I want to make a brief intervention in this debate, because so far no one who has sat on the Standards and Privileges Committee has spoken. During the course of the debate, a number of assertions have been made about how that Committee operates. We heard from one hon. Member that there was risk of a tabloid campaign leading to the upholding of a complaint against a Member who would then find himself confronted with a 10% petition in his constituency. Another Member asserted exactly the opposite—that the Standards and Privileges Committee was a cosy clique that protected other Members from justice. Let me therefore explain the Committee’s role, the environment in which it operates and the very real constraints on what its members can do.
First, there is an independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. That commissioner, who is independent of Members, investigates the complaint and produces a report saying whether or not the complaint should be upheld. Members of Parliament and members of the Committee have no role whatever in the production of that report, which is always published. Members are then free, if they so wish, to go against the finding of the independent commissioner, but they of course need
very good reasons so to do. They are going to have to stand up in public; they cannot simply say that they do not uphold the complaint, as reasons have to be produced.
One quite recent change is the introduction of lay members on that Committee. It is true that the lay members do not have a vote, but they have something much more effective—a veto. If they disagree with the elected members of the Standards and Privileges Committee, that disagreement is put into the pubic domain. Any attempt by Members of Parliament to shield a colleague from a wholly justified complaint would be shot to bits by the lay members publishing a report in disagreement. Further changes are that the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee cannot come from the Government Benches. When I chaired the Committee, there was no Government majority on it. The notion that the members of this Committee, in the words of one Member, “chase the Whips’ bauble” is a gross injustice to the independently minded MPs who serve on the Committee. I think they would deeply resent some of the allegations made against them.