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Mr. Michael Colvin (Romsey and Waterside) : Earlier the hon. Gentleman said that he supported the third motion, but I believe that he means the second, which was originally the third.
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Dr. Cunningham : I apologise for that slip of the tongue. I meant that I supported the motion in the name of the Leader of the House calling for the matter to be referred to the Select Committee. I am pleased that the House is conducting this difficult debate in a serious manner and, I hope, even in a mood of some magnanimity. There is nothing worse than a sanctimonious mob on such occasions. It must have taken considerable courage and fortitude on the part of the hon. Member for Winchester to apologise unequivocally and fully, and I pay tribute to him for that. He has accepted the report of the Committee and, no doubt, will accept the decision of the House.5.34 pm
Mr. Michael Colvin (Romsey and Waterside) : I support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Mr. Thompson) and me, which has been selected for inclusion in the debate. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) and congratulate him on the non-partisan way in which he approached this subject. I hope that that will be echoed by others who take part in the debate.
Although I support the motion in the name of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House in respect of agreeing with the Select Committee on Members' Interests' report, and its endorsement of the Committee's findings, I cannot agree with the suspension of my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Browne). He has been pilloried unmercifully and unjustifiably in the national press, but he has not been treated so by his local press, which knows him better. He and his family have been through a living hell since long before the inquiry began. I submit that he has suffered enough. Although I accept that this is a matter for the House to decide, I do not believe that hon. Members should feel obliged to rub salt into the wounds. As has already been mentioned, this is a House of Commons occasion, much more so than a party political one, but it is also an occasion that we should not relish.
I also agree wholeheartedly with the second motion tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend, particularly regarding further study of the procedures that the Select Committee uses to investigate complaints such as this. The Select Committee considered complaints from a journalist who, for a number of years, has had a financial interest in investigating my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester. He said to the Committee :
"I've got cracking on Mr. Browne for years."
The hon. Member for Copeland has already said that the procedures are imperfect. Under those procedures, the Select Committee was unable to let my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester present his case as fully as he would have liked, call witnesses to give evidence on his behalf, or cross- examine the complainant or his other witnesses. It was a rather weird form of trial, but the Committee was not, of course, a court of law. My hon. Friend has not broken the law of the land ; he has broken the rules of the House of Commons.
Mr. Michael J. Martin (Glasgow, Springburn) : Although the House may not be a court of law, does the hon. Gentleman agree that an hon. Member's reputation could be ruined as a result of the decision of the Select
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Committee? If an accusation is laid against anyone, it is only natural justice for him to be entitled to invite witnesses on his behalf and also to cross-examine.Mr. Colvin : The response to that welcome intervention demonstrates that the hon. Gentleman's remarks are supported by most hon. Members present.
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith : Under the present procedures, it is possible for an hon. Member in such a situation to call witnesses--we have never denied that. We were working within the rules. Evidence was presented from the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Browne)--in writing, it is true-- and he was also able to comment, in writing upon the evidence supplied by the complainant. The same privilege was given to the complainant.
Mr. Colvin : The House will also welcome that intervention, and I think that it will accept that, when we seek to find justice, an analogy should be drawn with courts of law. I hope that the House will agree that the Select Committee should undertake a study of its procedures, and perhaps it will draw on the analogy of courts of law to see whether procedures can be improved so that hon. Members who appear before it as a result of complaints have a fairer opportunity to present their case and cross-examine witnesses.
Mr. Campbell-Savours : I cannot understand the hon. Gentleman's point. He says that witnesses could not be called. As I understand it, the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Browne) conceded to the House today that he was in error and made mistakes. Why should he want to bring witnesses when he concedes that he was in error?
Mr. Colvin : I am referring to the general procedures, not the specific case. As I said, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester has already admitted that he broke the Rules of the House. I am saying that those rules are accepted by all to be imprecise. The letter from the Registrar that accompanies the form that we are regularly invited to complete sets out the Register's fundamental purpose. It states :
"the purpose of this register is to provide information of any pecuniary interest or other material benefit which a Member of Parliament may receive which might be thought to affect his conduct as a Member of Parliament or influence his actions, speeches, or vote in Parliament."
That description is capable of widely different interpretations, and it is not surprising that, in those cases where a complaint against my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester was upheld in the Committee, it was as a result of oversight or failure on his part to understand what the rules are all about.
Mr. Dalyell : In the light of what the hon. Gentleman has just said, will he give the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Browne) an opportunity to clarify what some of us understood him to say in his opening statement, to the effect that he was less than happy with some of the procedures? If the hon. Member for Winchester was unhappy, should he not specify why he was unhappy and what he was unhappy about? Should he not be given that opportunity?
Mr. Colvin : That would prejudge the study that the Select Committee is about to undertake. From the reaction
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of the House so far, I do not think that many hon. Members are entirely happy with the Select Committee procedures under the rules as they are currently drawn. That is what the Select Committee has to consider.Hon. Members will know only too well that our duties as Members of Parliament and the triangular way of life that we lead, consisting of Parliament, the constituency and home--home always seems to come last--put heavy strains on our families and marriages. Some of us are lucky and some are not. The divorce rate among hon. Members is one of the highest.
My hon. Friend was one of the unlucky ones. His particularly acrimonious divorce and the determination of his ex-wife to destroy him were largely responsible for the journalistic inquiries and subsequent complaints, based largely on evidence produced mainly by the former Mrs. Browne. It is not our job to debate the matrimonial affairs of my hon. Friend. However, we must acknowledge that it was mainly his divorce that led to the complaints against him. Probably the most damaging of my hon. Friend's errors of judgment was, following a bad press in connection with his divorce, to proceed with his private Member's Bill on privacy. I can well understand why he did that, but it was probably because of that Bill that the national press has been doubly hard on him during the past few months.
My hon. Friend's constituency is adjacent to mine, and for a while he was my Member of Parliament. I have seen him at work in and around Winchester, and I have read the many good things about him and his parliamentary and constituency work in my local press. No one works harder for those whom he represents. He certainly had difficulties with his constituency association following his divorce, when, understandably, people took sides. We can also divide his association today into the "workers" who are for him and the "talkers" who may be against him.
But then Winchester has a record of being tough on its Members of Parliament. Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles, now Rear-Admiral Sir Morgan Morgan- Giles, who will be remembered with great affection and respect in this place, also faced--
Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr) : Gunboat, gunboat.
Mr. Colvin : Did the hon. Gentleman shout, "Gunboat, gunboat," because that is what they used to shout?
Admiral Morgan-Giles also faced a special general meeting calling for his deselection--we Conservatives started it long before the Opposition thought of it. I forget what the issue was about ; it was either the route of the M3 or the fact that his majority had slipped below 20,000, but he saw off his opponents by 2,000 votes to 120. I hope that my hon. Friend does so too, if he is forced into that position.
Whatever action we may, or may not, take tonight, it is the electors of Winchester who will have the final say. They sent my hon. Friend here and they will decide whether he returns at the next general election. From experience, I believe that he will return. At the general election in 1987, his majority may have fallen, largely due to demographic changes in the constituency, but his personal vote actually increased.
There are many people in Winchester who give my hon. Friend considerable support. The Dean of Winchester, who was for some time Mr. Speaker's chaplain, said some
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good and supportive things about my hon. Friend on television just the other day. The lord lieutenant of Hampshire, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir James Scott, in whose home my hon. Friend has a small flat, backs him. His Member of the European Parliament, Mr. Edward Kellett-Bowman, said that he was the hardest-working and most helpful of his constituency Members of Parliament. I intend no untoward criticism of other hon. Members in his Euro-constituency. My hon. Friend now has a wife who is enormously loyal and supportive to him and his work as a Member of Parliament. She has been an absolute brick through these hellish months and is immensely popular in his constituency. My hon. Friend has made errors of judgment--we all accept that, as he does. But then, who has not made such errors? He has broken our rules, but that is partly due to the loose way in which they are written. My hon. Friend has apologised generously to the House for his mistakes. The House is magnanimous and understanding enough to accept his apology, and I am sure that, when this sorry day is over, whatever the outcome, for the vast majority of us, the hon. Member for Winchester will remain our hon. Friend.5.48 pm
Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield) : We are not debating the general conduct of the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Browne). When the speech of the hon. Member for Romsey and Waterside (Mr. Colvin) is read in Hansard, it will be seen to have been wholly irrelevant to the major questions that concern the House.
We are having one of those rare debates when the House discusses the obligations that Members of Parliament owe to their electors and each other, the question of openness in Parliament, how open we should be and how to deal with cases when there may be a conflict of interest between a Member's duties to his or her constituents and his or her pecuniary interests. This is a House of Commons matter, as has been said, and it affects us in all parties. We are all responsible for what we do, both as individuals and as Members.
I have tabled two amendments, and I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for selecting them. The first recommends a reprimand rather than a suspension, and the second calls for legislation in place of the voluntary Register, because we are dealing with potentially corrupt practices. I am not speaking about the hon. Member for Winchester ; I am talking about potentially corrupt practices.
I read the Select Committee report ; it upheld some grave and serious complaints. The hon. Gentleman has done himself and his party and the House damage, but because of the very fact that we have all suffered, we have to be careful how we act in this case. The party of which he is a member must be very embarrassed by what has happened, and the party of which I am a member must be tempted to exploit it politically. The whole House is angry that the conduct of one Member might have damaged the public esteem in which all Members are held. It is not just that we are not a court of law, although we are not ; it is also that we are not exactly an independent jury in the hon. Member's case.
The hon. Member for Winchester has not broken the law, because there is no law. That is what is wrong, and the people on trial today are the House, more so than the hon. Gentleman.
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I do not favour suspension, for the reasons that have already been widely canvassed. Members are elected by and are answerable to their constituents. Candidates are answerable to their local parties. The sentence proposed is the wrong one. One, two or three months' suspension without pay is absolutely meaningless. I had not realised until it was explained that the hon. Gentleman will be able to use the facilities of the House, so what possible punishment can there be in that, if indeed punishment be meant? However, the suspension would deny the electors of Winchester a voice in the House that they might need, and we have no right to deny them that.I have therefore looked at other remedies and settled on the one that my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) suffered--the penalty of a reprimand. The Leader of the House said that a reprimand was not as severe as a suspension. Any hon. Member who has seen a reprimand will know that it is more severe than a suspension. The hon. Gentleman in question would stand in his place and Mr. Speaker, wearing his three-cornered hat and seated, would deliver the reprimand, which would be recorded not only in Hansard but in the Journal of the House. I would regard it as a terrifying experience to be reprimanded by the Speaker for a breach of a resolution of the House. With television, the experience would be even more frightening.
So I recommend that the hon. Gentleman be reprimanded, not suspended, for an offence which he, in all fairness, admitted in his statement was an error of judgment.
Mr. Paul Channon (Southend, West) : The right hon. Gentleman referred to the last occasion when a reprimand was administered. Many of us who saw that occasion thought that it was a repellent event that should never be repeated. Can the right hon. Gentleman recall it? If so, does he really consider such a reprimand an appropriate remedy?
Mr. Benn : I can only say that the House must act when its own resolutions have been defied. I voted against the suspension of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Brown), giving the same reasons that I am giving now--and my party was more angry then than the Conservative party. I believe that a reprimand is a proper way to deal with a breach of rules. They are, after all, only rules--
Mr. Joseph Ashton (Bassetlaw) : Is my right hon. Friend aware that I was severely censured and reprimanded by the House for alleging that Members of Parliament were available for hire? Later, it was proved that Maudling, Cordle and Roberts had indeed been hired, but no one ever gave me a free pardon. That is one of the problems with reprimands or censures : one can be reprimanded and then proved right.
Mr. Benn : I give way to the hon. Member for East Lindsey (Sir P. Tapsell).
Sir Peter Tapsell (East Lindsey) : May I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) has just said? I thought that the last reprimand in the House was a nauseating occasion. The House should never go through those procedures again.
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Mr. Benn : The House must make up its own mind. The Leader of the House said that my proposal was less severe than a suspension, but I do not take that view. I shall vote against the hon. Gentleman's suspension for any length of time, and I shall vote against the hon. Member for Romsey and Waterside (Mr. Colvin), who said that nothing should be done.
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) : Does my right hon. Friend agree that these interventions by Conservative Members confirm precisely what my right hon. Friend has been saying--that a reprimand is more serious and humiliating than suspension? So my right hon. Friend is surely on the right track.
Mr. Benn : I am trying to think of an appropriate response by the House to a breach of its rules which will not impose a financial penalty on the hon. Member for Winchester. After all, a month's suspension without pay sounds like a penalty imposed by a court of law, and it denies his constituents the right to be represented. I am much more concerned with my second amendment. What obligations do Members owe the electors of this country? That is the real question. I have been trying to follow through the obligations that we assume. First, all of us before we are elected issue an election address. I have never yet met a Member who has put his business interests on his election address. The election address contains political pledges, and so on.
Next we come to the House and go to the Table. I have been struck by the strangeness of our arrival, with an election address that has helped to propel us here. We take the oath :
"I do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors according to law. So help me God."
We do not say that we will implement certain programmes or abide by the rules of the House ; we just give a ritual oath of allegiance. Once we are here, how do our constituents see what we do? They read Hansard or, if they can afford £10, they read the Register of Members' Interests, which is a business prospectus--all 98 pages of it. Any company that wants a contact with a Member of Parliament would do well to start by looking at the Register of Members' Interests to see who could be recruited to its board from among the new Members. That is a much more serious matter.
Then we must consider how to define interests. I, like every former Cabinet Minister, received a confidential minute from the Prime Minister :
"Cabinet : Procedure. Questions of Procedure for Ministers", signed by the Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan on 23 April 1976 : "I circulate a memorandum on questions of procedure".
This is a little more formidable. Any hon. Member who has ever been a Minister might care to remind himself of what Ministers are expected to do. I regard it as outrageous that the document is not published. That is a limitation on some Members of Parliament that is not known to others.
Paragraph 67--I doubt whether it has changed much in 14 years--reads :
"It is a principle of public life that Ministers must so order their affairs that no conflict arises, or appears to arise, between their private interests and their public duties."
That should apply to all Members of Parliament.
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"Such a conflict may arise if a Minister takes an active part in any undertaking which may have contractual or other relations with a Government Department".That should apply to Members of Parliament, too.
"Ministers should be free to give full attention to their official duties, and they should not engage in other activities which might be thought to distract their attention from those duties."
Perhaps that principle should apply to Members of Parliament. "Ministers must on assuming office resign any directorships which they may hold, whether in public or private companies and whether the directorship carries remuneration or is honorary."
That might or might not be applicable to the House as a whole. This is a wholly different approach from the cosy investigation of a voluntary undertaking which was introduced years after it should have been.
I have already mentioned the issue of disclosure. No disclosure is made to the electors, who have a vested interest in the matter. I believe that when the polling card is sent by the electoral registration officer it should include a register of all the interests of all the candidates as well as of the Member of Parliament. If that is not done, there should be a requirement that the electoral address should include them. The average elector connected with any party does not go to the Register of Members' Interests to find out the interests of his candidate. People should be allowed to know, and that would be a provision.
In law there are no rules on interests. I am interested in these matters and I looked up the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975. There are 11 pages of disqualifications to over 300 offices. Any Member who applies for, and receives, the Chiltern Hundreds is immediately disqualified. What is it about the Chiltern Hundreds that makes it a task incompatible with membership? It is the notion of an office of profit. I looked up some of the offices that lead to disqualification and found that some of them are absurd. They include membership of the Pilotage Commission and chairmanship of the British Library Board ; and 43 amendments have just come out.
We should define offices, whether of profit under the Crown or anywhere else, that are incompatible with membership. I regard as quite incompatible with membership of the House the chairmanship of a company that has contractual relations with the Ministry of Defence or any other Government Department. That should be a disqualifying office and the House should look at that in terms of legislation. It might even remove some of the disqualifying offices in the House of Commons Disqualification Act.
There is no definition of a corrupt practice. "Corruption" has many meanings and is interpreted in many ways, but it is the use of improper influence to secure something. If a candidate in an election goes around putting 50p coins in pints of beer, in the way that candidates in the 19th century used to do with half-crowns, that is a corrupt practice. Such people are taken to court on an election petition and the court determines whether they have acquired a seat by a corrupt practice. That is all laid down in the Act. I have some of the old cases before me and they show that that is the proper way to deal with an issue that we have been dodging through a debate that has not got to the root of the matter.
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These matters should be dealt with by the courts. As soon as the House passes a law it will not be for us to interpret that law ; it will be for the courts.Mr. Hugh Dykes (Harrow, East) : Like, I suspect, some other hon. Members, I agree with the attractiveness of what the right hon. Gentleman suggests--the idea of a compulsory or legal registration system. The majority of hon. Members do not receive unearned income, dividends or unearned income from wealthy wives. This matter bedevils British politics. Most hon. Members have to rely on their salary or on some other source of earned income. Under the Labour Government in 1975 a vote on linking the salary of hon. Members to the salary scale of assistance secretaries was defeated by a large majority. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if the House had grasped the nettle of setting a realistic professional salary for Members there would not be orientation towards dubious outside interests?
Mr. Benn : To take an extreme case, it is arguable that a Member of Parliament should publish his income tax return. That is a clear answer to the hon. Gentleman's question. I doubt whether that would be welcome, but if the House adopted such a rule it would settle all the arguments about private incomes. When my father was first elected in 1906 there was no parliamentary salary. He worked as a journalist in the City of London in the morning and went to the House in the afternoon. The House could be filled if people had to pay £1,000 a year to be a Member, especially as we now know the business interests that can be attracted by a Member of Parliament.
I should now like to deal with the register of lobbyists. The hon. Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Members' Interests, spoke about that. The whole business world that has grown up around influencing Members of Parliament is staggering. I throw away 95 per cent. by weight of my mail every day, all of which is paid for by the Chancellor of the Exchequer because it is a legitimate business expense to send annual reports to hon. Members.
The Palace of Westminster is crowded with lobbyists. Anyone who wants to know where they are has to look at The House Magazine. I looked it up and photocopied a couple of pages. The Freight Transport Association represents the total transport interests. There is also the name of its controller of legal and parliamentary affairs. We should not need to look at The House Magazine to find who is trying to win our support ; there should be a register. I would go further and say that research assistants and perhaps members of the Lobby should be reasonably asked to declare their interests.
Mr. Campbell-Savours : They already do that.
Mr. Benn : In that case, I should like to add another category of temporary people attached to the House. I had a letter from an American student who asked me to take him on as a research assistant, which I did not do. I am sure that many hon. Members had such letters. He included with the letter his curriculum vitae and a reference which I shall read to the House. I shall not mention his name so that he will not be embarrassed. The letter was from Michael Lekson, deputy counsellor for political affairs in the American embassy, and he said what a wonderful man this guy was. He said that he had
"clearly gotten full benefit from his earlier internship at the House of Commons. We profited considerably from his
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knowledge and insights about Commons' members, procedures, and folkways--most notably in delegating to him two priority projects. The first was to select up-and-coming Conservative parliamentarians to submit to an Embassy committee choosing potential recipients of International Visitor grants. This process was a bureaucratic nightmare. Identifying the future leaders was only the start. He also determined who had been considered before by researching through chaotic files in this and other offices ; got the essential personal and possible travel data from the potential nominees without committing the Embassy to offer a trip ; and documented his nominations for consideration by a traditionally sceptical committee. Mr did all this superbly--and, as a side -benefit, systematised our computerised records on parliamentarians. Eight of his nine nominations have been accepted and the ninth is under active consideration."I have tried to introduce a note of humour. People send their interns here for very good reasons. I would like the American embassy to give us a list. We must legislate on this matter.
Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch) : The right hon. Gentleman has touched on a matter that will strike a chord in the hearts of many hon. Members. As it returns to the subject of lobbying, the Select Committee on Members' Interests would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman and any other hon. Members would submit as evidence documentation of the sort that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned. The right hon. Gentleman implied that a large proportion of the costs that American research assistants incur are met by the British taxpayer.
Mr. Benn : I am not getting at researchers, because my son was a research assistant to a senator in Washington and came back and wrote a thesis on the White House staff. I am not complaining about researchers, but I am saying that we should know and we should legislate. Nothing has convinced me more of the need for legislation than hearing the cosy and courteous way in which we have spoken about the hon. Member for Winchester. We have dodged our own failure to take seriously the fact that a Member of Parliament is an attractive target for business people and that there is money to be made by Members of Parliament.
There is no enforcement. If the House is an enforcement body, it is the most curious one that I have come across. I fear that we will create a scapegoat and say that that is that. However, the problem will remain. I do not believe in "scapegoatism" ; I believe in getting to the root of the matter. If we were to legislate, the matter would be resolved not by the Select Committee or the Leader of the House but by a court. I know that some hon. Members do not like to have courts looking into the conduct of Members of Parliament, but the decision to which I have referred was taken years ago. The House of Commons decided then not to try contested elections in the House itself, but to hand them over to the courts.
Up to a certain date--I do not remember when ; it may have been 1700 or a bit later ; in any case, the matter is referred to in "Erskine May"--if there was a petition against an election, the House voted. But it voted on party lines. So the matter was pushed out to the election court. I speak as somebody who has appeared before two election courts. Actually, one of them disqualified me. Two judges, having sat for a fortnight, said that nothing had changed since 1626, and, as a result, I was thrown out of the House.
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A court to look at the proper relationship of Members of Parliament, with their financial interests, to the House and to their constituents is what we should be considering.It is with some regret that I say that I fear that the Palace of Westminster is in danger of degenerating into a marketplace, where influence is traded for favours, where backhanders and patronage are rife, and where we turn a blind eye to these things. We have the ancient rituals- -the office of profit under the Crown, the Chiltern Hundreds--but we ignore the real conflicts between financial and commercial interests and parliamentary duties. Parliamentary privilege has come to be a means of protecting Members from their constituents, whereas I have always taken the view that parliamentary privilege is intended to protect constituents and to enable Members to do their job.
There is a certain high-minded cover over our proceedings, designed to confuse and mislead people into believing that all is well. If we want to end the cynicism, let us realise that this debate, if interpreted in a certain way, could lead to greater cynicism. If that happens, we shall have damaged the institution itself. Perhaps it is time to turn the money- changers out of the temple. Today is the time to begin.
6.11 pm
Sir William Shelton (Streatham) : I listened with great interest to the speech of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). I have some sympathy with what he said, because, like him, I am not entirely happy with the procedure that, as a member of the Select Committee, I underwent during the period of the Committee's examination of this matter. I think that, in all, that was nine months. The Committee's report is unanimous, and I agree entirely with its finding. In that respect, I have no quarrel at all. The fact that the report came out so well was due not only to the Committee's members but also to its Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith). He was an excellent Chairman, who handled the Committee extraordinarily well.
But it was not a pleasant experience. As has already been mentioned, there was talk of stolen documents. In many cases, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Browne) had no copies. As has been said, a divorced wife passed evidence to a journalist, and writs were issued against that journalist. Eight-year-old handwritten notes--perhaps forged, perhaps not-- were put before us. Not surprisingly, in view of the time lag, there were conflicts of evidence. It really was a most unpleasant business.
Of course, in 1982, when all this happened, the climate of opinion in the House was very different from the climate of today. Indeed, at that time Mr. Enoch Powell refused to register at all. We have been judging my hon. Friend in respect of events in 1982 by standards of 1989. I do not say that that is improper. However, it is what we have been doing, and I am sure that the House would wish to keep that in mind.
My conclusion, about which I have thought a great deal, is that, within the rules of the House, justice was indeed done by the Committee. However, I question whether natural justice has been done to my hon. Friend. "Natural justice" is an expression that was used earlier today. I question whether the retribution bears any relation to the offence. Let me explain as quickly as I can
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why I have the sense of unease that I have had for several months, and why I find myself being critical of rules of the House. First, those rules are ambiguous ; they are subject to various interpretations. Even we on the Committee had to have a discussion before we could agree exactly what they meant. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield talked about their friendliness and cosiness. It is fine to be friendly and cosy, provided the stakes are not so high, but when the stakes are as high as they are in this case--at stake is not only my hon. Friend's reputation but perhaps even his living, not only as a constituency representative but also in respect of business matters--one cannot be friendly and cosy.I refer to this wretched business only for the purpose of illustrating the point I am making. Paragraph 3 of the introduction to the report refers to a resolution of the House which says that the Member
"shall disclose any relevant pecuniary interest or benefit of whatever nature, whether direct or indirect, that he may have had, may have or may be expecting to have."--[ Official Report, 22 May 1974, Vol. 874, c. 538.]
Let me apply that to the case of 3Cs--one of those in respect of which the case against my hon. Friend was upheld, although no action was recommended. I use this case merely to demonstrate why I think that, perhaps, the rules are too cosy and friendly.
Clearly my hon. Friend wanted to make money out of cable over a period. However, in March 1982 he wrote to the chairman of Thorn-EMI stating that he had considered setting up a company but had come to the conclusion that it would be best to work for the major corporation rather than start a new company. A copy of the letter appears on pages 117 and 118 of the report. He asked--rather naively--whether the company needed a consultant. In the following months, the company invited him to lunch and told him that it did not need a consultant.
A few days later--on 20 April--came the debate on cable. What was my hon. Friend to declare in that debate? Clearly he was not to declare that he had started a company--he had not. Clearly he was not to declare that he was seeking a consultancy with EMI--he had been turned down. What was he, therefore, to declare? The view that the Committee took was that he should have declared that he was going to start a company--indeed, he did start a company a few weeks later--or that he wished to make money out of the cable business, or something like that.
My hon. Friend, in his evidence, said that he had decided after the debate to start the company, because it had been such a good debate. I agree with the finding of the Committee because of its phrase "or might be expected", but I cannot release myself from the feeling that there is there a certain amount of ambiguity that could lead to misinterpretation.
Mr. Campbell-Savours : I think that the hon. Gentleman is being clear with the House, but perhaps he could be even clearer if he were to say that that was not the only matter on which the Committee deliberated. There was also another document, which referred to the fact that 3Cs had been set up "some 18 months ago". That was almost 18 months prior to the speech in the House of Commons. While it could not be proved that 3Cs had been set up, the Committee received other evidence--again evidence that has been published--showing that the idea of 3Cs certainly had existed some six months earlier.
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Sir William Shelton : As the hon. Gentleman knows, we debated this matter, if not for weeks, then for days, and if not for days, then certainly for hours. I understand entirely what he says, and he will remember the arguments that I put forward.
Let me return to the rules. The definition of "relevance" in page iv, paragraph 3, is left to the discretion of the Member concerned. The rule continues :
"The extent to which the details of the relevant interest are disclosed is also a matter for the Member."
If my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester read that, he might be forgiven for thinking that he had nothing relevant to declare, and therefore did not have to declare anything. Either the words in the rule mean something or they mean nothing, and clearly they do not mean anything. The issue of relevance appears to be left to the view of the Member, and clearly that is not the position. That is why I am led towards the possibility of introducing legislation of the sort that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield was talking about. I turn my attention to another rule which guided the members of the Committee. I refer to paragraph 5 at the top of page V, which states :
"The purpose of this Register is to provide information of any pecuniary interest or other material benefit which a Member of Parliament may receive which might be thought to affect his conduct".
Thought by whom? Clearly not by the Member himself--that would be nonsense. Clearly not the complainant, because of the 10 complaints which were made the Committee upheld three or four. Does the rule mean it is the view of the public? That, too, is clearly nonsense. It comes down--not necessarily wrongly, and perhaps rightly--to the members of the Select Committee and then to the House. That must be the interpretation of the phrase, but that is not apparent from the rule.
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