House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2015-02-27
Topic: Civil Rights
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): I should like to begin by thanking all my hon. and right hon. Friends who have taken part in the debate for their interest in the Bill. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) for making it clear at the beginning of his remarks that he supported the principle behind the Bill, and I am grateful to the Minister for confirming that the Bill conforms to the requirements of the European convention on human rights. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who, as always, has raised important issues that will need addressing as we go through the legislation I should like to put the new clauses and amendments, and indeed the Bill, into perspective. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said, the Bill basically does two things. It enables a suspension to go beyond the lifetime of the current Parliament, and it enables the House of Lords to expel a Member. It does not change anything else. It does not change the code of conduct or the environment in which the code is administered, and it does not change the interface between the House of Lords and the courts in regard to issues such as exclusive cognisance. So, to some extent, the broader issues that he has raised have already been dealt with in the context of the original introduction of the code of conduct and of how the system works The Bill has no direct impact on this House. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said that clauses had been dropped because they were controversial, but there has been no sign so far—certainly in the upper House—of any controversy. Indeed, there was an absence of controversy as the Bill went through. The upper House sees it as an important building block in restoring the reputation of that House, by giving it clear powers to expel a Member whose behaviour is unacceptable. There will be an indirect benefit for this House, in that anything that restores confidence in Parliament is good for both Houses I turn now to the new clauses and the amendment. I understand exactly why my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury tabled new clause 1. I understand that in the House of Lords, technically, it is not the Lord Speaker who lays such documents. That is in fact done by the Committee for Privileges and Conduct, which lays on the Table the reports of any investigation into the conduct of a Member of the House of Lords. The Committee is already required to do that by Standing Order No. 68 of the House of Lords, which states: "Reports from Select Committees shall be laid on the Table and ordered to be printed. Notice shall be given on the Order Paper of the day on which the report is to be considered ." I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend will agree that we do not need any changes to the legislation or to Standing Orders to enable such reports to be laid My right hon. Friend made an important point about natural justice. If he looks at the House of Lords code of conduct, he will see that paragraph 19 states: "In investigating and adjudicating allegations of non-compliance with this Code, the Commissioner, the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct and the Committee for Privileges and Conduct shall act in accordance with the principles of natural justice and fairness." Also, if he looks at those who sit on the Committee, he will see that it is required, by Standing Order No. 77, to include two former holders of high judicial office. I therefore think that we can be confident that the fate that befell poor Lord Lovat will not befall any errant peer; no one will be subjected to a kangaroo court. We can be confident that the principles of natural justice will be upheld. The Standing Order also states: "A Committee for Privileges and Conduct shall be appointed at the beginning of every session; sixteen Lords shall be named of the Committee, of whom two shall be former holders of high judicial office." My right hon. Friend went on to deal with the issues of privilege, and he referred to the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 and an amendment inserted in the Bill that became that Act by the House of Lords. That Bill was a very different animal from this one. The Bill then being considered contained provisions that seriously risked breaching privilege. He may well remember the decisive intervention of the then Clerk of the House, Malcolm Jack, who produced a report during the passage of the Bill expressing the concerns in this House. That Bill explicitly required the production of a code of conduct relating to financial instruments and it set out that it must be laid before the House of Commons. The Bill detailed at some length the procedure of any investigation into a breach of that code and established a new offence of providing false or misleading information about allowance claims The short Bill before us is a very different animal and does none of those things. Unlike with the 2009 Act, the Bill has raised no concerns from the Clerks of the Parliaments, nor has anyone raised any concern about its current drafting risking parliamentary privilege. As the Minister has just said, matters of parliamentary privilege do not need to be expressly stated in legislation in order not to be justiciable Let me now address the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on the code of conduct. A code of conduct is already produced, and it is published by the Committee for Privileges and Conduct. That already takes place under Standing Order No. 77. All reports from that Committee that have recommended that a sanction should be applied have included a very clear reference to the relevant provision of the code that was breached in each instance—that is also what happens in this House. The most recent investigation gives us an example of how this is done. The Committee’s report summarises and includes the findings of the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards and the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct, all of which include specific reference to which paragraphs of the code of conduct the Member was alleged to have broken. The most recent report states: "The complaint alleged that Lord Redesdale breached the Code of Conduct by not registering certain interests in the Register of Lords’ Interests (in breach of paragraph 10(a) of the Code) and by registering certain other interests more than one month after those interests came about (in breach of paragraph 13)." Other reports on the conduct of noble peers, such as the one on the conduct of Lord Hanningfield, contain explicit reference to which particular breach of the code has taken place. My understanding is that the case of Lord Rennard was not referred because the code specifically says: "Matters not falling within the Commissioner’s remit include…Members’ non-parliamentary activities." That is not wholly dissimilar to the rules that apply to us in this House and it explains why that case did not go before the relevant Committees.