My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for her preparedness to take on my amendment during my absence in hospital. I have always held her in high respect for her contributions on many issues, which is why I asked her to propose my amendment.
I hesitate to repeat the case made at Second Reading and in Committee, apart from drawing attention to my 15 years’ experience as a member of the Commons Privileges Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, was a member of that committee during the critical period that led up to the Nolan reforms.
I have supported recall for nearly 30 years. So what is the argument all about? I shall put it briefly. The Government’s original Bill, as presented to the Commons, required a suspension of a Member of Parliament of more than four weeks before the second trigger provoked a petition and a possible by-election. The Labour Opposition Front Bench moved its amendment on Report reducing the period of suspension from more than 20 days to 10 days or more. Having read the whole report of Committee in the Commons, I found almost no reference to this amendment in debate apart from speeches by Mr Docherty speaking from our Front Bench and the Minister replying on behalf of the Government. Furthermore, my approaches to a number of MPs who voted for the amendment revealed that they were totally unaware of its content. Only one MP whom I contacted knew of the amendment—Mr Kevan Jones, the Member for North Durham. Only two members of the Standards Committee and the Privileges Committee voted at Committee stage; the chairman and three members abstained and four members voted against. They opposed the 10-day amendment. The Conservative Benches in the Commons voted on a free vote in favour of 20 days—that is to say, they took my position today, which is to have a free vote. The truth is that there was no proper consideration of this 10-day amendment.
In my view, the amendment moved by my honourable friends and may well come back to haunt the Commons in the future. The effect of it will be to concentrate the mind of the Standards Committee’s membership not on the nature of a breach of the code of conduct and the appropriateness of any penalty imposed but on whether a suspension of more than 10 days could trigger a petition; the substantial expenditure by the local authorities on the petition process; a possible by-election with substantial expenditure by the local authorities and political parties, running into hundreds of thousands of pounds; and considerable political manpower being poured into constituencies as part of the campaigns. But, perhaps most importantly, a 10-day plus suspension could trigger political advantage or even disadvantage, which may well end up in the mind of a committee member. That latter consideration, among others, will transform a quasi-judicial committee into a political and politicised committee, and it is utterly inevitable—let there be no doubt of that. As I say, I say that as a former member.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, after the debates at Second Reading, asked me privately while we were seated what the difference is between 10 and 20 days. Surely, he said, the same principle applies. I want to answer that, because it is an important question. First, some cases need more than 10 days’ penalty, but not a by-election. The committee needs the flexibility to introduce longer suspensions without triggering a by-election. Ten days may well be too short a suspension period for some breaches of the code. If the appropriate suspensions are to be imposed under the 10-day rule, we may end up with an excessive number of petitions and a wholly discredited process. Finally, cases of more than 20 days are now few and far between, but such cases may involve major breaches and clearly warrant the petition procedure.
So how have my noble friends and my honourable friends on the Front Benches of both Houses sought to justify the 10-day amendment? Mr Docherty put it this way:
“According to the excellent research services of the House of Commons Library, it appears that that threshold would have been met on only two occasions over the past two decades, and that no one found guilty during the cash for questions scandal received a sufficiently long suspension to meet the Government’s proposed threshold”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/10/2014; cols. 69-70.]
That has been at the heart of the argument that they have used against us but, with respect to the very erudite Mr Docherty, that is an inadvertent misrepresentation of where we were at the time.
Both those cases took place prior to the expenses scandal. The first involved Michael Trend—I have read in its entirety the third report on February 2003—who was suspended for 14 days. His case turned on the dishonest designation of a house of a friend as his main home and claims for additional cost, when in fact he stayed there infrequently and, when he did stay, it was rent-free. The penalty today would be substantially higher—therefore, it is irrelevant.
The second case was that of Mr Derek Conway, on whom there were two reports—the fourth report of May 2007 and the third report of January 2009. Again, I have read them in their entirety. He was suspended for a total of 10 days, so he would have met the trigger, as it appears here. His case turned on improper payments to his sons, Freddie and Henry. Repayments were made to the Fees Office.
Both these cases would have incurred substantially higher penalties under the conditions that are currently in place. It is now inconceivable that such breaches would command penalties of only 10 and 14 days. If by any chance they were not the subject of criminal charges under Section 10 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, under trigger three, they would certainly trigger in excess of four weeks as a penalty under trigger two. That fact alone, and those two cases, destroys the Official Opposition’s case. I hope that when my noble friend deals with this debate from the Dispatch Box she is not tempted to use those two cases, because they are at the heart of the argument that I have been having with colleagues on the Front Bench in the House of Commons who support the amendment.
The second and final justification for the amendment is more credible. During meetings with Mr Docherty, we were told that Labour was considering longer term plans for the reconstruction of the Committee on Standards and Privileges. That follows upon the decision taken by the committee to establish a sub-committee and the report which everybody knew was being prepared. Obviously, other political parties have been involved in establishing their position and deciding how they wish to respond to the report. However, the setting up of the committee followed two recent reports, one on Mr Peter Lilley and the other on Maria Miller. Having read both of these, I recognise why the committee took the decisions it did on Peter Lilley. I confess to having some difficulty over the Maria Miller case, but that is not a matter for us. Recognising the need for reform from both Front Benches, the Standards Review
sub-committee, established to consider the future structure, is suggesting that the legislation we are dealing with today may well be further amended when it is considered at a later stage in the House of Lords. It says that the,
“system is likely to be affected by any Act resulting from the Recall Bill, currently passing through Parliament, which proposes to allow an MP’s constituents, in certain circumstances, to institute a petition for his or her recall. At present this will apply if an MP is suspended from the House for more than ten days. The Bill has not yet completed its passage and this may change”.
The people on the sub-committee recognise the dilemma. They were not going to comment on legislation going through the House but it is quite clear that they do not agree with what is in this Bill and they hope for some further amendment to be made at this stage or a later one.
That report makes a great number of recommendations, some of which I support and some, as I have already said, I oppose. Whatever the final recommendations are, they have not yet been approved by Parliament. This brings me to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. Why are we dealing with this now, without having heard the final position taken by the Committee of Privileges and a decision by the House of Commons on the structure of these committees? We have no guarantee that a reformed structure would command the support of MPs in the new Parliament. It would certainly have to pass the privilege test set by Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg in Committee on 27 October, as reported in col. 73. One could argue that the trigger provisions in the legislation should await reform of the committee.
We know that if the recall Bill, as currently drafted, is enacted, the new structure will still have to surmount the hurdle of the 10-day trigger. An increase in lay membership will not remove the problem because a controversial 10-day trigger petition and by-election could influence the deliberations and future decisions of a committee comprising a greater lay membership. A controversial by-election, called on a 10-day penalty, exploited by the media and with all the political ramifications being felt by the lay membership of a lay-dominated committee could, over time, enter the collective mind of the committee and meddle with its thinking on 10-day judgments. The lay members, and Members of Parliament on the committee, would be placed in a totally impossible position.
All roads lead back to the 10-day trigger. It has to go. The question is at what stage is it going to go.
5.45 pm