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House of Lords: Code of Conduct

My Lords, I welcome the report. I have heard reference made to the other place. I shall not go into all the details regarding its problems, because that would certainly keep the House up all night. However, I have a worry which I should like to put to the Leader of the House. I have no objection to there being a Commissioner for Standards, or whatever name we may wish to give that person, but the House must make sure that that commissioner gets a proper job description. I shall tell you why. Three parliamentary commissioners served while I was Speaker in the House of Commons, and they all approached their work differently. Some Members felt that if they had been investigated by a previous commissioner, they might have been treated fairly or differently. It used to be the case that self-referral to a parliamentary commissioner in the House of Commons was not acceptable, but because so many honourable Members were being badgered by the press for an investigation by the commissioners, many Members have sought, and have been able to obtain, self-referral. Self-referral is not necessarily a good thing, because it means that people that can be bullied into going to the parliamentary commissioner. We all talk about the freedom of the press, and no one would wish to take that away. However, the press have an awesome power. I have looked at some of the stories that they have covered in the House of Lords and the House of Commons. I have heard Peers who are legally qualified. The press often do not make even a prima facie case in a newspaper. Members of the press love to get someone to say that they are reporting an honourable Member to the parliamentary commissioner. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, was right to say that the practice of one Member making a complaint against another has dwindled away. However, what certainly happened in the other place was that when the media were looking for a complainer, they tried to get one of our own. That is what they will do in the House of Lords—they will try to get a Peer to complain about another Peer. That is not a reason for not having a parliamentary commissioner, but it is a reason for giving them a proper job description. I should not like a case to go to Strasbourg. However, in the other place, it is frowned on when an honourable Member brings a lawyer as a representative before the parliamentary commissioner. In the outside world, whether in an unfair dismissal tribunal or any other hearing, if someone brings a lawyer, everyone would say that they have a right to do so. Sometimes people are not necessarily articulate in front of an investigative body, no matter how articulate they are in other ways. If a parliamentary commissioner can find against a Member in a case, although it would be taken to a committee of your Lordships, that could lead to the destruction of a reputation or a career. We must ask ourselves whether such a case could one day be taken to Strasbourg when a person has not been treated fairly. If a person is refused a lawyer at the beginning of an investigation, some people might argue that that is unfair. I do not know. It may be that others will be able to say whether it is. However, it is a worry. I recall one commissioner complained bitterly and was put up as a victim by the media. Although that commissioner’s four-year contract had expired, he said "I should not be dismissed". I do not know, but I have worked in factories, and if I had been told that my one-year or four-year contract was up, I would have no solid complaint and I would have fulfilled my contract. However, a commissioner put such a case, to the extent that every subsequent commissioner in the other place has been given a non-renewable contract of employment. That is why I say that a commissioner’s terms of employment must be explicit. Members of the other place have a secretarial allowance, additional costs, a communications allowance, an office costs allowance and travel expenses. Consider the amount of funds at the disposal of Members of the other place and Members here. I may be wrong, but I think that the commissioner in the other place works a three-day week. Our allowances are far smaller than those in the House of Commons. I think that I am right in saying that one of the first paragraphs of a publication of this House states that your Lordships boast that they are cheaper than the House of Commons. We do not cost as much. If that is the case, the parliamentary commissioner that we employ in this House will certainly not have the volume of work that exists in the other place. On fairness, complaints about someone can be very vexatious. Perhaps a candidate has an eye on a marginal seat. That will not be the case here, but there can be vexatious complaints. The Leader of the House should examine the cases that have been brought before the parliamentary commissioner in the House of Commons. She will see that some of them have been very minor indeed—items which should have been resolved by the Speaker saying to the Chief Whip, "It has come to my notice that this Member has breached the rules on the use of parliamentary mail or the communications allowance", for example. As a result of the way complaints go around, very small items have been brought before the commissioner and the Committee on Standards and Privileges and have been acted on. In other cases, a Member might have been in the wrong but other people did not made a complaint against him: or he might have been involved in a matter of misconduct that was far larger, but because there was no complaint, nothing happened. I end by saying—noble Lords who are lawyers will perhaps tell me whether this is just—that, until recently, when I complained, it was the case that when a report was made about a Member, even if the Member was found not guilty, and in fact when the Member was found not guilty, there was an item on the back of the page of every report referring to, "The case against the honourable Member for such and such"—in other words, even the "not guilty" verdicts were published in every report that went out courtesy of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. If, God forbid, I was brought up on a charge in Glasgow sheriff court and found not guilty, when the next person was charged and found not guilty, there would be nothing on his docket saying, "By the way, Lord Martin was up here last week and was found not guilty". That was the nonsensical situation that we found ourselves in because no one tightened the job description of the parliamentary commissioner. I said that that was my last point, but one more thing has come to mind; the Americans call it the statute of limitations. There is a ruling that parliamentary commissioners do not go back more than so many years. There is some logic to that, because you cannot have a sword of Damocles hanging over someone for 15 or 16 years. However, a case has been looked at by the Commons parliamentary commissioner that went beyond seven years. That is unfair. The matter should have been dealt with at least within five years. I ask the Leader of the House to look at these matters. It is one thing to say that we have an all-singing, all-dancing parliamentary commissioner; it is another when the problems start with the media looking for one of our own to report another Peer, so that they can say, if the matter goes on for weeks, "By the way, this person is under investigation by the parliamentary commissioner". That would put a taint on them. I know that we are all equal, but they will look for the great and the good.