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Privileges Committee: First Report

My Lords, perhaps I may detain the House briefly with a matter that has already been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, and others. It relates to the advice given to the four Peers before and indeed during the committee’s sitting. These are matters of which many noble Lords may be unaware and the references made in those speeches were, if I may say so, dealt with very lightly, and do not give the full picture. It may assist the House to have just a little more background. In January, before the Committee for Privileges sat, as I understand it, each of the four Peers, but certainly the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, was sent a letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, accompanied by the code of conduct and by a document that is now in the Printed Paper Office—I know that it was not earlier when other noble Lords were asking for it—headed, Guidance for Members of the House of Lords against whom a Complaint is made. Paragraph 6 of that guidance note states in the clearest possible terms: ""The House has no power to suspend, expel or fine its Members. If a complaint is upheld, therefore, the only sanction available to the Sub-Committee and the Committee for Privileges is to bring the conduct of the Member concerned to the attention of the House"." It then continues to describe other matters that relate to failure to declare interests. That was the guidance that each of those four Peers received before they were summoned before the committee. That guidance has been dismissed as wrong, but it was of course wholly in accordance with the advice that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, gave subsequently, which was that there was no such power to suspend. No doubt whoever drafted the guidance did so on the basis of that position. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, handed those documents to his legal advisers and took their legal advice, which was based, in part, on that guidance. As a result, he did not himself give evidence before the committee, although he was represented. As we have heard, there was the later, detailed advice from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and now a suspension is recommended to this House in two cases as a result of that advice being accepted by the committee. That advice may be right, it may be wrong. It is for your Lordships to make up your minds. I am not a constitutional lawyer and I do not propose to try to argue one way or the other. I listened carefully to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, just said. What was undoubtedly the position was that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, did not know of that advice until after the report was published. Indeed, it is not clear to me from the few members of the committee to whom I have spoken whether they were made aware of the guidance that had been sent to the four Peers beforehand. As a matter of natural justice and fairness, surely it cannot be right to start what was in effect a disciplinary procedure on one basis, conduct the proceedings on that basis and subsequently change tack, so as, in effect—I deliberately use these words—to impose a retroactive punishment. Certainly one of the noble Lords took advice based on the guidance given by this House. Whether he would have given evidence or not otherwise, I clearly do not know, but it seems that there has been a breach of natural justice in the procedure adopted that could lead to an extremely embarrassing legal challenge subsequently, if we proceed to suspend. It may be that we disregard natural justice in relation to matters about which we feel particularly strongly; I hope that we do not. It may be that although the European Convention on Human Rights makes it clear that we are entitled to a fair trial, sometimes the greater political need causes us to be blind to that. I urge the House to be very slow indeed in rejecting paragraphs 14 and 15 of appendix 1 to the report in which the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, urges caution. There are many ways in which we can expel people from this House in ways that do not involve the word expulsion. We can, for example, invite them to take leave of absence. We can also, if they insist on coming, move that they are no longer heard. We have many ways of making this House’s displeasure known. We have come here, all of us, with heavy hearts, to try to protect the integrity of a place about which we care greatly. That is all the more reason, in an atmosphere packed with emotion, that we should get it right. If we suspend, having told these four Peers in advance that that was not going to happen, it seems to me that we are running a grave risk of breaching natural justice, which we want to see preserved.