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Privileges Committee: Second Report

My Lords, I wish to say a few words about the guide and some residual concerns that I have over implementation. I gave evidence originally to the Nolan commission and to Wicks in his review of the House of Commons between 1997 and 2001. I also prepared a detailed proposal for a guide and code of conduct for the Eames committee. My first observation concerns presentation. We will have two documents—the code of conduct and the guide—and I suggest that we should publish only one document, which is the position in the Commons. The Commons document has the code of conduct together with the guide to the rules so that there can be no misunderstanding as to what is the relevant document when anyone is considering their position. I welcome paragraphs 109 and 110, which establish the remit for the commissioner. Following my experience on the Standards and Privileges Committee in the House of Commons in the period 1997 to 2001, I expressed concern to the Wicks inquiry about the remit for the commissioner being tightly defined, unambiguous and clear. There is a danger of remit drift, which can lead to anxiety in the House about the limit of the remit, particularly in the minds of those who are the subject of complaint. Remit drift can also instil a sense of expectation in the media as to what can be investigated by the commissioner. One area of the remit concerns me. Paragraph 110, which deals with, ""Matters not falling within the Commissioner’s remit"," includes "Members’ non-parliamentary activities". That is very broad. There may be circumstances where a breach of public duty responsibilities unrelated to parliamentary activities but related to a Member’s conduct, while not constituting a criminal offence may bring dishonour on the Member and, indeed, on the House. For example, a case might arise in the management of a charity, in third-party influence on a contract or—and I am not political point-scoring when I say this, because it affects all parties in this House and all Members—in accuracy of declarations of domicile. That is an important issue for us all. Paragraph 5 relates to the Ministerial Code. It has been my view since the early 1990s that the Ministerial Code should be enforced not by the Cabinet Office and the Cabinet Secretary but, in the Commons, by the parliamentary commissioner for standards and, in the Lords, by the commissioner for the House of Lords. That responsibility should be transferred to them and taken away from the Executive. Paragraphs 19 and 20 in the appendix to the guide to the code of conduct could cause confusion, not only in the code but in the guide, and could potentially lead to abuse. Perhaps I may quote selectively without destroying the sense intended. It states: ""Members may not … advise outside organisations … on process, for example how they may lobby or otherwise influence the work of Parliament"." It then states: ""The following is not parliamentary advice … advice in general terms about how Parliament works"." Paragraph 20 states that, ""a Member may exceptionally give parliamentary advice to an organisation … with whom the Member has a financial interest, provided that the Member can demonstrate that: he or she does not receive payment or benefit in return for the provision of parliamentary advice or services. The Member should … be able to show that the payment or benefit is provided in return for some non-parliamentary advice or service which the Member provides"." There is a built-in contradiction. While the great majority of the House will, I am sure, honour this part of the code and guide to the letter, it is inevitable that there will be those who breach the provisions and what I believe to be the intentions of the guide. I am concerned also about paragraph 90, which deals with declarations in Committee. I understand that it has been the case for quite a time—it is not new—that one declares an interest at the beginning of a set of proceedings in Committee; in other words, one does so at the beginning of Committee stage on a Bill. I have never believed that that is satisfactory. What happens in conditions where a Bill may run in Committee for seven, eight, nine or 10 sessions? Is it sufficient for a Member simply to declare their interest at the beginning of a Committee stage on a Bill in a way that covers all amendments that might be moved during it? The public may well be misled and a Member may stand publicly accused of not declaring a relevant interest. I know that we are here to act on our honour. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, was very careful in his original report—wisely so in my view and, I am sure, in the view of all of us—to emphasise the need for honour in the way in which we conduct ourselves. But I say it again: honour varies between Members and there will be some who do not see it being as important as others do. The issue of domicile should be dealt with in the code, so that when a Member signs up at the beginning of a Parliament to the code they are effectively signing up to whatever rules might exist on domicile. My objective in making my observations, most of which I communicated to my noble friend Lord Hart of Chilton during the many months that he spent toiling over the code of conduct along with other members of that committee, is simply to flag up certain issues that the committee may wish to consider when it reviews what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, referred to as a living and evolving document. The whole code is based on personal honour. I only hope that we are all capable of living up to the very fine intentions as set out both in the guide and in the code.