather than being covered by
“relevant resolutions of the House”.
We could automatically create a situation in which we would be required to re-legislate in circumstances in which we could pass future resolutions that could take care of themselves in a fairly mature way without having to amend the Bill. One of the aims of the amendment is to make us revisit the legislation by way of more amendments than I think would be appropriate. If we are saying that we want, by virtue of the Bill and other measures, to reach a point at which we no longer spend so much time determining, deciding, debating and legislating in respect of our own salaries, why table an amendment that forces us to legislate again on the very issue of pay?
My hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) has already put very well the point that I want to make. We should not pre-empt the Kelly review, we should not tie the issue of pay to a single set of resolutions of the House, and we should not agree to what we see as temporary legislation in circumstances in which we can forge for the future.
The Minister seems to be ignorant of the fact that pay is not part of the Kelly review. Also, she seems to have forgotten that her own Secretary of State has described this as emergency legislation, which by definition is generally considered to be temporary and something to which we return in due course.
I can tell the hon. Gentleman at the outset that we will not be accepting his amendment.
The amendment limits IPSA’s power to pay Members’ salaries set in accordance with the resolutions passed by the House last July, which set out the formula whereby the SSRB was to calculate the annual change in our salaries. That would mean that if in the coming months we decided to adopt new resolutions—which, given what has been said in the debate on the amendment, we may find ourselves doing—or a new way of calculating Members’ salaries, IPSA would have to cease to be the payment authority. My hon. Friend the Member for Foyle made that point. As a result, it would be necessary to pass new legislation—for which some Members seem to be setting us up—to enable IPSA to pay salaries under the new regime, or to set up a new payment system within the House. That is a complicated set of options, and by that point the House might no longer have access to funds with which to make the payments.
If Members propose to ensure that the House does not seek to resile from the resolution of last July allowing our salaries to be set automatically—and there has been much discussion of the automatic nature of the current mechanism—I suggest that it would not have that effect. The amendment would not bind the House; it would only bind IPSA. It would lead to chaos and confusion—which, of course, may be the intention in some cases—if the House ever were to change its arrangements, and I urge the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) to withdraw the amendment.
I wish to press the amendment to a Division.
Question put, That the amendment be made:—
Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
MPs’ allowances scheme
I beg to move amendment 68, page 2, line 11, at end insert—
‘( ) the Committee on Standards in Public life’.
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 26, page 2, line 14, at end insert—
‘(ca) members of the House of Commons.’.
Amendment 71, page 2, line 15, at end insert—
‘(da) HM Revenue and Customs,’.
New clause 10—Taxation etc—
‘(1) In administering House of Commons salaries the IPSA will make arrangements for the deduction and payment of income tax and national insurance contributions and provide Members with relevant details for return purposes.
(2) In the context of administering the Members of Parliament’s allowances scheme the IPSA will engage with HMRC on the appropriate tax treatment of property, items or benefits funded or part-funded by the allowances scheme and shall provide members with appropriate details for submission in their tax returns.
(3) The IPSA shall provide general guidance to Members on relevant principles and considerations of due parliamentary standards to be reflected in the preparation and submission of their tax returns, in particular as they relate to property, items or benefits funded or part-funded by the Members of Parliament’s allowances scheme and such other costs as may be presented as work-related expenses in connection with their role as a Member of Parliament.
(4) The IPSA shall consult with HMRC in preparing and revising the guidance referred to in subsection (3).
This relatively small amendment is significant, because it would add the Committee on Standards in Public Life to the list of people and bodies that IPSA would have a statutory duty to consult when preparing or revising the MPs’ allowances scheme.
I find it astonishing that the Government could have drawn up a long and apparently comprehensive list of people to consult, which includes the Leader of the House, the Speaker, any Committee of the House of Commons, the Senior Salaries Review Body and the Treasury, yet succeeded in excluding the one body and the one person to have been specifically charged by the Prime Minister with examining the issue.
The revision of the scheme may well be necessary in the light of the recommendations of Sir Christopher Kelly. It is simply not true to say that his group is looking just at the content of the allowances, as the Secretary of State suggested earlier today—I believe he did so yesterday too. The group is not engaged in a study with the intention merely of making recommendations that can be slotted into the Bill afterwards; it is looking widely at allowances, including the structure of allowances and the compliance structure that lies behind them, as I found out when I gave oral evidence to it the week before last.
The absence of any reference to the Committee on Standards in Public Life in this clause—indeed, there is almost no reference to it in the entire Bill—raises the possibility that IPSA could, although I do not think that it would, ignore Sir Christopher’s recommendations. We could find ourselves in the crazy position where all the parties are falling over themselves to say that they agree with his recommendations, but because of how the Bill is drafted IPSA could then completely ignore the political parties and those recommendations, and do something completely different. I am confident that nothing in the Bill would prevent such a situation—even my amendment would not. However, my amendment would at least require IPSA to consult Sir Christopher Kelly before coming to its conclusions, which is why it is an essential minimum that we should add to this Bill in order to ensure that his recommendations are given proper consideration. I very much hope that the Government will be able to agree to the amendment.
I welcome the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend, because it is entirely sensible. The Government will also see that Conservative Members have tabled amendment 26, which would provide that Members of Parliament should be consulted too. Given our number, it would be perfectly feasible for that to happen without any difficulty. A letter could go out to every Member and they could then make the relevant representations. It is not adequate that representations should simply be made by the intermediary of one or two Committees. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to our proposal too.
I note that other proposals have been tabled to provide for the consultation of other bodies. The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) has made those proposals. I am less certain that it is necessary to consult Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but he will doubtless be able to speak for himself on that, and I shall also leave him to discuss his new clause.
Obviously, I rise to speak to amendment 71 and new clause 10, which are tabled in my name. I begin by noting and accepting the strong case that has been made for amendment 68. The House would reject it at the risk of creating a very serious misunderstanding and misapprehension. If we were not to include the Committee on Standards in Public Life in this statutory consultation list at a time when that Committee is carrying out work on this issue and is conducting hearings—indeed, it is to take evidence in Belfast tomorrow—that would send out the signal that we were legislating in deliberate disregard of the important work of that Committee. I therefore believe that we would be wise to accept the sensible amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie).
On amendment 26, I am less convinced about insisting on statutory consultation with all Members of Parliament, because that would take us back in another direction. Clearly, other interests who have responsibilities in this House and have regard to the needs, circumstances and rights of people in it are factored into this consultation, so I am unsure whether it needs to be extended to all Members.
On amendment 71, the reason I believe HMRC needs to be specifically included in the list is because the Treasury is included and it is, thus, easy for people to misunderstand things and believe that their only reason for consulting the Treasury might be to consider what the tax treatment implications would be of different allowances—either those that exist or new allowances that might be created in future. Obviously as Governments change the rules on the treatment of benefits in kind and various other work-related benefits and subsidies, issues will arise from time to time. Those matters are best addressed by the authority speaking directly to the independent professional people who are handling and interpreting those issues, namely Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. So, if the authority proposes significantly to change the allowance system, create some new allowances or insist that certain allowances should be available for particular purposes on the basis of particular entitlements, it is right that due consideration and due regard should be given in advance of any possible unforeseen tax implications. Similarly, as the tax rules change—as approved by this House and tabled by Government—it would be necessary from time to time for the authority to liaise with and talk to HMRC to see whether the changes affect how parliamentary allowances are treated. It seems to me to be sensible and proper that we should do that.
New clause 10 has been tabled because, at the minute, the Bill would have the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority see nothing, say nothing and consider nothing in relation to taxation and parliamentary standards. If we are saying that one reason that the Bill is necessary is the concern and consternation that has been raised by the recent revelations, we have to remember that that concern and consternation does not relate solely to the issue of allowances and expenses. It also relates, very substantially, to the whole question of MPs’ attitudes to tax returns.
The whole question of flipping, as it is called, is not just a matter of people using the designation of a property to draw down expenses in respect of one property and then to do so in respect of another. Flipping goes to the heart of the question of capital gains tax, and of people being able to avoid capital gains tax in a way that has scandalised some but that was obviously within the rules and was the approach that was advised by people in the Revenue at the time as well as by others.
I interrupt the hon. Gentleman because although I appreciate what he is trying to do—indeed, it might be the right thing to do—the difficulty is that, as I understand it, the Revenue might take a completely different view of matters from the morality view. It is indeed right that that might have got MPs into terrible trouble, and some MPs have repaid—or tried to repay—sums to the Revenue. I am not sure whether they have been able to do that successfully, unless they have improperly withheld tax. It does not seem to me to be the role of the Revenue to conform its rules to those that the House might wish to impose on its Members. I wonder whether this might create a bigger muddle than the one we have at present.
Nothing in new clause 10 imposes any duty on HMRC. It is not obliged to conform to anything. Amendment 71 would require consultation between the authority and HMRC so that it can draw up its schemes in the light of what HMRC has said will be the likely treatment of any benefits, or that will be the new treatment under new tax rules as they come in.
The purpose of each proposed subsection in new clause 10 is fairly straightforward. Proposed new subsection (1) will specifically ensure that we recognise that the authority will be handling the issue of salaries and that, in doing so, it will be making the deductions and payments for tax, national insurance and so on. That will avoid any doubt that we are talking about the authority’s having an overseeing role and that some of the pay functions will be held residually in the Fees Office or elsewhere. It is to make it clear that it is the total function—
I appreciate that point, and I hope that it would have to follow automatically that IPSA did that. However, in proposed new subsection (3), the hon. Gentleman wants IPSA to
“provide general guidance to Members on relevant principles and considerations of due parliamentary standards to be reflected in the preparation and submission of their tax returns, in particular as they relate to property, items or benefits funded or part-funded by the Members of Parliament’s allowances”.
That is where I think that a much greater difficulty arises. It seems to me to be turning IPSA into one’s accountant, and I am not sure that that is the right role to request of it. IPSA will be placed in a difficult situation when it comes to the question whether it is there to advise MPs on how they should best go about their taxation business to minimise tax or to advise them on the standards of morality that should apply to their tax returns. Those are two rather different things.
I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman may be persuaded that it is very clear that the latter would be the role of IPSA.
The hon. and learned Gentleman referred to proposed new subsection (3). I turn now to proposed new subsection (2). It provides for the fact that IPSA will engage with the Revenue commissioners on the tax treatment of property and benefits that are funded or part-funded by the allowances scheme. It will provide details to Members for the purpose of their tax returns, which is a follow-on and consequential amendment. Yes, we might have all assumed it, but in these circumstances, and as some people seemed to be suggesting earlier that the function in relation to the salary might not rest with IPSA, I believe that it is important to put proposed new subsections (1) and (2) on the face of the Bill for clarity. That would ensure, first, that IPSA would do the pay-as-you-earn and national insurance deductions and would pay them over, and, secondly, that Members would be provided with the basic tax information they needed for their salary and on any allowances they received.
On proposed new subsection (2), it seems to be good employment practice for someone who is providing allowances to ensure that the Member—or employee in any situation—is provided with accurate and effective information on which to make their tax return.
Yes, absolutely. Many Members have been criticised and challenged for the way in which they were relying on the obscurity of the system, the failures in administration, and so on. We need to be upfront and explicit so that we are clear where things lie in future.
In proposed new subsection (3), I am saying that, given that the authority’s role is in parliamentary standards, it should provide general guidance to Members. I am not saying that it should be responsible for the tax returns or for all kinds of advice, but that it should provide general guidance to Members on relevant principles and considerations of due parliamentary standards to be reflected in the preparation and submission of their tax returns
“in particular as they relate to property, items or benefits funded or part-funded by the Members of Parliament’s allowances.”
Such guidance should also be provided in relation to
“such other costs as may be presented as work-related expenses”—
in a tax return—
“in connection with their role as a Member of Parliament.”
I have included that provision because it has been revealed in recent times that a number of Members used their allowances, apparently wrongly, to get assistance and advice on tax returns that dealt with some of the particular requirements of being a Member of Parliament. Indeed, it seems that some people were passing around the cards of people who could give bespoke advice—whether they were qualified or not, I am not sure, but they were able to give bespoke advice on tax returns and so on. It seems to me that there is something missing when we do not have a source of general guidance available to us in that regard.
It is important that we should recognise that the authority is not just there to police and investigate what Members do, but to support us in our efforts to do the right thing by way of due parliamentary standards, and we should make it very clear that the authority will provide appropriate guidance to us on such matters. The situation changes from time to time, and Members can be caught offside because of rule changes that they do not appreciate—many such things have been referred to—and it is important to ensure that the authority’s role includes providing that guidance. To leave it with a “pounce and bounce” role towards any Member whenever it feels like it or when some member of the public feels like it seems to me to be odd.
We have to recognise that the taxation issue is a matter of concern. It will probably be the next big focal point. We know that there is a big issue about second jobs and the questions of what needs to be declared in relation to them, but taxation will be another big focal point and challenge. We need to make sure that the authority that we are setting up responds to the concerns and the sense of scandal that people feel. The public have an image of the House as being like a good ship “Lollipop” moored on the Thames, where we all do what we want and try to get what we can. It is important that people do not see us follow cleaning up the allowance system with cleaning up on the tax system, and they must not perceive that we have unclear rules and no clear guidance on tax. If we have complained about the lack of them in the past in relation to allowances—and Members have said that they were not aware of the sensitivities involved or the possibility that claims could be held to be improper or unsuitable—we must make it very clear that the authority has a duty to provide general guidance about tax.
This House is the only place that passes the law on taxation, including on capital gains tax. We cannot afford to be casual about whether we comply with the requirements of the tax law, or about whether those requirements go together with achieving good parliamentary standards, and that is why we should make sure that the appropriate provision is in the Bill. Yes, we are human: we know that tax laws and tax compliance can be difficult to understand and, even with the provision of general guidance, our tax returns would remain our own responsibility. We would also be responsible for the advice given by the professional advisers that we hire, but the authority’s guidance role should be made clear.
The need for guidance goes beyond the treatment of items funded, in full or in part, for the purposes of CGT or any other tax. We also need it for other items that might be claimed as work-related expenses. My accountant always asks why I do not claim such items, as he says that there must be plenty of things that I could claim as work-related expenses. I do not make such claims—I am sure that others do, and probably quite legitimately—but the next false dividing line used to determine which Members claim what will be taxation. We all need the protection of good advice and guidance that are given in the light of considered parliamentary standards.
There have been stories in the media recently about some of the exotic and expensive claims that have been refused by the Fees Office. There are questions about whether some of the claims presented in tax returns and approved as work-related expenses were reasonable. If significant curbs are placed on the allowances paid to Members in future, will that force them to consider claiming work-related expenses on their tax forms? Once again, questions will arise about the propriety and consistency of that approach.
If it is left to hon. Members to take their chances in that regard, or to go with whatever advice they have been given, it will occur to a person working in the tax office—just as it did to someone in the Fees Office—that the range of practices is very wide, and that all sorts of things are being tried on. That person will then take away a disc, and in a year or two a job will be done, like the one that we have just seen in The Daily Telegraph, on tax matters. If we reject the new clause, or if we do not make similar provision in the Bill, we will then rush to say, “Shock! Horror! We didn’t realise tax was also going to be an issue in relation to parliamentary standards”, even though we have been served absolute and due notice of that.
Proposed new subsection (4) of new clause 10 would merely ensure that, when IPSA is preparing the general guidance for Members, it would consult with Revenue and Customs so that the guidance was more reliable. It would also mean that Members under pressure in years to come can say that they relied on that guidance. As a result, they will be in a much stronger position than Members who said that they relied on advice from the Fees Office about what expenses claims would be approved.
I rise to support very strongly amendment 68, in the name of the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie). It would strengthen the Bill immensely, and it is entirely logical that the Government should accept it. If the body being set up is charged with undertaking the work that is proposed, we must make sure that it gets the best and widest possible advice and expertise. I hope that the Government will consider the amendment very carefully.
Amendment 26 is also sensible, in that clause 3 should of course contain some reference to Members of Parliament. It would not cause any embarrassment, as Members of Parliament would merely be consultees in a list of other consultees. They may well have something useful to contribute, so excluding them from the clause is a rather strange thing to do.
The proposal in amendment 71 that HMRC should also be consulted is also very sensible, although I am not so sure about new clause 10. Our tax affairs are somewhat complicated, and the fact that Members are neither self-employed nor employed means that we are a hybrid in tax terms, but all that is clearly understood by accountants, who are properly paid for the work that they do. If we are saying, “The Revenue is bound to tell us every single thing that we should or shouldn’t do,” why should that not be extended to every other profession and trade?
New clause 10 and its provisions for general guidance apply only to considerations and principles relevant to parliamentary standards. It does not propose guidance on how Members can maximise claims or minimise the tax payable. Members who want that must employ their own accountants. The new clause relates only to parliamentary standards, but there are parliamentary standards issues in relation to tax.
Of course there are, and we have seen a few over the past few weeks and months. I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, and I think that his amendment 71 is worthy of support. I am still considering new clause 10, but that is by the by.
These amendments are useful, and the debate on them, though short, has been useful too. I hope that the Government will take note of everything that has been said.
In a long and highly competitive field, this is by any stretch of the imagination a very foolish Bill. That is exemplified by clause 3, and I wish to support amendment 68, moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), on including the Committee on Standards in Public Life in the consultation process.
Sir Christopher Kelly is a mild-mannered and sensible man, but if I were him I would be outraged that I had not been consulted by the Government. He has already started his work, but to some extent that has been negated by the introduction of this very foolish Bill, which is designed purely to show that the Prime Minister is doing something. If I were Kelly, I would be extremely angry as well that the Bill had been introduced after I had started the inquiries that the Prime Minister had asked me to undertake. Amendment 68 is absolutely essential to the Bill, and I hope that the Minister will take what steps she can to see that it is included.
Incidentally, I believe that the Government tried to consult on this matter. I was present at two pre-legislative meetings that the Minister attended, at which it was clear that the Government were trying to accept amendments and arrive at a consensus. However, to exclude the Committee on Standards in Public Life from the provisions of clause 3 is insulting and—much worse—incredibly foolish.
I want to reinforce the point that the Government should accept amendment 68. Clearly, the Committee on Standards in Public Life is relevant to the proposals on allowances, and it seems blindingly obvious that it should be involved.
In relation to amendment 26, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said that Members should not necessarily be consulted, but I disagree. All hon. Members are here to represent their constituents, but many have different and even unique needs in terms of the allowance system. It is important that that is reflected in the introduction of the system. The system should be independent, but it should be informed by the variety in the House.
Amendment 71 makes a lot of sense. It makes sense to consult the Revenue because there is an awful lot of interaction between expenses and allowance systems and the work of the Revenue.
Under new clause 10, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) is trying to deal with public concern about the tax treatment of Members. I suspect that the Revenue might not want to be tied into giving advice over and above that which it gives directly through the Revenue system, so I am not sure that new clause 10 will achieve the hon. Gentleman’s objectives.
My job is quite an easy one because we intend broadly to accept the amendments. We are discussing amendments to clause 3, which sets out the authority’s duties in setting the scheme for MPs’ allowances and lays an obligation on the authority to prepare a scheme, review it regularly and revise it as appropriate. The authority is obliged to consult a number of bodies about the scheme. That already includes the Leader of the House, the Speaker, any committee of the House nominated by the Speaker, the review body on senior salaries, the Treasury and others, but hon. Members have tabled some useful amendments in this short debate. I thank the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith), the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve)—the shadow Justice Secretary—and the hon. Members for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), for Foyle (Mark Durkan), for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) and for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) for their contributions on amendments 68, 26 and 71, which we shall be happy to accept.
The Committee on Standards in Public Life was not included in the list of consultees. It may be necessary to consult it at the moment, but it may not be in the future. It may not be looking at matters that affect IPSA. However, the hon. Member for Chichester made a good case for including that body, and we are happy to accept amendment 68.
A number of points have been made about the need to consult Members of this House, and we are prepared to accept amendment 26. What we were seeking to do in not including hon. Members in the list was to avoid burdening the consultation process and making it too lengthy, but as hon. Members have just said, there are differences between Members. London Members are different from Members in other parts of the country in terms of, for instance, their staffing allowances. So there are issues to consult Members about, and we accept that point.
It is clear that matters relating to HM Revenue and Customs have been serious issues, as the hon. Member for Foyle said, and I am sure that it would be appropriate to consult HMRC, so we shall accept amendment 71.
We accept the principle that the hon. Member for Foyle has outlined in new clause 10, but we shall need to look at the drafting so, if it is acceptable to him, we shall do that and table a similar new clause later in the proceedings.
Once IPSA has drawn up the scheme, it will be laid before the House and it will reflect the amendments.
Amendments made: 68, in clause 3, page 2, line 11, at end insert—
‘( ) the Committee on Standards in Public life’. —(Mr. Tyrie.)
Amendment 26, page 2, line 14, at end insert—
‘(ca) members of the House of Commons.’.(Mr. Grieve.)
Amendment 71, page 2, line 15, at end insert—
‘(da) HM Revenue and Customs,’.(Mark Durkan)
Amendment 1, page 2, line 18, leave out ‘IPSA’ and insert ‘Speaker’.—(Sir George Young.)
I beg to move amendment 56, in clause 3, page 2, line 18, at end add
‘and shall not come into effect until they are approved by a resolution of the House of Commons.’.
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 57, page 2, line 19, leave out from ‘effect’ to end of line 20 and insert
‘only after the general election following the resolution of the House of Commons referred to in subsection (5).’.
The amendment provides that the House should approve the allowances system that has been prepared by IPSA. It brings this aspect of the clause into line with clause 5, whereby the scheme of financial interests, and the rules governing that will be approved by the House, having been recommended by IPSA. I believe that we should do the same for the allowances system.
Of course, allowances should be administered externally. That is generally agreed. The Fees Office is too close to us and if the Bill had been all about setting up an external body to administer, judge and enforce the expenses system, there would not have been very much controversy. However, I believe that the making of the rules, which are then handed over to the external body, should be decided ultimately by the House. We should not permanently transfer to an external body the making of the rules. Obviously, we would accept recommendations. Others would design the system, but the ultimate approval should remain here so that they become our rules and it is up to us to defend them, explain them and be elected on them. I do not believe that a sovereign body should permanently and irreversibly delegate these matters to an external body of whatever kind.
Of course we all know that reform is urgently required of the entire expenses system, and that is happening. The second purpose of my amendments is to rescue the Bill from a collision between what Sir Christopher Kelly and his committee are doing and what IPSA will do. Both are bringing forward proposals on expenses and allowances. There is a much bigger collision between the Kelly committee and the Bill. In the Bill, we are setting into statute matters that are being investigated by Sir Christopher and his committee. This was raised yesterday, and remarkably the Justice Secretary denied that there was any confusion or conflict here. He said when questioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell):
“Sir Christopher Kelly and his committee will come forward with proposals for the scheme of allowances, … However, that is about the content of the scheme. The Bill is about the operation of the scheme”.—[Official Report, 29 June 2009; Vol. 495, c. 50-51.]
I have to say that that is simply untrue, and the Prime Minister would agree. He made no distinction between the content and the operation of the scheme when he wrote to Sir Christopher Kelly on 23 March. He made it clear in his letter that Sir Christopher was not confined to going into and designing matters of content and detail about expenses. He wanted that Committee to look at everything. He said:
“I would welcome a review of MPs’ support and remuneration, including outside interests, carried out by the Committee on Standards in Public Life as it offers the opportunity to consider the full picture. For example, you will have greater freedom to consider issues such as the impact of MPs holding second jobs and their roles outside of Parliament.”
Is there not an inconsistency in logic here? On the one hand, we are saying that we should accept whatever IPSA imposes; on the other, the Government have been careful to say that they will not necessarily accept what Kelly proposes—in other words, we will be prepared for a little bit of pain, but perhaps not too much from an external source.
That is exactly the point that I am making. We may or may not accept the Kelly recommendations; we have discretion on that. However, under the terms of the Bill, we have to accept the scheme brought forward by IPSA. To conclude the point that I was making, in another letter, dated 30 March, the Prime Minister went on to repeat the point about the breadth of the Kelly inquiry:
“I am keen you should not feel bound in your discussions but free to consider a wide set of issues”.
The Government could not have been clearer. The Kelly inquiry is looking into everything, including the structure of the allowances and the content of the scheme, yet we are legislating for such a scheme in the Bill.
When pressed, the Justice Secretary conceded earlier today that future legislation might be required, so this is only an interim Bill. I think that he is already retreating from his earlier remarks, if I interpret his body language rightly, but they are on the record. He must concede that there is a conflict between setting up an inquiry into everything, as required by the Prime Minister, and prejudging that inquiry in a Bill that is being rushed through the House in a week. There is nothing that I can do to rescue the Government from that collision except try to throw the Bill out, which I tried to do yesterday by voting against it.
However, through my amendment 56, I could at least prevent the House from having to accept the scheme of allowances that IPSA will bring forward under clause 3. It is required, under the Bill, to bring forward a scheme of allowances, and we do not have any say on it; we have to accept it. Again, there is a conflict between the Kelly inquiry findings, which we may or may not accept, and the terms of the Bill, which require the House to accept the scheme that IPSA must present.
I believe that the House must have the last word on such matters. That is desirable both because we are a sovereign Parliament and must decide the rules and be accountable for them, and because, as I have explained, that would give us discretion if the Kelly inquiry brought forward rules and suggestions that were incompatible with those that we have to accept from IPSA, under the Bill as drafted. That is why I ask the Government to accept amendment 56.
My second amendment, 57, proposes that any scheme of allowances that is proposed, agreed and accepted by us should come into effect only after an election. As I mentioned yesterday on Second Reading, I borrowed the idea from the 27th amendment to the United States constitution. I will not weary the Committee with a long history of that amendment; it is a very long history. It took more than 200 years for that amendment finally to be ratified. It was first proposed in the 18th century. In essence, it prevents any change from being made to the pay and compensation of Senators and Representatives until after the next election. “Compensation” is the word used in the amendment to the constitution; it chiefly refers, I think, to salary, but its meaning could easily be extended to cover allowances and expenses. The amendment to the constitution requires that any such change should take effect only after the next intervening election.
I think that we could adopt a similar system here. It would counter the charge that we are setting our own pay and allowances. As I have explained, I believe that the House ought to set such matters. A sovereign body should not transfer those matters to any other body. Under my amendment, we would not set pay and allowances for this Parliament and for ourselves; the change would take effect only after an election—after the implied endorsement of the electorate.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for bringing amendments 56 and 57 before the House. I see his exact purpose in doing so. The difficulty that I perceive with amendment 56 brings us back to a debate that we had earlier on a fundamental issue—the extent to which we wish to set up an independent authority to regulate our allowances. If it is the desire of the Committee to have such an authority, so that it can distance itself from the decisions taken, amendment 56, while it would achieve the aim that my right hon. Friend desires, would effectively defeat the intention behind the legislation. It would turn IPSA into something very similar to the Fees Office, as it currently stands. That is a difficult issue.
All that I can say to my right hon. Friend is that I do not think that the sovereignty of Parliament is involved in the matter, because just as we have the power to set up the authority, which would be at one remove from us—we would have to accept what it came up with—if at a later date we decided that we wanted to get rid of it, we could do so through primary legislation, so the power remains with us. The question is: to what extent do we wish to interfere with its daily operation?
My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point when he highlights the fact that when Sir Christopher Kelly’s report comes out, there may be incompatibilities between it and the structure that we have set up. I have no idea who will be in government when that happens, so all that I can say to him is that if there are incompatibilities, we will have to have primary legislation to resolve them. It is quite apparent that we cannot have those incompatibilities. If they occur, the fault will be due to the way in which the Government approached the matter. On that, I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend.
Amendments 56 and 57 would insert a parliamentary filter into the setting of the allowances claim, and would delay the introduction of an allowances scheme by setting a scheme for a later Parliament, rather than for now. Both amendments are unacceptable to the Government. It is important, for the restoration of public trust, that we are seen not to set our own pay and allowances. As discussed earlier, we have decided that we will allow our main pay to be set automatically by reference to movement in public sector pay, and a review will be carried out once in each Parliament by the Senior Salaries Review Body. We will not set our pay. We must take the same hands-off approach to setting our allowances; we on the Labour Benches believe that that is the only thing that will satisfy public concern. I urge the Committee of the whole House to reject the amendments.
Amendment 56 negatived.
Clause 3, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Dealing with claims under the scheme
I beg to move amendment 6, page 2, line 32, after ‘to’, insert ‘or on behalf of’.
The issue raised by the amendment is of a less constitutional nature than those raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) in the amendments that we have just discussed. Clause 4 states:
“No allowance is to be paid to a member of the House of Commons under the MPs’ allowances scheme unless a claim for the allowance has been made to the IPSA.”
I want to make sure that the facility that exists at present, whereby the allowances are not paid directly to a Member, but are paid on his behalf to a third party, can be carried through into the new regime. I was concerned that, as drafted, clause 4(1) did not allow that facility.
It is often convenient for Members to pass the invoice on to the Fees Office to be paid with the requisite authority, rather than to pay it themselves and claim it back. I hope that advantage can remain. Also, the audit trail—
I may be interrupting the right hon. Gentleman as he was about to make the point that with the Fees Office paying directly, there is much greater clarity about where the money has gone.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He anticipated the other point that I intended to make. The audit trail is much simpler if the money has gone straight from the Fees Office to the supplier, rather than along the more circuitous route via the Member’s bank account. No great oratory is needed to make the case. All I seek from the Government is an acceptance of the amendment or an assurance that the amendment is not necessary because that facility is possible under the Bill as drafted.
The experience of the past few months had taught us that some Members may need to take greater responsibility in future for the allowance claims made in their name. We want to be sure that, as the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) outlined, existing arrangements to pay invoices or standing payments in respect of a Member are transferred to the new scheme. The amendment as drafted may raise some technical issues. We want to capture the point that payments are made for or in respect of a Member. If right hon. and hon. Members will allow, we will give the matter further consideration as the Bill progresses through Parliament and seek to capture the essence of the amendment.
The amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) is sensible. When our allowances were published, a constituent pointed out to me that the system by which we were submitting payments to the Fees Office was costing more money because direct debit arrangements would lead to savings. These are all issues that need to be examined. Given that we are required to provide value for money, and given also—I take the Minister’s point—that there should be proper scrutiny of what we are claiming for, cost savings could be achieved by direct debit mechanisms, with the money going straight from the Fees Office to the third party.
The Minister made a helpful reply. I accept the implied rebuke that my drafting is not perfect and that there is somebody somewhere else who thinks they can do a better job. It would be churlish to press the amendment against the undertaking given by the Minister, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
MPs’ financial interests rules
I beg to move amendment 74, page 3, line 16, leave out subsections (1) and (2) and insert—
‘(1) The IPSA must prepare a code to be observed by members of the House of Commons, the content of which is provision made by virtue of subsections (7), (8) and (10).
(2) In this Act “the MPs’ code of conduct relating to financial interests” means the code prepared under this section as it is in effect for the time being.’.
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government amendments 75 and 76.
Amendment 16, page 3, line 21, at end insert—
‘( ) the Speaker of the House of Commons’.
Amendment 27, page 3, line 23, at end insert—
‘(ba) members of the House of Commons.’.
Government amendments 77 to 79.
Amendment 28, page 3, line 29, at end insert
‘save that no member may be required to declare any specified information relating to any source of outside earned income which would place him in breach of a duty of a confidentiality laid upon him by any recognised profession.’.
Amendment 7, page 3, line 30, leave out subsection (8).
Government amendments 80 to 82.
Amendment 29, page 4, line 2, after ‘or’, insert ‘specified’.
Amendment 30, page 4, line 4, after ‘or’, insert ‘specified’.
Government amendments 88 to 91.
Government amendments 84 to 87.
Amendment 73, page 4, line 16, at end add—
‘(c) to payment as, and hours worked as, a Minister.’.
Clause stand part.
It may assist the Committee if, in addition to speaking to the Government amendments, I comment briefly on the other amendments.
Yesterday, to general approbation, I announced that the Government would withdraw clause 6. We should get an opportunity to do that later this evening. My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House attached her name to amendment 83, standing in the names of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides. I also told the House that there would be certain consequential amendments, and these are they. Essentially, they replace the word “rules” with
“a code to be observed by members of the House”.
In amendment 74, proposed subsection (2) refers to the
“code of conduct relating to financial interests”.
Why are we doing that? The Committee could spend the whole evening on this, or no time at all. I recommend the latter. I am sure all Members have studied the code of conduct with great care. In addition to the fact that 33 pages are devoted exclusively to guidance on financial matters, a significant chunk of the code qua code in the earlier pages is also concerned with financial relationships. That will go into the scheme that IPSA would have the responsibility to prepare, but I repeat that it would be subject to decision by the House. Under clause 5(6) it could not come into effect unless it was approved by the House.
There was a suggestion not only from the Government Benches, but from the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, for example, that there should be a code. In so far as the public take a close interest in the matter, it makes sense for them to note that the code of conduct will not disappear when, as a House production, it becomes thinner. A large part of it will find its way into that proposed in clause 5.
I am not entirely persuaded by the soft-soaping of that change, which is rather fundamental. We are setting up financial rules and we have a code of conduct. I appreciate that the Government take the view that, at some point in the future, the commissioner might have some conjoined role covering not only standards and privileges, but the investigatory functions in the Bill. However, now does not seem to be the time to run the two together, because it would immediately raise the possibility of our current code of conduct becoming subject to IPSA’s remit. Indeed, the Secretary of State seemed at least to hint that a revised code could be produced which would wrap the whole thing up into one. The Bill, however, does not seem to authorise that; we would have to take further decisions. So, for the moment, why not keep the rules separate from the code? If there comes a time when we should join the two together, we can do so later.
I was not suggesting that the two codes would run together—far from it; I was suggesting that they would be split. The code that relates to the non-financial matters of the House would be pretty thin, and I therefore think it important that the public and Members be able to find that part of the code which is the vast bulk. It would comprise not only the guide to the rules relating to the conduct of Members, but the rules of conduct in the Members’ current code of conduct, wrapped up in a single word: “code”. That is all I am saying.
Is it not the case that we will continue to have the Members’ current code of conduct, albeit without paragraphs 14 and 16 and the financial bits, and then another code that, if the amendment is agreed to, will be called a “code”? There is a real risk of confusion, because there will be one code produced by the House, our current code of conduct, and another code produced by another body, covering matters that are tangential but not identical. Would it not be better to have just one code and to stick with what we had until this morning, which was the rest of it being just rules?
That is a choice for the Committee, but in my judgment, there are slightly more important issues to get on with. My view is that the amendment would be more sensible. We would have a code that was like the current code but
“a code of conduct relating to financial interests”,
as spelt out by proposed new subsection (2) in amendment 74. Like the current code, it would have rules and general guidance, too. It would be more than a code and more than the rules, just like the current code, and it would come before the House.
rose—
I give way to the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith).
I should like some clarity from the Secretary of State. Why was the provision in clause 5 originally worded “financial…rules”?
This is a rose by any other name, but now it is called a
“code of conduct relating to financial interests”.
The measure amounts to the same thing; it depends what label one wishes to attach to it. It raises no issues of principle or privilege whatever. They are separate.
In the hope that we can speed on our way through the clause, I wonder whether my right hon. Friend recalls that, yesterday evening, Government Members insisted that it was totally proper that we declare in detail our earnings from other interests, but that we thought unworkable the proposals that we account for the amount of time spent in acquiring those earnings. Has he had further thoughts on that in relation to this clause?
Yes, I have, but it may assist the Committee if I go through the other amendments in this group in the order in which they happen to be on my sheet.
On amendment 16, which my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) tabled, I shall listen carefully to what he has to say before coming to a view. Amendment 27, from the Opposition Front-Bench team, would require IPSA to consult Members when preparing and revising Members’ financial interests, and we will of course accept that.
Amendment 28 proposes that
“no member may be required to declare any specified information relating to any source of outside earned income which would place him in breach of a duty of a confidentiality”,
and amendment 7 would leave out subsection (8), which is quite a detailed subsection. I want to listen to the debate on those two amendments, but I say to all parts of the Committee that I accept that the drafting of subsection (8) is potentially too onerous and restrictive of Members. I do not mean that it is too narrow; it may be too wide. However, parliamentary counsel are already looking at whether its basic purpose can be captured in far less onerous language.
I think that there is general agreement that any scheme for the registration of interests should be backed by arrangements whereby interests have to be declared. Part 6 of the code of conduct, “Registration and Declaration of Interests”, says:
“Members shall fulfil conscientiously the requirements of the House in respect of…registration…and shall always draw attention to any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its Committees”.
Paragraph 77 gives further guidance on how declarations of interest should be made, saying that it should be done “briefly”. I think that we all accept that. I certainly accept that, as the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) said, we are now in the age of Google. Ten years ago, before Google, someone who wanted to find out whether a Member had a declarable interest had to go to the Library or to a public library—there was no other way of accessing that information. These days everybody can do it, even from a mobile telephone. The fact that the consequences of registration are so ubiquitous should mean that the need for declaration is less onerous.
At the same time, there must be some provision for declaring an interest; otherwise, we would get into some extraordinary situations. Somebody may, perfectly properly, be an adviser to a particular company and wish to say something—not paid advocacy—in a debate. For example, an adviser to or a director of a defence company may have an interest in speaking generally in a defence debate. There is no reason why they should not do so, but it is important that that is drawn to the House’s attention and that of the Member’s constituents.
The Justice Secretary has made some important and practical points. However, what astonishes me is that we are faced with a specific, detailed provision, presumably drawn up by lawyers in consultation with Ministers, and it looks as though—I welcome this—it is about to fall at the first fence. Why on earth was it introduced in this fashion if the Justice Secretary now accepts that it is a complete load of nonsense? Can he give us some idea of how he expects us to have to deal with this? At the moment we simply say, “I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests”, that reminds the House that the right hon. or hon. Member has an interest, and if anybody wants to look it up, they can do so.
Even in Bills that are not brought in with this speed, sometimes Homer nods and they need refreshment—the language needs to be improved—as one proceeds. That is the purpose of proper scrutiny. There is not a single Bill in which I have been involved in the past 12 years—it is a huge pile now—that has not been improved by the process of scrutiny. Sometimes, as a result of amendments being tabled, one discovers things that should be improved. I plead guilty to that.
I am in a great dilemma. Today the current rules come to an end. As from tomorrow, we are supposed to declare all these timings and things, which were so brilliantly exposed as odd by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) in his speech yesterday; I supported him in the course of my own speech. We now have proposals before us that the Secretary of State accepts are imperfect; I infer from what he says that he wishes to see them altered. The other problem is that Sir Christopher Kelly was specifically asked by the Prime Minister to look at the whole issue and to report on it. We really are in an awful, confused mess. As I have said before, we want clarity, so can we please have some advice from the Justice Secretary? Will the rules that are supposed to come into force tomorrow come into force? How are we affected by what he is saying tonight? Can he give an undertaking that whatever he says tonight will take second place to what Sir Christopher says if he makes different recommendations?
The rules that are due to come into force tomorrow will come into force tomorrow, and that has nothing whatever to do with the Bill. Everybody knows that to be the case, because the decision about that preceded the Bill’s publication. Those rules will stay in force until they are changed by the House in the normal way.
I have sought to answer the hon. Gentleman’s point about recommendations from Sir Christopher Kelly, but the Bill—even the rather onerous clause 5(8), and clause 5(9), which is linked to it—simply provides a framework into which his recommendations, as accepted, would drop. There is no problem with that, although for belt-and-braces reasons I have spelled out what would happen if there were a problem, so we need not go down that track again now.
May I bring my right hon. Friend back to the matter of timing? He is correct to say that we approved the rules that are coming into force tomorrow, but when we did so we were given four resolutions that we had to accept or reject in their entirety. One of the four stated that we should declare our earnings, which I am totally in favour of, but it also stated that we should declare how much time we spent on them. Like a lot of people, I did not want to be in the position of seeming to be against declaring our earnings, so we voted it through knowing the time factor involved.
From tomorrow, I will not and cannot fulfil the conditions of the House, because of the principles and practicalities that I outlined yesterday. I shall be fined, but I shall not pay the fine, so we will then be in this ludicrous business of going to prison. Surely that cannot have been the aim.
I have known my right hon. Friend for more than 30 years, and when we were both traipsing around in the rain at a shack on the gyratory system in Brixton, waiting to be interviewed by the Effra ward of the Vauxhall constituency Labour party in 1976—
We were lucky—we were both rejected.
We were indeed, and never was there salvation more quickly delivered. It struck me then that my right hon. Friend was possessed of many great talents but had a wish to end up on the stake or subject to some other form of martyrdom. Attractive though I know the stake or the gallows are to him, the prospect of his proceeding in that way and being fined by the new body is out of the question.
rose—
And on that point, four hon. Members stand up. I give way to the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd).
May I take the right hon. Gentleman back to the incisive question asked by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young)? He dissected the current code of conduct and said that at some point the non-financial aspects of it would probably be hived off to the new body. Some of us were quite happy to hear that clause 6 would disappear from the Bill, but it is actually a great concern because that clause stated that the code of conduct would continue as per the Nolan principles. The deletion of clause 6 will in fact make it easier for all conduct issues to be taken into the new body.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no question of responsibility for non-financial conduct matters going to the new authority. That will not be part of its functions. We discussed the matter at some length downstairs in the cross-party talks. It would be outwith its functions and experience, and it would be completely inappropriate for wider issues of conduct to be subject to scrutiny or determination other than by the House. The Government oppose that; I oppose it; it is not in the Bill and we are proceeding on that basis.
I have a growing anxiety as I listen to the Secretary of State and watch his body language as he explains the provisions. Changing “rules” to “code” emphasises that the measures we passed a few weeks ago and that several hon. Members regard as completely flawed—I shall explain the reasons for that when I speak to my amendments—will, the moment the Bill is on the statute book, be subject to all the pains and penalties, including criminal offences in so far as they refer to financial matters, in clause 9. Should we not concentrate on that? On the one hand, the Government tell us that they have abandoned the conduct provisions in clause 6—to which we all say, “Hooray”—but on the other, and with some slight sideways movement, the Secretary of State attempts to lull us into accepting an unsatisfactory state of affairs, with potentially catastrophic consequences for individual Members.
I do not accept that. We can have a debate about whether we use “code relating to financial interests” or “rules”. It amounts to the same thing. What is in the tin is the same.
Is the Secretary of State saying that introducing a new set of financial rules tomorrow could be followed by their substantial amendment when Kelly reports, and that that could be followed by further substantial amendment when the new authority is set up and opines that it has got it all wrong? Is that not simply too difficult and complicated for people who try to follow what we do?
I am genuinely unaware of whether Sir Christopher Kelly is concerning himself with rules or codes about declarations of interest. I do not think that he is. He may be, but—
The Prime Minister said so.
I have not said so. I am open to correction—I have not given evidence to Sir Christopher Kelly’s committee, but he appears to be concentrating on the whole system of allowances and expenses. If he were to say that there should be some change in categories of registration and declaration, the House would have to take that on board, but it is not relevant to the Bill.
I say to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) that, in due course—it will be quite some time—the authority may decide to propose different sets of rules in its code for registration and declaration. It may propose some that would give my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) greater comfort than paragraph 24 of the Green Book about declarations of hours. However, that is further down the track. I offer the right hon. Member for Wokingham the comfort that, if the authority made such a proposition, it could come into force only if and when it was approved by affirmative resolution.
I want to try a question on the Secretary of State that has nothing to do with Kelly or with the words “code” or “rules”, but is pertinent to what he says. As he knows and as colleagues have said, the new rules that require Members to declare how many hours they work outside this place come into effect tomorrow. According to clause 5, a series of rules will be established. Subsection (6) provides that they will not come into effect until they are approved by a resolution of the House. If the clause goes on to the statute book, is it the case that from that point the rules that come into effect tomorrow will be null and void until the House passes a resolution on the new rules? The Deputy Leader of the House is shaking her head.
No, it is not. The rules will come into force and, despite what the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield has said—that at the moment a breach of the code would not give rise to a criminal offence—it is certainly the case that, because a failure to comply with the requirement in the financial interest rules code will give rise to an offence under clauses 9(2) and (3), that requirement will have to be very carefully drafted. Indeed, it will have to be more carefully drafted than what is currently in the code.
This is not supposed to be a debate about paragraph 24 of the current code of conduct, but I just want to make one point. There are 168 hours in a week—that is not a matter for argument across the Chamber; it is just true. I merely offer hon. Members who are worried and their constituents this reflection. The European working time directive, whether one likes it or not—some do, some do not—prescribes 48 hours as the standard maximum that one is supposed to work in one job. [Laughter.] Hang on. If colleagues are sleeping normally—eight hours a day—that will them give them 56 hours. Adding those two together gives 104 hours. If we take that away from 168 hours we get 64 hours, which gives hon. Members nine hours a day, more or less, to do what they want with and still fulfil their constituency duties. [Interruption.] I am merely trying to be helpful.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young). I entered the House of Commons four years ago, and it is a complete madhouse. We are now on our fourth iteration of the Green Book since I got here. The rules have changed on a quarterly basis, and now they are changing on an almost fortnightly basis. We have codes there, codes there—codes everywhere. We are seeing almost a deliberate attempt to criminalise every Member of Parliament, because it is now impossible to keep up with what the Government are doing.
I apologise, but I cannot quite remember when the hon. Gentleman came into the House.
Four years ago.
The House has been struggling to bring its systems up to date and into a state such as it has insisted that other institutions and professions bring theirs into, which is one of the reasons, I suggest, why we fell into the abyss of the expenses scandal. With a bit of luck, once we get the legislation through and we get the authority established, we will be able to enter a period of much greater stability. That is my hope, and I think that we will do that.
I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for missing the opening few minutes of his remarks, although I was pleased to hear his important comment about clause 5(8), which he will now take away and redraft. However, could he tell us how that will be done practically? Will he table an amendment tonight that will be dealt with on Report tomorrow or do we have to leave that to the House of Lords? We are scrutinising the Bill in very limited time, so it would seem to be awfully late in the day to bring forward such amendments, welcome though they would be.
With the best will in the world, I do not think there will be time to table such an amendment to take on Report tomorrow. However, we are a bicameral legislature, and there is no reason on earth why we cannot have commitments made in one Chamber and amendments moved in the other—indeed, it happens all the time. However, what I also undertake to do—I should have said this—is to consult—
I will indeed consult the hon. Gentleman—why not? I cannot promise that we will reach agreement on the draft amendment, but I promise that I will consult him, and I will consult all the others on the cross-party group, too.
I think that I have spoken for long enough. This has been an unexpectedly entertaining few minutes—for me, anyway—and I shall now listen to the debate.
I was not sure whether to feel sorry for the Secretary of State, but I will do so, because he seems to have been placed in an impossible and ludicrous position—largely, I suspect, by the actions of the Prime Minister. I say to everyone here that they would do well to be very careful before accepting the siren songs that are being sung to them. What we have here is an illustration of the utter incoherence at the Bill’s very core, which could have devastating consequences for every Member of this House.
First, the Secretary of State tells us that he wishes us to change the wording, so that the word “rules” is replaced by the word “code” throughout the Bill. We have a code of conduct at the moment. The proposed change could be entirely cosmetic and pointless—an attempt to change the words possibly because the Prime Minister promised that there would be a code, and the code in clause 6 has now gone because those provisions have been removed. That is one possibility.
The second possibility, which we need to bear closely in mind, is that putting the word “code” into the Bill will have the effect of bringing justiciability on the entirety of the existing code of conduct for hon. Members, and in future there will be two codes, but they will be conflated into one. We would do well to avoid that option. If we do not, justiciability and judicial scrutiny will apply to the financial code and to our own code. Furthermore, I am left with the unpleasant sensation that the proposal to change the wording might involve an attempt to obfuscate future change, so that, when we subsequently consider these matters, it might be easier for the House to swallow the bitter pill.
Will the hon. and learned Gentleman expand on his logic? The House already has a code, and another code is proposed in clause 5. Why would the proposal mean a reverse in justiciability in relation to our own code? Would not the courts understand that justiciability would apply to the rules or code in clause 5?
I take the hon. Gentleman’s point.
On balance, I prefer my first theory to my second. Nevertheless, I cannot exclude the second. Having spoken to others who might know more about this than I do, and who seem to be more knowledgeable about the House’s procedures and rules, I believe that we would be very unwise to take this step. As I have said, the change of wording is either pointless—in which case, if we want to change it, we can do so when we create the new body with a single code and possibly a single commissioner doing slightly different things—or we should leave the proposal well alone.
Picking up on the point that was made a moment ago by the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith), the hon. and learned Gentleman is making much of the question of potential justiciability, but there is no basis or warrant for that claim on the basis of a change of name. Does he accept, however, that there is a fundamental distinction to be made between clause 6 and clause 5? There was anxiety—however loosely founded it may have been, I accept that it had a basis in fact—that, because the duty in clause 6 was placed on the House, the House could have been the subject of judicial review. That would have run straight into issues of privilege, which is why I was happy to withdraw that clause. The duties under clause 5, however, are on a statutory authority, and it is completely standard for duties on such an authority to be subject to scrutiny by the courts.
I listened with care to what the Secretary of State has said, and I am conscious of the very limited time we have had to consider the matter—and the even more limited time to consider the further changes that he puts forward. He will have to answer when, ultimately, we come to point where we will have to approve the rules or the code, and it seems to me that at that stage, the matter is as much a creature of this House as it is if we have a code of conduct under clause 6—even if it has a statutory nature. All I can say is that my best advice to the Committee is that I can think of no reason why, if the Secretary of State is right, we should not keep clear the distinction between the financial rules that he wishes to create and the present code. If there is even a shadow of a doubt, the sensible thing for the Secretary of State to do is to abandon this attempt to change the word “rule” to “code” and to leave it as it is now, and we can sort it out later. I very strongly urge him to do that.
Secondly, moving on to our own amendment, I note that I thought I had understood, but perhaps I had misunderstood, that the Secretary of State was going to abandon clause 5(8). I thought it was an abandonment rather than a going away to rewrite the provision in some new form. There is absolutely no doubt that once clause 5(8) comes into force, it will, as I said in my intervention earlier, have an immediate bearing on a whole series of questions relating to the rule changes we introduced two months ago or whenever it was, which have come in for so much criticism in the House.
By way of illustration, let me turn to amendment 28. I am also mindful of what was said by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) a short time ago. I must declare my interest here, Mr. Cook, as a practising member of the Bar. However, that fact may be pretty academic because as I have not practised for 12 months, it is unlikely that I will practise again before the next general election—and it may well be that my appearance in court last July was the last time I will ever appear.
Not under this Bill.
My hon. Friend could not be more correct. There is, I think, little danger of my appearing as an advocate, but if I tried to appear as one, there would certainly be a very immediate danger of my appearing as a defendant. Let me explain to the Secretary of State just how flawed is the system that he proposes to introduce.
We were told that the whole issue of professional confidentiality would be dealt with under the regulations. We were to say not only how much we earned and when we earned it, but normally to provide a statement of who paid us. It was also said, however, that special provision would be made to respect client confidentiality in respect of the professions. Unfortunately, in their practical application, these rules will not do that.
The requirement for me as a barrister is to say that I received £X from a solicitor for advising a client and a court appearance and that I carried out Y number of hours’ work. The problem is that I did only one case in July last year. It was quite widely reported and it concerned the definition of the word “garden” in the Forestry Act 1967—a very interesting and rather esoteric matter. The fact is that I did only that one case. If I were to report that I had received £X from the solicitor who instructed me in that case for Y hours, there would be no difficulty in establishing how much the client had paid me.
For those reasons, if this case were taking place in three days’ time rather than a year ago—on 3 July last year, I believe—I would be unable to comply with the rules. Whatever law may be passed in this country, I am afraid that my professional rules would have to take precedence as a matter of conscience and I would simply not be able to observe the terms of this declaration that the House required. At the moment, that would land me in serious difficulty with the House. That would be bad enough, and it might bring my career to an end, although I would have to accept that cheerfully because I would not be prepared to subvert my professional requirements of confidence to clients. However, the Bill would also turn that into a criminal offence. I urge the Committee, when we consider criminal offences tomorrow, to take a little time to consider the extraordinary architecture of oppression that we would be creating for ourselves. I do accept that we appear to have created an architecture of oppression for many other people in recent years—
If I understand the rules correctly, from tomorrow every gross payment we receive will have to be recorded. The hon. and learned Gentleman knows as well as I do that gross payments do not relate to the net receipts at the end of the financial year. What is one to do—record the gross or estimate the net? It is grossly—perhaps I should rephrase that—terribly unfair.
The hon. Gentleman is right. The rules say something about that, but it is all very vague and opaque. Amendments 29 and 30 would be preserved under the current structure.
Under the hon. and learned Gentleman’s professional code, what information could he provide to give the public an indication of any obligations he might have through his financial interests?
I have given the game away by saying that I only worked once last year, but normally I would have no difficulty in giving a global figure for how much I earned. I could also give the number of hours worked, although heaven knows it is not as though I keep a 100 per cent. accurate record. For many cases, I am not paid by the hour, and it will require some onerous changes to the way in which I operate to introduce an egg-timer to record every moment I am earning. However, if that is what the House requires, I will of course comply, but I will not identify my clients and how much they have paid me. That applies not only to me—it will apply to any professional in a recognised profession with a duty of confidentiality. For that matter, it may well extend outside.
The difficulty arises because we do not work full time. I am sure that the intention behind the drafting of the regulations was that nobody should be able to disentangle what money came from whom. However, for most hon. Members, the likelihood is that the amount of work that they do is so limited that it would be exposed by the new system. We have landed ourselves with a monumental problem for a benefit that I fail to understand.
If my hon. and learned Friend unwittingly over-recorded or under-recorded the hours that he worked, would he be committing an offence? If so, what sanctions could be visited on him?
We will tomorrow consider the requirements laid down in clause 9. I could be fined and, as a professional person, I might be able to pay a £5,000 fine, but it would have catastrophic consequences for my ability to continue in professional practice. That would be an extreme double whammy.
I am particularly concerned by clause 5(8) because it would put the requirements into statutory form, which would enable the offence to bite on it. I had thought that that provision would go away and we would be left with only the House’s obligations and not the statutory obligations. As it is, this provision will be a fertile field for litigation. I am entitled to invoke the law as much as I can, and I imagine that, if the amendment were taken to its logical conclusion, it could end up in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In that event, my argument would be that its impact on my ability to earn a living—quite apart from the duties of confidentiality and privacy law—caused it to breach articles in the European convention on human rights. We are creating a labyrinth for ourselves.
The Secretary of State is temporarily absent, but I forgive him that. I am sure that he has a good reason for disappearing behind the Speaker’s Chair. I believe that it is for the reasons that I have given that he showed a slight hesitation as he approached the Dispatch Box to try to disentangle the impacts of clause 5. Amendments 29 and 30 deal with clause 5(10), which states:
“The rules must prohibit a member from… by any specified means, advocating or initiating any cause or matter on behalf of any person in consideration of any specified payment or benefit in kind”.
I interpret that as a preliminary for the offence of paid advocacy that appears in clause 9. What is bizarre, however, is that, according to my understanding, although a payment must be “specified”—I suppose we see that in the rules—a benefit in kind is not subject to qualification by the word “specified”. On the face of it, we are putting in statute a requirement that any benefit in kind, irrespective of the rules that we are enacting, be prohibited.
The regulations show that there is a real problem with benefits in kind. Those who drew up the regulations experienced great difficulty in deciding what constituted a benefit in kind and what constituted a gift. If I deliver a speech—as I did recently—to, for example, a Conservative association or indeed a rotary club, and if at the end of the evening someone gives me a bottle of claret, is that a gift or is it a benefit in kind? It is clear to anyone who reads the regulations that those who drew them up were not at all sure into which category such things should fall. As a consequence, if thereafter we come to the House and try to advocate anything that might be to the advantage or otherwise of a particular organisation, we shall be committing a criminal offence carrying a fine of £5,000.
All this strikes me as a complete fantasy world. I am afraid that the reason for that fantasy world is, yet again, our semi-mad Prime Minister, who goes out and makes statements to the public without thinking through the consequences of his actions in an attempt to secure some cheap and quick public fix. That is what the Secretary of State is now having to disentangle without ruffling too many feathers at No. 10 Downing street, and that is to the extent to which, at present, we are being disgracefully governed.
Should not Labour Members also take this matter seriously? When Labour legislated for Electoral Commission returns concerning political donations, that turned out to be extremely damaging to many candidates for the deputy leadership of the party. Labour Members must understand that this measure could have all sorts of perverse consequences for people who want to behave honourably but find the rules very difficult.
I agree with my right hon. Friend.
Let me say in fairness to the Secretary of State, who has now returned to the Chamber, that I have detected today a real willingness to listen. I think that he has a pretty acute awareness of the areas of the Bill that are wanting. It can also be said—although I realise that this does not apply to one or two Members—that we have a common purpose in trying to establish an allowances and payments system that will bring the House out of disrepute.
We had every incentive—all of us together—to make the Bill a success, which is why it pains me so much when I see where we are starting to go so catastrophically off the rails, with consequences for every Member. That will first of all do us damage, but it will also damage our reputation for competence.
Before my hon. and learned Friend sits down, will he give us some advice about amendment 74? It states:
“The IPSA must prepare a code to be observed by members of the House of Commons, the content of which is provision made by virtue of subsections (7), (8) and (10).”
Does that mean that the content of this code is limited to
“provision made by virtue of subsections (7), (8) and (10)”,
or could the code go wider than those provisions, as these are terms of art and there is considerable flexibility in the interpretation?
I am sure my hon. Friend will agree with me that we will want to listen to what the Secretary of State says. I am prepared to be talked out of my anxieties on this, but I have to say that I can see how that problem could arise. I think there are clear advantages in keeping the distinction between “rules” and “code” until such time as this House is completely satisfied that it wants to create some unified structure.
I certainly agree with my hon. and learned Friend about the distinction between rules and codes. Having got that out of the way, does he also accept that there is a problem in there being the majority that there is in this House? A lot of matters may well therefore need to be resolved in the House of Lords, but whereas I entirely agree that this Bill has in its essence and principle a good objective—which I have advocated for a very long time—as many of the areas it addresses are privileges of the House of Commons, it will be nearly impossible for the House of Lords to be able to make any meaningful amendments. The privilege arrangements and the black lining will mean that they will not be able to have the effect that they otherwise would have.
My hon. Friend may well be right. Another point arises from an amendment that he has tabled. It relates to the European convention on human rights. So long as this House has kept its principles simple, it has succeeded in escaping outside jurisdictions—for very good reasons, I think—but if this House starts to create criminal offences for its Members, which we are doing, that will clearly become much more difficult. Also, when we come to consider this matter tomorrow, I strongly recommend that the House should pause before creating criminal offences which, in fact, pertain to regulatory breaches of its own rules. That too is likely to create very serious problems for how we run ourselves.
My hon. and learned Friend touches on an extremely important question, relating to the application in this context of the principles applying in the Duncan Sandys and Damian Green cases, but we will come to that tomorrow, will we not?
Yes, we will, but I want to conclude now.
Our amendment 73 simply specifies that Ministers should be obliged to supply their hours of work and the hourly rate of pay for what they have been doing. I cannot think of a reason why they should not do so if we are being put to this burden. Ministers may be Members of this House, but ultimately the work they do as Ministers is distinct from other aspects of their work. I cannot think of a reason why they should not realise now the onerous burden that is being placed on everybody else.
I have been listening all night long to this very interesting debate, which mixed up Sir Christopher Kelly, the new rules coming in tomorrow and this Bill. I should add at the outset that the purpose of amendment 16, which stands in my name and that of the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), is simply to add the Speaker to the list of those persons who should be consulted. I do not think there is any particular problem in that.
I have risen to speak about Government amendment 74, however. I understood what the Justice Secretary said, because we did have some concerns about the original clause 6, which he graciously withdrew yesterday. The clause seemed to undermine the concept of privilege and place its determination in the courts by referring to “the Nolan principles” and “such other matters”. Those who examined this matter felt that that would have opened up the privilege question and taken us into the courts. The concern is that Government amendment 74 might have the same result.
The Justice Secretary made a pertinent point when he said that the old clause 6 meant that the House of Commons was to continue to have a code of conduct whereas now the new body, IPSA, would propose the code and, thus, not put the House and its privileges within the determination of the courts. I should like to draw that principle to his attention and he might wish to reconfirm it when he responds to the debate.
I should like to speak to amendment 7, which stands in my name. It relates to clause 5(8), which the Secretary of State was good enough to refer to in his remarks, as was my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve).
The registration of interests and the declaration of interests are two separate activities. My amendment seeks to remove subsection (8), which deals with the declaration of interests.
The registration of interests is dealt with in subsection (7); I have no difficulty with that and with the fact that one must register specified information in a register maintained by IPSA. My amendment would remove the requirement for IPSA to include rules relating to the declaration of interests in relation to its financial registration rules—or the code of conduct, as it has been rebranded. Later on in the Bill, clause 9 recognises a distinction between registration and declaration, and a failure to register is made an offence, whereas a failure to declare is not. The rationale for that distinction is that whereas registration is part of a Member’s wider accountability to our constituents and the public at large, declarations arise in the context of proceedings in the House, for example in the course of a debate or in a Committee. Therefore, proceedings in the House should not be governed by statute law, but should be dealt with by the House itself.
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this House legislated in the Scotland Act 1998 for people to face criminal sanction for non-declaration in the Scottish Parliament? Given that this House believed at that time that such rules should be applied to another legislature in the UK, why should this House not be held to the same standard?
Were my amendment to be successful, I would quite understand it if the hon. Gentleman felt obliged to table a consequential amendment to deal with the provisions to which he has just referred. My view is that it is for this House to decide the circumstances in which Members should declare an interest and to decide what to do if they do not. I, thus, believe that the amendment should be accepted and the rules relating to the declaration of interests should continue to be made by the House itself.
I just wish to say a word about the Government amendments, which rebrand the rules relating to financial interests as a code of conduct. It is not at all clear to me why what yesterday was a rule about a financial interest must today be a code of conduct. That is certainly not a consequential amendment flowing from the removal of clause 6; it does not follow at all that because that code of conduct has been removed another part of the Bill has to be rebranded as a code of conduct. I think that this has happened merely so that the Prime Minister can fulfil his pledge to introduce a statutory code. If the Government amendments are accepted, there will be two codes. One will be a statutory code covering financial matters and the other will be maintained by the House and will cover everything else. That is a recipe for confusion, and it is totally unnecessary.
Finally, I should add that many of us voted against the programme motion yesterday because we were worried that there would not be enough time to discuss matters, and it looks as though that prophecy is about to be fulfilled.
I entirely agree with what my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) has just said—and, indeed, with everything that he said in his brief but, I felt, totally persuasive speech.
I feel very sorry for the Secretary of State. He is trying to be his master’s voice and he is clearly finding it extremely uncomfortable. His performance at the Dispatch Box at the beginning of this debate was one of total sincerity but utter discomfort—[Interruption.] Yes, it was. It could be seen in the way in which he responded to my plea for clarity. I would commend to him the letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son, which are perhaps the best commentary on manners in the 18th century. The boy was going off on the grand tour, and his father warned him of the pitfalls of frequenting houses of ill-fame. He said, “Be careful of your money. Remember, the pleasure is momentary, the position is ridiculous and the expense is damnable.” Tonight, the right hon. Gentleman is a classic illustration of that. He adopted a ridiculous position, the pleasure of doing so is certain to be momentary and the cost to this House is damnable.
I think that the Secretary of State should think again, and if he has not read Lord Chesterfield there is a treat in store for him—
It sounds more like “Flashman”.
It is far better.
I ask the Secretary of State: what is the difference between a code and a rule? If, as he seemed to imply—at least, that was what I inferred from what he said—there is not a difference, then why persist with it?
The other, and far more important point, which my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire raised in his amendment, is that clause 5(8) should be deleted. It really should.
I said that I would listen to the debate, and I have, and I am persuaded that it is right to withdraw clause 5(8). I add two caveats. The amendment is to clause 5(8). It follows, as night follows day, that clause 5(9) will have to be withdrawn, but I am not sure that we can do it tonight, because there is no amendment. We can sort that out in due course. Let me say to the Committee, for the avoidance of doubt, that it might be necessary to bring forward some consequential amendments—although I doubt it. If it is, I promise that I will consult the usual people, including the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young). I hope that that reassures the Committee.
I am extremely grateful, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire is grateful and, indeed, that the Committee is grateful. Can we now build on that, and will the Secretary of State acknowledge, in a belated response to the point made by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) last night and by a number of other Members of all parties, as he came close to doing when he gave us the little timetable of hours that there is nothing disreputable about Members’ having outside interests? Will he acknowledge that it is quite right and proper that they should? It is of course proper that they should declare them, but in declaring them they should not be put into a ridiculous position, such as that mentioned by the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) when he talked about the difficulty for somebody who earns some of his money, as I do, from writing in giving precise and specific hours.
I am very happy to acknowledge that. I regard myself—whether others do is a matter for them—as someone who takes his constituency responsibilities very seriously. However, it happens that I have been on the Front Bench in one capacity or another since November 1980, which is some time ago. When I was in opposition, I used to earn a significant sum from writing, which I used to subsidise my office—[Hon. Members: “How much?”] I cannot remember now. It is also true that for the past 12 years I have had a second job, as a Minister. I hope that that helps.
I am grateful again to the right hon. Gentleman, and perhaps we can have a hat trick. He has accepted the amendment moved by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire and acknowledged that it is both valid and honourable for hon. Members to have outside earnings. For the hat trick, if we are to have this provision on outside earnings, will he now acknowledge that Ministers should also declare? Ministers have to deal with their ministerial portfolios, and they travel the country or to other countries doing all sorts of perfectly right, proper and appropriate things—well or badly, but doing them nevertheless—but they are not able to perform their constituency or ordinary parliamentary duties at the same time.
To paraphrase what the Justice Secretary said yesterday, let what is sauce for the goose be also sauce for the ministerial gander.
I am afraid that I cannot give the hon. Gentleman comfort on that, as the distinction is that it is a fundamental part of our constitution that people may be Ministers. Our diaries are pretty public, and I can answer the question about whether I was able to do my constituency work when I was abroad with the following example. The Foreign Office record shows that on one occasion—and much to her surprise—I had to phone the chairperson of my local primary care trust from an armoured vehicle on the way to Ramallah.
I am sure that she was thrilled. If we cannot have sauce for goose and gander in that respect, then let us have it in the other—since Ministers do not have to declare their hours, let it be the same for others. In that way we will all be on all fours. We are answerable to our individual constituents, and we must satisfy them that we do a decent job in Parliament and the country. I never work less than 60 hours a week, and I break the working time directive every week of the parliamentary year. If, while we do that, we write the odd article or give the odd bit of advice, then God bless us all. Let us move forward in an atmosphere of tolerant and mutual admiration—as I admire the right hon. Gentleman for what he said a few minutes ago.
We have only 29 minutes left, but I hope that we will be able to reach other clauses—
We will not get any further because we will have Divisions. Keep talking.
The hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara) points out from the Conservative Front Bench that there will be Divisions as well to use up the time, so I might as well speak for as long as I like.
I welcome the decision to accept amendment 7. Along with removing clause 6, that will help to create the distinction between Parliament and the courts. Most of the many Government amendments changing “rules” to “code” are cosmetic, but that change is acceptable if it helps to remove clause 6.
Amendment 73 should be supported by the Government, as the idea of the register is to show the conflicts that Members have and how they use their time. That principle should apply to Ministers as much as it does to anyone else. One of the roles of this House is to hold the Government to account, so ministerial interests must be in conflict with that role at times. People should be able to judge the roles that Ministers play, and the time that they are able to put into their work.
I have quite a lot of sympathy with amendment 28 and the concerns about professional confidentiality, but I worry about whether it would have the effect that contracts could be drawn so that the word “confidentiality” could take on a wider meaning. If it can be restricted to professional understandings that already exist, I think that amendment 28 could be acceptable.
I rise to support amendment 73, which is excellent, and I also agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) said. He was absolutely right that what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the Government gander. However, with the economy in meltdown and our armed forces engaged in a battle in Afghanistan, it is astonishing that this House should spend so much time on this matter. It is true that there is public concern about expenses and that we had to address that, but the Government have come forward with a completely irrelevant issue relating to Members’ interests. There is no clamour for the complex proposals that they have introduced save among the ardent socialists on Secretary of State’s own Benches, and there are not too many of them.
This provision bears all the hallmarks of a nasty, petty and partisan attempt by the Prime Minister to stoke up hostility towards some on the Conservative Benches, although it will have the added advantage of dragging in some of his right hon. and Blairite Friends whose services clearly are valued by a number of corporations and individuals out there in the public sector. I look at the right hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr. Ingram), a good friend of mine. I am so glad that he has been properly remunerated for his great talents and skills. If this were not an attempt to stoke up hostility, the Government would have accepted the case for bringing Ministers within the scope of the Bill. If the Prime Minister were not minded to be so venomous about it, logic would demand that Ministers should be brought into its scope. They spend infinitely more time than most of us who have outside interests on doing things other than looking after their constituents. There is therefore no justification for excluding Ministers. I did not think that the Justice Secretary’s little example supported his case.
This draconian measure will impose enormous added burdens on right hon. and hon. Members. We will be required to fill in some sort of time sheet, rather like lawyers, totting up how much time we spend on other interests. We have already seen how Members have fallen foul of the requirement to register interests, not in most cases because they have been dishonourable or evil, but simply as a result of the pressures on time. It is monstrous that the Government have proposed this complex web of requirements to impose on us.
Failure to record interests accurately will render us all liable to criminal prosecution. It is important that we put it on record that there should be right hon. and hon. Members who have other interests. It is extremely important for Labour Members for, if they do not have other interests, they will be unemployed after the next general election.
This House, as some commentators have noted, does not have enough people with business experience to inform debates in this place. It is left to those with experience in the other place to amend legislation that is pushed through here by people who do not have experience. I have checked with the House of Commons Library and, as matters stand, 7 per cent. of Labour Members have business experience and 38 per cent. of Conservative Members do. It is an indictment of Parliament that so few people have business experience. Therefore, I encourage all hon. Members to have outside interests. It adds to the value of debates in the House.
I conclude by reminding the Committee of a remark made by the Bishop of Durham in another place. He said during debates on constitutional reform:
“it looks as though constitutional change has been done on a wing and a prayer. We on these Benches are very happy to supply the prayer, but we want to be assured of the quality of the wing.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 June 2009; Vol. 711, c. 767.]
What the Justice Secretary’s action tonight has demonstrated is that the wing is not qualified and is indeed plummeting to earth rapidly.
I endorse much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) said about amendment 73, and what my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) said. Let me set out the strongest case for Ministers being brought into the scope of the rules on declarations. Just imagine what the inclusion of Ministers would show. If the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) were now the Foreign Secretary, it would probably show that he spent 80 or 90 per cent. of his working time being Foreign Secretary. I do not know how many hours he spends being Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; I would submit that that must account for 70 or 75 per cent. of his working time. That would seem to be a reasonable proportion of his time to spend on ministerial office. For that, he is justifiably rewarded with extra salary as a Cabinet Minister. I appreciate that he does not draw the Lord Chancellor’s salary. The inclusion of Ministers in the rules on declaration would, at a stroke, legitimise the view that other Members of Parliament without ministerial office would be perfectly justified in taking outside employment for a number of hours for a degree of extra remuneration.
The failure to include Ministers in the rules on declaration seems deliberately to suggest that being a Minister is legitimate, but having a different outside interest, even if it is for the public good, is not legitimate. An invidious atmosphere has been created on the subject of outside interests. That was obviously political, and had absolutely nothing to do with the exposure of the expenses of right hon. and hon. Members by The Daily Telegraph and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It was a purely vindictive and political act for the Prime Minister to bring that extra resolution before the House. It was done to create that political atmosphere.
In parenthesis and perhaps not entirely relevantly, I might add that it has always struck me as slightly odd that a Member of Parliament resigns by accepting an office of profit under the Crown. I have never understood why being a Minister does not count as having an office of profit under the Crown. If we are to go on professionalising the House of Commons, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) said yesterday, we should chuck the Executive out of Parliament altogether, on the basis that to be a Minister is to hold an office of profit under the Crown. That should disqualify Ministers from being Members of the House of Commons.
The truth is that being a Minister was an office. It was the case certainly until the 1920s, if not later, as we were reminded last night—
I mentioned that.
Indeed; the hon. Gentleman mentioned that whenever anybody was appointed as a Minister, there was automatically a by-election. That would be a bit risky these days. I can think of many reasons for not having such a system. I understand the strong feelings about what is in paragraph 24 of the new arrangements that come into force tomorrow, but those arrangements are not directly germane to the Bill, which simply provides a framework, particularly given that we will withdraw clause 5(8).
It would, of course, be churlish of me not to acknowledge that the right hon. Gentleman has agreed to withdraw subsection (8). That is the subject that I want to move on to next. The withdrawing of parts of the Bill should amount to substantial concessions, but although we were initially delighted by what he announced about clause 6, we were not aware that while he was making that dramatic concession, other amendments were being tabled that seemed to undo his concession. I appreciate that there has been progress, but we have taken 10 steps forward and nine steps back. If I may, I shall spend a few moments explaining why I think that.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) accepted my comment that the new subsections (1) and (2) to clause 5, introduced by amendment 74, leave some ambiguity as to whether the code is confined purely to the issue of expenses and declarations, or whether it might go wider. I have since studied the Nolan principles of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. It is not difficult to connect every single one of those principles with the declaration of financial interests. For example, the text on selflessness states:
“Holders of public office should take decisions solely in terms of the public interest. They should not do so in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves”,
so that one goes in. The principle of integrity states:
“Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations”,
so that one goes into the code. The principle of objectivity requires us to make choices for public office on merit. I wonder whether that could be squeezed in somehow. The principle of accountability certainly applies. People in public office should
“submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office.”
I am sure IPSA will do that.
According to the principle of openness, we should be open about the decisions that we take. On honesty, the code says that we
“have a duty to declare any private interests”.
So a great deal of what is in the Nolan principles overlaps dramatically with what would be a code instead of rules under the Act. The withdrawal of clause 6 does not amount to nearly such a large concession as was originally advertised by the Lord Chancellor.
The concern raised by the learned Clerk about clause 6 referred to the anxiety that
“the maintenance of such a resolution”—
that is, the code—
“and the content of what it approves would become, by virtue of Clause 6, a matter which is justiciable by the courts.”
By virtue of being included in the Act, instead of being made by resolution of the House, the code would, by definition, be justiciable. The code relating to financial matters in the Bill will be justiciable by the courts. If it does not conform with the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life or with the rules, it would, by definition, be justiciable.
I still do not see how the Lord Chancellor has dealt with paragraph 9 of the learned Clerk’s memorandum. Paragraph 9 states:
“It is not clear why this clause is in the Bill.”
It is not at all clear why we should have to substitute “code” for “rules” unless, as we heard, it is purely to satisfy the impulsive outburst of the Prime Minister, who wanted to be able to tell the public, to appease the press and to ingratiate himself with the press, that there would be a statutory code to which MPs would be subject.
Clause 6 may be withdrawn, but clause 10 is still in the Bill. That is the problem that gives rise to the anxiety about a chilling effect on the freedom of speech in Parliament. The inclusion of the code undoes whatever good the withdrawal of clause 6 does, and the Bill remains as unsatisfactory and as dangerous to the interests of our constituents as ever.
Clearly, as I said yesterday, Members of the House are either elected representatives who are free to earn outside, or professional politicians who are not. It is with that thought that I shall address the clause and the amendments. As some hon. Members know, I have become convinced over a period that, unfortunately, the House is heading in the direction of professional politics. That, for better or for worse, is why I have decided not to stand again. I confess that when I made my decision, pessimist though I sometimes am, even I could not conceive of a clause as poor as clause 5.
Let me explain my reasoning. First, the Secretary of State has said consistently, throughout the proceedings on the Bill, that we need the Bill in order to quell public anxiety over expenses, but it ought to be obvious to every Member of the House, including those who have just entered it, that the clause has nothing at all to do with expenses. It is to do with the declaration of financial interests. If the Secretary of State had wanted a Bill concerned merely with expenses, he could have had it quickly yesterday and that would have been an end to it. But no, we have to have this Bill and this clause.
The clause places before us a series of rules that will apparently be replaced by a code. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) have just been through all the arguments, and it is not ultimately clear whether “rules” is to be replaced by “code”—the most likely explanation is that the Prime Minister has promised a code and that is an end of it—or, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex just argued, whether the courts will be given the power to rule on the clause, thereby obviating the removal from the Bill of clause 6, which was offered to us as a concession yesterday.
Furthermore, I do not know what will replace clause 5(8), if anything. Some Members may know because the Justice Secretary has been scurrying back and forth to speak to them. However, we do know what remains and looks likely to be punishable by the courts under clause 9. Nevertheless, we do not even know whether what the Bill seeks to give effect to, namely the provision whereby we have to declare in detail every hour that we work outside this place, will stand or be replaced by whatever Sir Christopher Kelly brings forth.
I thought I heard the Secretary of State say this afternoon that, if Sir Christopher comes forth in due course and says, “I do not much like any of this,” it may all have to be replaced anyway. I thought also that I heard my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex say that Sir Christopher, in conversation with him, seemed to intimate that he was not happy with every aspect of the Bill, raising the further question why it exists and why the clause exists.
Underneath that tangled mess, which is so tangled that my description is even more tangled than it normally would be, lies a simplicity. As other hon. Members have said, the Government are creating an atmosphere of illegitimacy around outside interests. That is the purpose of clauses 5 and 9, and the ceiling that has been descending year upon year on outside interests, ever since the Nolan report and probably further back, is being ratcheted down under this Bill. It is essentially unjust, because the one group of people who will not have to declare how much time they spend working on business other than those of their constituents are, of course, Ministers. If there were any justice, they would accept the amendment tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends, so that Ministers had to declare how many hours they spent moonlighting outside this place—to use the language that they frequently throw at us. But of course, they will not accept it.
Either we are to be elected representatives who are free to work or, if we are to be professional politicians, we will have to separate the Executive and the legislature, and being an MP will be a full-time job. I do not expect the Justice Secretary to address that argument fully or completely openly. I understand why the Leader of the House cannot be present, but, notably, the Justice Secretary has been sent in because, with his usual combination of charm and cunning, he is the only Front-Bench spokesperson likely to get the Bill past unsuspecting Government Members who, if they are still here after the next election, will find that it bites as much on them as on any other Member.
My closing words, however, are not to the Justice Secretary but to my Front-Bench team. If, as may be, there is a Conservative Government after the next election, they are going to inherit this mess, and they are going to have to make a fundamental decision themselves, despite all the political difficulties. The question is, are they going to allow the boat to continue to drift all the way down to the professionalisation of politics, or are they going to make a stand and allow this House to return to what it should be—namely, a forum in which the clash of interests is represented and debated? If this House does not do that, there is no purpose in it being here at all.
We heard a brilliant contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman); I hope that he changes his mind at some point.
On sources of outside income, we have to be absolutely clear that we are talking about jobs undertaken and time spent in addition to our work as Members of Parliament. Clearly, a ministerial job is additional to the duties of a Member of Parliament. Committee chairmanship and, perhaps, the Speaker’s role can also be seen in that light. If we are declaring the number of hours of paid work outside this place, or even inside it, it is completely illogical that we are not declaring the number of hours of unpaid work outside this place, as well as inside it. Fundamentally, if we are arguing that being a Member of Parliament is a full-time job—although I do not make that argument—then, equally, anything that takes a Member of Parliament outside this place to undertake other kinds of employment and use their time in other ways should be declared. If somebody is working for a charity, acting as a school governor, or doing anything that is not remunerated, surely those hours should also be listed. Of course, to do so would be considered completely nonsensical and not particularly relevant. Perhaps that is why the declaration of the number of hours worked or the amount of money received should equally be seen as nonsensical.
Let us take a completely different view. It could well be argued that the fewer the number of hours a Member of Parliament spends fulfilling his or her duties, provided that he or she is efficient, the better. That is a good sign. If a Member of this House can achieve in three hours a day what other Members, or other people, might achieve in eight hours a day, is that not something to be welcomed? Efficiency must come into play. My background is in business, and I can say immediately that people in business—people who are entrepreneurs, who are enterprising, and who are looking for a return and a benefit to their company and to the economy—will look for the most efficient person who can achieve the best result in the fewest number of hours. The whole drive towards the declaration of the number of hours, with the undertone that it is bad to work fewer hours fulfilling one’s duties as a Member of Parliament, is incorrect.
Underlying several parts of the Bill is the assumption that outside interests or outside earnings are a bad thing. I put it to the House that we want a variety of people here. I do not want only wealthy people to be represented in this place—that would make it a very bad place to be. These changes to the rules, which insist on each individual hour of income earned outside being declared, are not only unworkable but work against people from less well-off backgrounds coming into this place. We will end up with the sort of people who have no outside interests because they have unearned income from elsewhere, have made a fortune in the past, or come from wealthy families, or the sort of people who have been permanent professional politicians. I am not sure that that is good for the nation or for our constituents.
I hope that the Government change their mind on several clauses, and that the Bill achieves what we would all like it to achieve—the independent administration of expenses, allowances and, potentially, salaries. I think that that is readily acceptable.
I have listened to the debate with great care. Let me say for the assistance of the House that in addition to the Government amendments, which I commend to the House, the Government wish to accept amendments 16, 17, 7, 29 and 30. We will separately consider amendment 28, and we are opposing amendment 73.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Amendment 74 agreed to.
Proceedings interrupted (Programme Order, 29 June).
The Chairman put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Programme Order, 29 June, and Standing Order No. 83D).
Clause 5
MPs’ financial interests rules
Amendments made: 75, page 3, line 20, leave out “rules regularly and revise them” and insert
“code regularly and revise it”.
Amendment 76, page 3, line 21, leave out “rules” and insert “code”.—(Mr. Blizzard.)
Amendment 16, page 3, line 21, at end insert:
“( ) the Speaker of the House of Commons”.—(Sir George Young.)
On a point of order, Sir Michael—
Order. We must deal with the votes now.
The Front Bench—
Order. It is for the occupant of the Chair to take the voices on these occasions and to decide what to do. As far as I am concerned, the Ayes have it.
Amendments made: 27, in clause 5, page 3, line 23, at end insert
“(ba) members of the House of Commons.”.—(Alan Duncan.)
Amendment 2, page 3, line 25, leave out “IPSA” and insert “Speaker”.—(Sir George Young.)
Amendment 77, page 3, line 25, leave out “rules” and insert “code”.
Amendment 78, page 3, line 26, leave out subsection (6) and insert
“(6) The code (or revision) does not come into effect until it is approved by a resolution of the House of Commons.”.
Amendment 79, page 3, line 28, leave out “rules” and insert “code”.—(Mr. Watts.)
Amendment 7, page 3, line 30, leave out subsection (8).—(Sir George Young.)
Amendment 82, page 3, line 42, leave out “rules” and insert “code”.—(Mr. Straw.)
Amendment 29, page 4, line 2, after “or”, insert “specified”.
Amendment 30, page 4, line 4, after “or”, insert “specified”.—(Mr. Grieve.)
Amendment proposed: 73, page 4, line 16, at end add
“(c) to payment as, and hours worked as, a Minister.”.—(Alan Duncan.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Clause 5, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 12
Interpretation
Amendment made: 88, page 8, line 11, leave out ‘financial interests rules’ and insert
‘code of conduct relating to financial interests’.—(Mr. Blizzard.)
Clause 12, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13
power to make transitional etc provision
Amendments made: 89, page 8, line 35, leave out ‘contained in rules under section 5(7)’ and insert
‘included by virtue of section 5(7) in the MPs’ code of conduct relating to financial interests’.
Amendment 90, page 8, line 37, leave out ‘contained in rules under section 5(8)’ and insert
‘included by virtue of section 5(8) in the MPs’ code of conduct relating to financial interests’.
Amendment 91, page 8, line 39, leave out ‘contained in rules under that section’ and insert
‘included by virtue of section 5(10) in the MPs’ code of conduct relating to financial interests’.—(Mr. Watts.)
Clause 13, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 14 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
To report progress and ask leave to sit again.—(Mr. Watts.)
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again tomorrow.
Business without Debate
delegated legislation
With the leave of the House, we shall take motions 3 to 5 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Companies
That the draft Companies Act 2006 (Part 35) (Consequential Amendments, Transitional Provisions and Savings) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 14 May, be approved.
That the draft Registrar of Companies and Applications for Striking Off Regulations 2009, which were laid before this House on 14 May, be approved.
Financial Services and Markets
That the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2009 (S.I., 2009, No. 1389), dated 10 June 2009, a copy of which was laid before this House on 10 June, be approved.—(Mr. Watts.)
Question agreed to.
Regulatory Reform
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 18(1)),
That the draft Legislative Reform (Dangerous Wild Animals) (Licensing) Order 2009, which was laid before this House on 17 June, be approved.—(Mr. Watts.)
Question agreed to.
European Union Documents
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 119(11),
Economic Recovery
That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 7084/09 and Addendum 1, Commission Communication for the Spring European Council on Driving European Recovery, and No. 10511/09 and Addenda 1 and 2, Commission Communication on European financial supervision; and endorses the Government’s approach to the next stages of discussions on how to restore and maintain a stable and reliable financial system.—(Mr. Watts.)
Question agreed to.
Adjournment (Summer)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 25),
That this House, at its rising on Tuesday 21 July 2009, do adjourn till Monday 12 October 2009.—(Mr. Watts.)
The Deputy Speaker’s opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 1 July (Standing Order No. 41A).
Notices of Questions Etc During September 2009
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 22B(2)),
That the days appointed for the tabling and answering of written questions and for written ministerial statements under Standing Order No. 22B (Notices of questions etc. during September) shall be as follows:
Tabling days
Wednesday 2, Monday 7 and Wednesday 9 September 2009.
Answering days
Wednesday 9, Monday 14 and Wednesday 16 September 2009.—(Mr. Watts.)
The Deputy Speaker’s opinion as to the decision of the Question being challenged, the Division was deferred until Wednesday 1 July (Standing Order No. 41A).
Estimates
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 145),
That this House agrees with the Report [25 June] of the Liaison Committee.—(Mr. Watts.)
Question agreed to.
Petition
Taxation (Bingo Clubs)
I wish to present a petition from 451 residents of Llanelli and others who use Argos bingo club there. The petition
Declares that the imposition of Gross Profits Tax of 22 per cent. on bingo clubs, compared with a gaming industry average of 15 per cent., is unreasonable and will be damaging to the continued viability of small bingo clubs, which play an important part as centres of the community as well as places of entertainment.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons approves a Gross Profits Tax maximum rate of 15 per cent. for bingo clubs.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P000386]
Standards Board for England
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr. Watts.)
I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to debate the Standards Board for England. For those hon. Members who have never come across it, let me say with great sincerity, “Lucky you!” The board is supposed to promote high ethical standards for local government, but in my experience it is an inefficient, expensive and woefully unfair outfit that should be confined to the history books as quickly as possible.
The Standards Board was established on a whim of political correctness. The driving force behind it was that master of oratory, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). He wanted local councillors to behave properly. That is a perfectly worthy goal, but the right hon. Gentleman could be clumsy; he loved to interfere in the natural order of things—and I suspect he still does. So instead of leaving it to the common sense of voters not to elect lunatics, or the common sense of the police to get involved when they had to, the right hon. Gentleman decided to reinvent the wheel. It was a triumph; the wheel was completely square. That is the sad story of the birth of the Standards Board.
It was guaranteed to malfunction because it was designed by idiots. It has turned the act of complaining about councillors into a fabulous spectator sport. Imagine the centre court at Wimbledon where anyone can take a pot shot. That is the system the right hon. Gentleman created: “Complaints are free; why not make one now?”
Several councillors from Bideford in north Devon are still under investigation because they want to scrap prayers before meetings to save time—hallelujah! Do we need to learn the lesson? Even in this place, where one would think we would all know better, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) recently reported a Lib Dem councillor to the Standards Board for the appalling act of removing a petition from a local post office.
Last year, there were 3,500 different complaints—one for every waking hour of every single day. We are getting this wrong. If there are too many complaints, the staff cannot handle them, which means more people have to be hired and everything slows down. There is only one thing worse than slow justice, and that is no justice. The Standards Board offers both in heaps. It has become an overblown, bureaucratic kangaroo court. It pretends to operate like the Old Bailey, but people should not expect a fair trial, or any help in defending themselves.
The Standards Board has set new standards, and they come in at gutter height. I could illustrate this argument with any number of high profile cases, but I prefer to stick to the one I know best. It concerns a former Somerset county councillor called Paul Buchanan. Adjournment debate groupies may recognise his name—I am sure the Minister does. The case of Paul Buchanan has dragged on for more than two painful years. I have raised it in this House on several occasions. Paul Buchanan was deputy leader of Somerset council’s Liberal Democrats. What happened to him speaks volumes about what is wrong with the Standards Board.
The board was bamboozled and brow-beaten into investigating Paul Buchanan, and all because of one unscrupulous public official: the chief executive of Somerset county council, Mr. Alan Jones. On 4 April 2007, Alan Jones composed a six-page letter of complaint about Paul Buchanan and sent it to the Standards Board for England. It was the work of a deliberate assassin. Paul Buchanan was accused of secretiveness, undermining staff, aggression, threatening behaviour, rudeness, intimidation, anger, disrespect, fraud, sexism, racism, homophobia, and abuse of his office as an elected councillor; not bad for one man—he is almost unique. There is barely concealed hatred of the man in every sentence. Jones did not just want the Standards Board to investigate; he wanted an instant political execution. He asked for then Councillor Paul Buchanan to be suspended there and then, but he did not get that.
The jobsworths at the Standards Board might have been forgiven for thinking that Paul Buchanan was an unstable nutcase with homicidal tendencies. In fact, the really unstable and unsavoury character was, and is, the complainant: Somerset county council’s most senior officer. However, wrongly—inexcusably—the Standards Board does not investigate complaints against officers; it cannot. That is another ridiculous gaping hole in its half-baked interpretation of justice.
If anyone’s local chief executive is caught bullying staff or paying off his mistress from public funds, the Standards Board will rightly say it is none of its business; it can only investigate councillors, and it was obliged, because of the rules, to launch a full-blown inquiry into Mr. Buchanan. Hundreds of interviews were conducted and thousands of pages of transcripts were churned off the printers, and when it rejected Alan Jones’s first batch of complaints, he wasted extra time querying its decision. It was dealing with a deranged obsessive. The first investigator retired, exhausted, halfway through and lawyers came and went. Heaven knows what the cost is—we certainly do not. What was the result? Eventually, 16 of the original complaints were chucked out, four others were referred to a higher court, not a proper court, but another quango; a panel with the pomp of the legal system, but—I say this in this place—none of the fairness. That meant even more uncertainty for Paul Buchanan.
The panel— with a new bench of barristers—finally met in Somerset, and I went along to watch this gladiatorial sport. Key witnesses were called, but few, if any, turned up—most, understandably, did not want to have anything to do with it. The panel upheld one tiny charge: the heinous charge for which Paul Buchanan should have been dragged out and hung was that he had been overheard swearing under his breath. Is that pathetic or was it the crime of the century? I shall let you decide that one, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
What was really behind all this? Why on earth did a chief executive who was earning £160,000 year and who had 17,000 staff and huge responsibilities go to so much trouble to make complaints about what was seen as an ambitious councillor? Mr. Jones’s explanation to the Standards Board was beyond belief; he said that Paul Buchanan’s behaviour was
“capable of damaging the council’s continued improvement and external reputation”.
Whoop-de-doo!
That statement would stack up only if the charges against Mr. Buchanan were proved, but they were not and he was acquitted of everything serious, other than the crime of the century of swearing under his breath. We should recall what he was accused of: secretiveness, undermining staff, aggression, threatening behaviour, rudeness, intimidation, anger, disrespect, fraud, sexism, racism, and homophobia. He was probably accused of leaving the loo seat up too. This was simply a personal vendetta.
So why did Jones want to “get” Buchanan and what had Buchanan “got” on Jones? I am sorry if that sounds conspiratorial, but there is a big hint of conspiracy in all this. Mr. Buchanan knew too much. Back in 2005, there was gossip about Alan Jones having an affair with a member of staff called Jenny Hastings. Everybody at county hall knew about this—it was no secret. What Buchanan did not know was that when the affair came to an end Ms Hastings made a serious complaint of sexual harassment against Alan Jones. That is, of course, a sackable offence, and rightly so. The complaint had to be dealt with by a confidential panel of elected members, including the lady who led the council at the time. Halfway through she was taken ill—legitimately so—and Paul Buchanan, the acting leader, took over but he was never told about the inquiry. It was Alan Jones who let the cat out of the bag and he came to plead with Mr. Buchanan to help, but Mr. Buchanan rightly told Mr. Jones that he would not and could not help—big mistake. Unfortunately, Alan Jones has a long memory and he bears grudges.
By the time the leader returned to work it was deemed too dangerous to punish Jones by sacking him—that is perhaps just one of those quirks. Unfortunately, Jenny Hastings was threatening an industrial tribunal, which is a very public way of exposing the antics of her lover, and the Audit Commission was due to inspect the council. There is nothing like a five-star sex scandal to scupper one’s chances of an excellent four-star rating, as they say in the best adverts. So, behind closed doors, and with the help of ACAS, a deal was signed to buy Ms Hastings off—that cost £140,000, which is slightly less than the annual pay cheque of the chief executive. Some very large extra payments indeed were made, and in the next couple of years millions of pounds were spent on mysterious “staff restructuring” at Somerset county council.
I do not know the answer to this and I know that the Minister does not either, but I wonder, and we must speculate, whether any of that money helped to buy the silence of those who knew the gory details. Were they given a golden goodbye when they retired?
Paul Buchanan continued as deputy leader, taking a particular interest in the projects that were close to the chief executive’s heart, but Mr. Buchanan is no fool. He was apt to ask too many difficult and complicated questions.
The Minister will know of my interest in the development of a joint venture company between Somerset county council, Avon and Somerset Police and IBM—it is well known. The outfit is called Southwest One and I am afraid that it has made a complete hash of things in the county. The computer system does not work, and it cannot place orders or pay bills, let alone—and most importantly—save money for the county. Southwest One is a nightmare, and is the product of Alan Jones’s dream of radically improving services.
That is why the incoming Conservative administration—we had great success down there—immediately announced a full inquiry a few weeks ago into the whole sorry mess. They did so independently. The Jones philosophy was “anything goes”, which explains how he was able to hire the wife of the Avon and Somerset chief constable to set the thing up in the first place. Sue Barnes, the chief constable’s wife, became the Somerset project director without a formal interview and her hubby, Colin Port, is now on the board of Southwest One. I ask the House—is that right?
Paul Buchanan was involved in assessing the merits of the commercial bidders back in 2006. He was—let us remind ourselves—the deputy leader of the council, and he does know one or two things about business. He is a successful businessman. There were three rivals: Capita; British Telecom, for which Mr. Jones got a consultancy in Somerset; and IBM. With millions at stake, such companies spend fortunes polishing their bids. Guess what? They twitch if anybody speaks out of turn. I am sure that we have all had experience of that.
On 12 February 2007, Sue Barnes went to London with Paul Buchanan to meet IBM. My sources in the industry told me at the time that IBM was badly rattled—it thought that it was going to lose the bid. It had heard rumours that Alan Jones had been singing the praises of BT at a late-night drinking session at a conference of chief executives. I forgot to mention that “Big Al” likes to unwind with a glass in his hand and, dare I say it, a pretty woman, but this time he was overheard, unfortunately for him.
Sue Barnes and Paul Buchanan had to go and see IBM and to pour oil on troubled waters so that IBM did not walk away. Otherwise, the whole project would have gone belly up. I have no problem with procurement projects—neither have the Government or the Opposition. We all agree on that point. Within a day or two of that meeting, Jones’s attitude to Buchanan changed. He set out to destroy this man’s opportunities.
Jones sent a letter to the leader of the council about Buchanan’s behaviour and persuaded four senior councillors to sign it. Then, the Lib Dems called a mate—Councillor Richard Kemp—from Liverpool, Mr. Jones’s home town. Kemp, as a Liberal, is known as the Jackal. He is deadly, and Jones went to London to give him the ammunition—signed statements from people in and around his office alleging Buchanan’s “unspeakable” behaviour. They were probably signed in their own blood, too, for all I know.
I apologise to the House that I am forced to go into detail to explain this yet again, but I do not understand—and I am sure that the House does not—why a chief executive should be immersing himself in the political side of any council. That is not the job or the role of chief executives. They are meant to leave politics to the politicians—and rightly so. Somerset council, with a weak Lib Dem leader on her way out, thought that Mr. Jones could get away with anything and do what he liked. However, the Jackal came to Somerset with a cunning plan. If Buchanan quit as deputy leader, promised to shut up and to accept “mentoring”, the charges would be dropped. Mr. Buchanan rightly said, “I’m not going to play.” If he had agreed to the Jackal’s plan, he would have been accepting his own guilt. As we have proved, he is not guilty of anything other than swearing under his breath.
On 27 March 2007, the Government provided the assassin with a convenient smokescreen. It was the day that they published a list of councils that wanted to become unitary authorities. Unfortunately for us, Somerset was on the list. The Jackal reached for his weapon, fired off an e-mail and went to the Standards Board right away. This was where things came full circle. He wrote:
“It is an ideal time to deal with this because of the Unitary News.”
Does that sound familiar? The Jackal was using the old adage, “It is a good day to bury bad news.” No serious attempt was ever made to deal with Jones—that was what was meant to happen. Jones wanted to go to the Standards Board; the Jackal pulled the trigger. How times change.
I am sure that many hon. Members will have read the letter from the Jackal that was sent to the relevant Minister some time ago. It is required reading. It is from a Lib Dem, in his own words. He said of the Standards Board:
“There is no evidence that any of these boards have had any effect in improving behavioural standards. There is some evidence that they have encouraged people to make malicious claims about councillors.”
That is the Lib Dems’ top man, the Jackal. It is a miracle—the very man who specialised in malicious claims against Paul Buchanan has suddenly been converted, falling off his ass on the road to Taunton! At last the Jackal has seen the error of his ways, but it is too late for Paul Buchanan. The very outfit that the Jackal now wants scrapped is still turning the screw.
On 13 July the high court of the Standards Board, the adjudication panel, will meet to have another go at the allegations brought by Alan Jones. The nature of those allegations is quite extraordinary. We must remember that chief executives are immune from the Standards Board, so Mr. Buchanan decided to complain about the behaviour of his chief executive to Somerset county council. He wrote to the county solicitor and detailed a long list of shortcomings—womanising, drunkenness, bullying—and he gave chapter and verse, with all the dates and places. So what does “Big Al” do? He complains about the complaints, to—yes, the Standards Board!
It is true. He says that he is being bullied because someone has complained about him being a bully. It gets better: the Standards Board was obliged, yet again, to call in more lawyers, do more interviews, produce more transcripts and waste more time and money.
The House will be glad to hear that it will all come to a head on 13 July, at the Holiday Inn in Taunton. If people want to see a kangaroo court in action, there is space available and they should head down to Taunton. However, anyone expecting that the chief witness in this case would be none other than “Big Al” himself would be wrong. Mr. Cowardy Custard from county hall does not fancy being cross-examined, and I wonder why. He would much prefer to avoid all questions, about basically anything. He has reduced a tough TV producer to tears. I know, because she worked for ITV and she stopped on the motorway to ring me and complain.
I am afraid that Mr. Jones’ reputation is bad, but this time the kangaroo court that is the panel will not be asking him to attend. I think that that is appalling. In other words, Mr. Buchanan is expected to prove that he did not bully the chief executive without the chief executive showing up in court to give evidence, because he cannot be forced to do so. The panel might as well go back to the days of the ducking stool, and I think that we know what that feels like. A person is tied to a chair and lowered into a pond: if that person drowns, he or she is innocent; if not, he or she must be a witch and so gets executed. Good old Somerset!
What makes it doubly ridiculous is that Paul Buchanan is no longer a councillor and never wants to be one again. And what is the worst punishment available to the panel? They can ban him from being a councillor, even though he is not one. This is all too much.
The Standards Board has become a joke, and a very bad joke at that. It is about as much use as a fireproof match or an inflatable anchor. In a dotty effort to improve its awful public image, many of its powers have now been handed back to local councils, and that has made things much worse.
If Paul Buchanan were a councillor today and fresh complaints were made about him by Alan Jones, then the judge and jury would be Alan Jones himself. Personally, I would not want to be cast away on a desert island with Mr. Jones. I quote again from the Jackal, who said:
“The standard of decisions that are made by council officers…relating to standards issues is diabolically low”.
I shall leave it there, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I need say no more.
This debate gives me the opportunity to discuss the conduct regime for local authority members in general, and the work of the Standards Board for England and the Adjudication Panel for England in particular. It allows me to make clear the vital roles that both bodies have in ensuring that high standards of conduct are maintained by local authority members, and it also affords me the opportunity to put on record once again this Government’s support for the conduct regime for local authority members, the Standards Board for England and the Adjudication Panel for England.
The views of the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) about the Standards Board for England are a matter of record. Indeed, on 21 April he secured an Adjournment debate in which he spoke at length about the board. It is obviously a body that he feels strongly about, as he has taken the trouble to secure another Adjournment debate to discuss it again.
I want to speak about the work of the Standards Board for England and the Adjudication Panel for England, but I should make it clear from the outset that I am not able to intervene in individual cases. It is right that this is so, as it guarantees the impartiality of both the conduct regime and the investigation process. Equally, I am not going to comment on, or engage in debate about, any specific ongoing issue.
In this country, we have naturally high standards of probity, accountability and objectivity. Our expectations of behaviour demand a conduct regime that is serious, reasonable, robust and fair—fair to the public, and to all in public life. That applies as much to those elected to local authorities as it does to Members of this House.
The conduct regime is underpinned by the code of conduct for local authority members, enforced through local authority standards committees and regulated by the Standards Board for England. It gives a clear ethical framework for local authority members to work within and makes clear to the electorate the standards of behaviour that they can expect from those whom they vote into office.
In 2007 a revised model code of conduct for local authority members was issued, providing a yet clearer, simpler and more proportionate code for members. This code removed barriers to members being able to speak up for those whom they represent, for example on planning and licensing issues, and has been well received by the local government world. It is this code that all local authorities have followed in their own codes by which their members must abide.
Late last year, my Department consulted on proposed revisions to the code of conduct. We have received over 1,000 responses to the consultation, clearly indicating the level of interest in this subject. We are in the process of finalising our consideration of the consultation responses, and the Government will be making their response to the consultation in due course. This same consultation asked for views on the possible introduction of a code of conduct for local authority employees, and I know that the hon. Gentleman showed interest in this matter the last time the conduct regime was debated here, as he has done again this evening.
Of course, many local authorities already have their own codes of conduct, but introducing a model code, which would effectively be built into the terms and conditions of each local government employee, is not something to be done lightly or without extensive further consultation with the local government sector. I will not say more on this issue because I do not wish to prejudge the outcome of the consultation process.
In May last year, the Government fulfilled their White Paper commitment to introduce, as recommended by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, a more locally based conduct regime for members and co-opted members of local authorities in England. Devolving responsibility for conduct issues to local authorities provides them with greater ownership of the conduct regime and local conduct issues and boosts their role in promoting and maintaining a culture of high standards of behaviour in local authorities. This belief is shared by the local government world.
The Standards Board for England, which until this point had been responsible for investigating alleged breaches of the code of conduct, assumed its new responsibility as the strategic regulator of local authority standards committees, responsible for monitoring their performance and issuing guidance on the conduct regime. The Standards Board continues to investigate the most serious allegations of misconduct. So let us be clear that the regime in place accords with the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, including its recommendation of establishing a more locally based decision-making regime for the investigation and determination of all but the most serious of misconduct allegations, but with the Standards Board at the centre of the revised regime with a new strategic, regulatory role to ensure consistency of standards. If hon. Members are challenging this, they are challenging the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which recently approached the Standards Board for England for advice on how a successful, robust and transparent conduct regime operates.
The Standards Board for England continues to grow in its new role as strategic regulator. Earlier this month it was granted powers to engage with local authorities where there was a problem with how the conduct regime is operating. The board has the ability to suspend the operation of a local authority standards committee, either taking on its operation itself or asking another local authority to do so, while the board works with the authority to resolve any problems prior to allowing the standards committee to begin functioning again.
If, following the investigation of alleged misconduct, the allegation is founded and misconduct has occurred, it is usually the case that the standards committee of the local authority concerned determines how the misconduct is dealt with and what sanction to apply. Measures can extend from training for the party involved or having to make a simple apology, through to being suspended from office. If it is determined that the breach of the conduct regime is serious, then the standards committee or the Standards Board for England may refer the case to the Adjudication Panel for England for sanction.
The Adjudication Panel for England is an independent judicial tribunal established by the Local Government Act 2000 as a disciplinary body to hear and determine references concerning the conduct of local authority councillors. The sanctions available to the panel include suspension from office or disqualification from office for up to five years. The panel may also simply choose to censure a councillor who has breached the code.
Let me turn now to the subject of investigations. Prior to the introduction of the new regime, it was for the Standards Board for England to assess and if necessary investigate the some 3,500 allegations made about the behaviour of councillors every year. Under the devolved regime, the Standards Board investigates only the most serious of allegations. I realise that the process can be trying for those who are subject to an allegation that takes some time to investigate and resolve. Investigations can become protracted for a number of reasons. Some cases are complex and require the collection of evidence from a number of witnesses. In addition, fresh evidence may come to light during the investigative process. Unfortunately, we must also consider the fact that investigation can be protracted by the malicious behaviour of the subject or subjects of the allegation, who may have reason to fear the outcome of the investigation.
Serious allegations merit thorough investigation, and where the finding is that there has been a serious breach of the code of conduct, the Adjudication Panel for England will issue the appropriate sanction. Since December 2008, an ethical standards officer at the Standards Board for England has had the power to withdraw cases that have been referred to the Adjudication Panel for hearing in certain specific circumstances. They might do so, for example, when the matter is revealed to be less serious than it had first appeared. Of course, circumstances may change between a matter being referred to the Adjudication Panel and a hearing of the panel. For instance, a local authority member may stand down or may lose his or her seat in a local authority election. However, that in itself is no reason to not go ahead with a hearing by the panel.
There is a clear public interest argument to be made. If a local authority member breaks the code, they should not be able to walk away from the consequences of their actions simply by resigning, or losing, their seat. The Adjudication Panel has powers, including the power to ban a person from being a local authority member in any local authority for up to five years, for a reason. Such a sanction prevents somebody from simply standing down and then standing elsewhere, or indeed standing again in the same authority. In addition, that power gives an assurance to whoever brought the allegation that they will see redress if the case requires it. Let us also remember that the panel deals with serious breaches of the code. Issues such as bullying can have a real impact on people’s lives, and it is right that such behaviour should be addressed.
It is important that a member who ceases to be a councillor should have the opportunity to clear their name of a serious allegation. That is why we consider it important that an investigation into allegations should move to a conclusion, unless there is a good reason why the process should cease. An essential part of investigation is the collection of evidence, and I would like to take this opportunity to address the issue of evidence and the public domain. To be clear, evidence transcripts are not in the public domain. Witnesses will have the opportunity to check their transcripts, and the member who is the subject of the investigation will have the opportunity to see all transcripts, if they form part of the evidence bundle, in order to check for accuracy.
When the evidence is provided, all those concerned are reminded of their obligations under section 63 of the Local Government Act 2000, which requires that information obtained by the Standards Board’s ethical standards officers during an investigation is not to be disclosed unless one or more specific conditions, such as consent by the individuals concerned, are met. Anyone disclosing information in contravention of the Act is guilty of an offence. At a hearing, the public are not given transcripts. If they make a request, they are given a summary of relevant evidence, and some of the information from the transcripts may be in that summary. The summary itself will be referred to in open hearing.
Let us be clear that the vast majority of local authority members observe the high standards of behaviour that the electorate rightly expect from them, but a robust conduct regime is absolutely necessary to provide redress when the code of conduct is not observed. The Standards Board for England needs to be there not just to provide regulation for the standards committees that enforce the code of conduct, but to continue to supply advice, support and training to local authority members to ensure that they continue to work within the conduct regime.
Finally, we absolutely understand that investigations, and their outcomes, affect the lives of all those concerned in them. We know that politicians trade in the currency of trust, and that trust is hard to build and harder to regain. However, we are also convinced of the need for a conduct regime that is robust, reasonable and proportionate, and that provides a framework to work within, and an enforcement method to deal with those who are guilty of misconduct. A robust, fair and transparent conduct regime is vital to maintain confidence in democracy, just as the Standards Board for England is vital to the conduct regime.
Question put and agreed to.
House adjourned.