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Members' Interests

10.11 pm

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton) : I beg to move

That this House approves the First Report from the Select Committee on Members' Interests of Session 1991-92 (House of Commons Paper No. 326) relating to the registration and declaration of Members' financial interests, provided that the recommendation in paragraph 84 of the Report relating to the declaration of any relevant registered interest at the time of tabling an early day motion shall apply only to the Member in charge of such a motion.

As the House knows, this is the first of two debates this evening arising from reports by the Select Committee on Members' Interests. It is appropriate that I should begin by paying tribute to the Chairman of that Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith) and his colleagues on the Committee for their careful consideration of the sensitive issues with which they deal on our behalf.

I probably do not need to remind the House that the impetus for the report arose from an unhappy incident in the previous Parliament, following which there was a widespread view that the rules governing the declaration of interests needed some clarification. That view was echoed by my predecessor in his evidence to the Select Committee in 1991 when he said :

"there is still uncertainty among a lot of Members about what should and should not be declared under certain headings I think it would be a worthwhile thing to go through the list and actually give Members rather more detailed advice as to what should be declared and what should not."

The Select Committee's subsequent report on registration and declaration was debated by the House last year. The response on that occasion has led the Government to table a motion to give effect to its recommendations, with one modification, so that they can be effective in the establishment of the register for the next Session. The main purposes of the motion, therefore, are to authorise the use of the new registration form that the Committee proposed in its report and to give Members clearer and more explicit guidance as to the matter in which they should register their financial interests. I will briefly set out the main changes in practice that the report recommends. In many cases--this has perhaps not always been as clear as members of the Committee would have liked--the matters are of clarification rather than completely new provisions. Taking business interests first, a Member who has an association with a company is already required to name it, but he would now be expected to state briefly the nature of the company's business. Most people would think that that is reasonable.

As for shareholdings, the existing rule is that a holding of 1 per cent. issued share value of any company must be declared. That rule would be modified to require the registration of shareholdings with a nominal value of more than £25,000, as well as those that constitute more than 1 per cent. of the issued shared capital of the company. The new form would also require clearer details about clients of consultancies linked to the work of right hon. and hon. Members in the House. Right hon. and hon. Members must already register any consultancy firms to which they provide advice. The Committee's recommendation is that, in future, right hon. and hon. Members should not only register any consultancy firm to which they provide advice but list any of the firm's clients to

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which the right hon. or hon. Member personally provides any services. That, too, is more a matter of explicit clarification than of innovation, because I understand that at present the registrar advises right hon. and hon. Members who ask that they should register the names of clients on whose account they have worked.

The report recommends that membership of Lloyd's should be more clearly described. Ever since the register was established, right hon. and hon. Members have always been advised to register their membership of Lloyd's. The Committee now proposes that they should detail the individual syndicates to which they belong. I understand that the Committee's view was that, just as right hon. and hon. Members should register the nature of the business of firms with which they are connected, so too should they register the number of their Lloyd's syndicate--a measure that clarifies the nature of the insurance business with which right hon. and hon. Members are involved.

The report recommends also that the provisions relating to land and property should be clarified. Right hon. and hon. Members would not be required to list their individual holdings, but they would be expected to specify the nature and general location of any property other than--I emphasise this point--any home or second home that has a substantial value or produces a substantial income.

A new provision recommended by the Committee is that gifts in excess of £125, including cash gifts, would need to be registered, as would hospitality, services or benefits in kind greater than 0.5 per cent. of the parliamentary salary, which is currently about £155. Those limits are broadly in line with those for Ministers and would avoid the obvious absurdity of requiring an entry every time that, for example, someone attended a lunch or dinner.

As to the right hon. or hon. Member's relationship with his constituency party--there will be particular interest in this point in many quarters-- the report proposes a clearer definition of sponsorship. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden may have something more to say on that. It may help the House if I explain the Government's understanding of that section of the report.

The Committee's proposal on the registration of donations to associations applies only to donations from a company or organisation. It does not apply where the donor is an individual, and I am sure that it is right to maintain the privacy of such donations. Where a donation is made by a company or an organisation, the Committee proposes that it would need to be declared if it exceeded £500 and was made on a regular basis and was not just a one-off or occasional donation, and--perhaps this is particularly important--the donation was linked to an individual right hon. or hon. Member's candidacy or membership of the House, or if the right hon. or hon. Member himself acted as intermediary between the donor organisation and the constituency party.

It is important to note that where a donation is made as an expression of general support for the party, as opposed to support or sponsorship of a particular candidate, it would not need to be declared. As the report states on page 17 :

andidacy or membership of the House, should not be registered ; and similarly it will not be necessary to register a trade union donation to a constituency party which is not linked to the promotion of a particular parliamentary candidate."

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Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) : I speak as a Member of Parliament who was sponsored by the Confederation of Health Service Employees--as it will be for only a couple of days more, because it will be named Unison thereafter--only after selection and election. What is the right hon. Gentleman's interpretation of the new rules in my particular case, as I was not sponsored through the selection process?

Mr. Newton : Should the motion be agreed tonight, the hon. Lady may wish to obtain the registrar's advice. However, I understand that the hon. Lady would need to declare an interest only if the amount involved exceeded £500 a year and was linked directly to her candidacy or membership of the House. In other words, she would have to do that only if it were an annual sum that amounted to more than £500, which had been given on the basis that it related to her rather than to her constituency Labour party or association.

I am sure that the House will think it right that where an individual Member is receiving what amounts to--this is the case that the hon. Lady put to me--substantial sponsorship from a company or an organisation on a regular basis, sponsorship that is related to his or her candidacy or membership of the House, that should be declared. Equally, where donations are in support of the party itself, whatever their source or size, they would not need to be declared. None of this affects the existing rules relating to contributions to a Member's election expenses, which are unchanged. Members should continue to register any sponsorship that exceeds 25 per cent. of their election expenses.

There are also some provisions relating to Members' staff.

Mr. Tony Marlow (Northampton, North) : I own small amounts of property and I have always declared the fact that I own small amounts of property. Why is it relevant whether the property is in Lewisham or not?

Mr. Newton : My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Sir. G. Johnson Smith) may wish to comment on that question. That is the proposal in the Committee's report. I did not feel that it was a sufficiently important point to justify a special departure from an all-party agreed report that has put these recommendations before the House.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington) : Will the Minister answer a simple question that we argued long about in our Committee proceedings? Why should a Labour Member of Parliament sponsored by a trade union, who is under no particular pressure from that union-- [Interruption.] That is the case. We are talking about £600 per annum. Let us move into the real world. The fact is that £600 a year is a very small amount of money. [Interruption.] I agree that over five years, it amounts to £3,000.

Why should a Labour Member of Parliament be required to register and declare that sum of money, while a Scottish Member of Parliament who received £10,000 from a property developer in Scotland--hon. Members know about it because it is in the report, and the House may wish to comment on it tonight--is not required to declare that sum ? That hon. Gentleman did nothing wrong. He is a perfectly honourable Member of this House, but his constituency party received £10,000 in a

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12-month period. I want to know why he does not have to declare it, while a trade union-sponsored Member who gets £600 has to declare it.

Mr. Newton : It seems to me that the issue is whether that constitutes the regular annual sponsorship of a particular individual. The hon. Gentleman was a member of the Committee that produced this agreed report. It is open to him to advance the reasons for a different set of recommendations during the speech that he will no doubt seek to make, if he is successful in catching your eye, Madam Speaker. However, I am setting before the House as clearly as I can the recommendations that are contained in the report.

Mr. Campbell-Savours : May I ask another question ?

Mr. Newton : Perhaps I may make one point before I give way again to the hon. Gentleman. As I have just said, the hon. Gentleman, whose interest in the matter is well known, was a member of the Committee, and he has pressed me to put its recommendations before the House. It would be more appropriate, I believe, for him to develop the arguments in favour of his alternative report to the one that he signed in a speech, rather than by putting points to me in this way. However, I do not want to prevent him from doing so, if he wishes. Therefore I shall give way to him again.

Mr. Campbell-Savours : What is the difference between a trade union- sponsored Member of Parliament who receives £600 a year for his constituency party and a Conservative Member of Parliament who receives £600 a year from the local industrial council ? Is there more pressure on a Labour Member than on a Conservative Member ? We know that it goes on.

Mr. Newton : My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden may wish to elaborate on the point, but I understand that the Committee was quite reasonably seeking a definition of regular annual sponsorship related specifically to a candidate or Member rather than to the constituency Labour party, a Conservative association or, for that matter, a Liberal association. That was a reasonable distinction to seek to draw ; but if the hon. Gentleman thinks differently, he will no doubt elaborate on his reasons in the debate.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : I have been sponsored by the National Union of Mineworkers for 23 years and have been a member of it for 44 years. It is proper for Members of Parliament to declare in the register that they are sponsored by a specific union. It is important to do that. Those of us who are sponsored in this fashion are happy to let it be known, and anyway I do not take all that much notice of the union's decisions. For instance, the year before last, it was in favour of proportional representation. I said, "I am not supporting that and, what is more, I will change the union's view." I campaigned in the union to get it back on the straight and narrow--first past the post--which the executive agreed by 13 votes to three. It was a great campaign. I am quite happy to do that, but if Tories are getting money from businesses, the amount of money should appear in the register, because then it is quid pro quo.

Mr. Newton : I am rather more glad than usual that the hon. Gentleman's advocacy of a proposition was

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successful. It is entirely open to him to advance that point of view. I do not agree with it and it was not what the Committee recommended.

Mr. Skinner : What, first past the post?

Mr. Newton : No, I am talking now about the hon. Gentleman's subsequent remarks.

That was not what the Committee recommended. It is not what I am proposing and I do not think that the argument holds. If the union chooses to give money to Bolsover Labour party, I do not see why it should have to declare it any more than the report would require. If it is specifically related to the candidacy of the hon. Gentleman or his membership of the House, that is a different matter. That, as I understand it, is the distinction that the Select Committee was seeking to draw.

The report proposes that visits and benefits provided for Members' staff should now have to be registered. I had some reservations about this proposal and whether it was really worth the effort involved, so my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden arranged to consult the relevant staff associations, neither of which, although he may wish to elaborate on this, has raised any objection. Holders of permanent passes as Members' secretaries or research assistants will have to register visits, gifts or benefits on the same basis as Members. The report proposes some administrative changes. The Select Committee would be authorised to make minor--I must emphasise "minor"--modifications to the rules, such as to improve ambiguities or to bring financial limits up to date, without the need for further recourse to the House. The scope of such changes would be strictly limited, which I am sure the House will think right. The last sentence of paragraph 66 of the report states :

"other changes--and particularly any which involve a major alteration of the categories or definitions of registerable interests--will of course still require approval by the House." After a general election, Members would be given more time in which to complete the registration form. At present, they are allowed four weeks ; in future, they will have three months.

I draw to the attention of the House one issue on which the Government propose a slight change to what the Committee recommended in its report. Following an earlier recommendation by the 1974-75 Committee, which was chaired by Mr. Fred Willey, the Committee recommended that the sponsor and the first five supporters of an early-day motion, or an amendment to an early-day motion, should be required to declare any relevant registered interest verbally or in writing to the Table Office at the time of tabling. When the motion appeared on the notice paper, a symbol would be printed by the hon. Member's name to signal that an interest had been declared. I do not need to tell the House that the number of early-day motions has been growing significantly. I think that I am right in saying that, when I first entered the House just under 20 years ago, there were probably 500 a year. I know from business questions on Thursdays that there have been well over 2,000 in the present Session, and the flow shows little sign of stopping. Every day, the Table Office has to deal with several hundred added names-- sometimes more than 1,000--most of which arrive in the post. The recommendation, if it covered all the names

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suggested in the report, would therefore place a large additional burden of work on the Table Office and would divert the Clerks from the task of dealing with questions and offering advice to hon. Members, which I think the House would regard as more important. A further specific problem to illustrate the type of difficulty that could arise is that it might not be possible to tell hon. Members reliably whether their signature would be among the first six, as new signatures might already have been handed in which had not yet appeared on the computer. My advice to the House is that the main thrust of the Committee's recommendation can be achieved with an acceptable amount of extra work if the requirement is limited to the sponsor of the motion. That is the purpose of the Government's motion.

I acknowledge that it could be argued that someone could circumvent the provision by getting someone else to table the motion in his or her name, but it would not be much more difficult to get six other people to table the motion and then to add one's name as the seventh. The practical gain would therefore be limited in following the Committee's recommendation as distinct from that suggested in the Government motion.

Subject to the approval of the House, I understand that Madam Speaker has authorised the application of this procedure in relation to early-day motions--or acknowledgement of interests in respect of the first name--from the start of the new Session.

As I said in response to an intervention, some people will no doubt have reservations about one or more of the report's recommendations, and in both directions--some will have wanted it to go further and some perhaps not quite as far. However, the report has been produced by an all-party Committee and was generally agreed, although there were arguments on one or two points. The Committee was chaired by a senior and respected Conservative Member. I believe that the House would be right to accept these useful improvements in our system of registration and declaration--

Sir Roger Moate (Faversham) : I apologise for interrupting my right hon. Friend. On that very point, if one does have reservations--one can discern possible matters about which one might have some, despite the general acceptance of the report--is it right to approve the report in full, bearing in mind that it is often the small points that give rise to problems of interpretation? When my right hon. Friend answered the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow), he admitted to having a reservation himself. Is it right that we should give carte blanche approval, without further examination, to a report of considerable significance? Would it not be better to hear the views of the House and decide whether some of the points--

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes) : Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that interventions should be short.

Mr. Newton : I shall make two points. First, we debated this issue a little less than a year ago in order to asses the House's general reaction. It would be fair to say that reasonable support was expressed. Secondly, I do not think that I expressed a particular reservation in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) but said that, if it were a matter of explaining the Committee's thinking, it seemed more

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appropriate that it should be done by the Chairman of the Committee rather than by my attempting to interpret what was in the Committee's mind.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : Will the Leader of the House confirm that the report was compiled not on the initiative of Selective Committee, but in response to a request from the House following a debate about a former hon. Member who had complained about difficulties? The general view expressed by the House, through a vote on a motion, was that the Committee should clarify the rules. This report is a response to that request. Mr. Newton : Yes, I adverted to that at the outset of my speech.

Clearly, several hon. Members wish to contribute to the debate.I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Sir R. Moate) and the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) sensed that I was trying to bring my --I hope reasonably brief--remarks to an end. The improvements to our system of registration and declarations are useful ; they will remove some of the dilemmas that hon. Members have faced as a result of the lack of clarity in certain respects. I hope that the House will support their implementation tonight. I therefore commend the motion to the House.

10.35 pm

Mrs. Margaret Beckett (Derby, South) : I am pleased to be relieved of the necessity of continually asking the Leader of House, on behalf of my hon. Friends, for this debate. We are pleased to have tonight's debate and to deal with the matter before us.

We are particularly pleased because the initial move to set up a register, as the Leader of the House recognised, was made under a Labour Government in 1974. There were then two parts to the resolution. According to the first part of that resolution, the declaration of Members' interests should be made a rule rather than a convention. The second part of the resolution set up the register itself so that hon. Members could assess any pecuniary interest or other material benefit which might be thought to affect the conduct of Members or the influence that they might exert.

I wish first to refer to the emphasis in the initial report, and the emphasis in this excellent report, on the responsibility on individual Members to ensure that they satisfy the conventions and rules of the register and, if they are in any doubt, to err on the side of including matters in the register rather than leaving them out. As the then Speaker said in evidence to the Select Committee : "Members who hold consultancy and similar positions must ensure that they do not use their positions as members improperly." I am aware that many hon. Members, quite rightly, want to speak in the debate, so I shall be brief. With regard to the declaration of interest, when the register was first set up, many of the reservations expressed by those who were unhappy about the procedure were along the lines that it would be very important for hon. Members not to think that the register should replace the need for a declaration of interest.

To a certain extent, for all of us, such declarations are subjective impressions. However, it is my impression that declarations of interest are hardly ever made these days. I understand how that has occurred, as there must be an instinctive feeling among many hon. Members that if the

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matter is in the Register of Members' Interests, people are free to look it up. Indeed, one often sees hon. Members speedily consulting the register, particularly when debates on contentious matters are taking place.

However, I wonder whether the Select Committee or the House should consider whether there is any way of reminding hon. Members afresh of their duty to make a declaration and that that duty is not extinguished by the existence of the register. For example, I want to declare an interest in that I am proud to be a sponsored Member of the Transport and General Workers Union. That interest is declared in the register. However, I rarely recall hon. Members making such declarations in the House or in Committee these days. We should consider whether we can improve that situation.

Also, we are seeing a number of changes in public policy and in the assumptions and the conventions of behaviour which reinforce our concern about the register and also the need for hon. Members to consider whether they themselves would wish to make a declaration. If I may take an example from outside this place, increasing concern has been expressed about the way in which civil servants are seen to move--I recognise, of course, with the permission of the Government, with the waiving of the rules--much more directly than has been the case in the past, straight from Departments into private industries with which they frequently were dealing a short time before. That is becoming an issue of growing concern.

Without wishing unduly to upset Conservative Members, I draw attention to the fact that, after a long period in government, people retire as former Ministers. Paragraph 15 of the Select Committee's report refers to the fact that the ministerial rules are so phrased that Ministers are discouraged from using information that they receive as Ministers for private gain, and quite properly. We all recall well-publicised cases in which hon. Members have gone very speedily--more speedily than would have been expected some years ago--from the Cabinet into private companies and, in some cases, on to the boards of companies over whose privatisation they had presided. There is nervousness and unease in the House about those matters, which makes it all the more important that we should be vigilant and try to get the balance right.

It is right--this theme runs through the report, and some hon. Members may have doubts about it--that such issues should remain largely in the control of hon. Members. That is my own point of view because, when we are dealing with such issues, we are conscious of the degree to which our common experience might make hon. Members share a view which might not be so widely held outside. That is natural among any group of individuals who have some common experience and who have, therefore, to some extent shared perceptions and understanding of the nature of the work and its pressures. I am reminded, for example, of a letter that I received the other day from someone who is not a constituent of mine, mentioning an issue for me to raise because it was a matter of great concern to that individual. I wrote back as courteously as I could explaining that, as the matter involved neither a constituent nor an issue which came within my own domain, I did not feel able to take up the campaign. I explained that all hon. Members receive requests and pressures to take up certain issues and

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campaigns which they are simply unable to meet, physically or in any other way, and that everybody has to make choices.

I was slightly dismayed to receive a prompt reply saying, "I had no idea that Members of Parliament could choose what aspects of their work they wished to pursue. I am delighted to hear that. I will now renew my pressure on everybody to whom I have written and say that they must take up this campaign." Every hon. Member is conscious that such correspondence is received almost daily and that it is literally impossible for any hon. Member to take up all the issues and raise all the campaigns that some people outside this place wish us to take up.

For such reasons it is right that these matters should remain within the control of the House. However, while they remain within the control of the House and of hon. Members, it is all the more essential that it is seen that that control is not being misused and that we are vigilant about the standards that we apply. Otherwise it will be difficult to justify keeping the matter within the hands of hon. Members primarily.

It is sensible--to some extent it might be an answer to the issue raised by the hon. Member for Faversham (Sir R. Moate)--that paragraph 66 of the Select Committee report suggests that it should be within the remit of the Select Committee to make minor modifications. That paragraph refers to the need to make minor modifications to the guidance in order to remove ambiguities as well as to deal with altering the financial limits without it being necessary to come back to the Floor of the House for full authorisation. That seems a sensible proposal, as is the idea of the pamphlet which might provide one route for highlighting the issue of an hon. Member's declaration, although I think that perhaps it might be better to look for a stronger route.

Having identified some of the issues in the report which I unquestioning and wholeheartedly welcome, there are a couple of issues on which I wish to enter a caveat. The first is the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) in the previous debate on 23 June 1992, to which the Leader of the House referred. Indeed, the point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) a moment ago.

I am sure that the Leader of the House was accurate in his reply to my hon. Friend : that the way in which these matters are defined in the report and the considerations of the Select Committee has led to the difference that he identified between someone who got perhaps as little as £100 or £200 a year on a regular basis from a specific organisation where it is regarded as a sponsorship link to that candidate, and someone who might receive substantially larger sums, perhaps not on quite the same basis-- either it is not a regular donation, in which case one might imagine that it might come up under the next section headed "gifts" in the register or, alternatively, it is not seen to be linked to the candidacy of an individual but is given as a donation to the political party rather than as a gift to the member. There seems to be a real loophole.

Without wishing to stray into other matters which are outside some of our deliberations tonight, I am reminded that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) suggested that much of the identified moneys

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which go to the Conservative party go what he called "locally". How he defined "locally" is not entirely clear. I suspect that "within these shores" might be one of his definitions. However, if that is the case, as he implied--he suggested that perhaps even millions of pounds went to associations locally--that highlights the importance of that area to which my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin referred in June 1992 and to which my hon. Friend the Member for Workington referred tonight. That seems to be one issue which bears further investigation.

Mr. Tim Smith (Beaconsfield) : I think that I can help on that last point. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) told the Select Committee that, out of a total income of £26 million last year, £18 million was raised by local Conservative associations and only £8 million by Conservative central office centrally. That was the point--"local" meant local Conservative associations.

Mrs. Beckett : That is a helpful intervention from the hon. Gentleman, both in clarifying the point made by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield and in making precisely the point to which I have just referred. If it is the case that sums of such magnitude are being given in a way which apparently does not come within the purview of the register as it has been described, the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington is made in spades.

Mr. Campbell-Savours : The figures that the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) quoted are fascinating because when I wrote a paper on this issue for the Committee at no stage could I establish the figure. We are talking about large sums of money paid at a local level to constituency associations on a regular basis--payments of £500, £600, £700, £800, £900 or £1,000 a year are often made. [ Hon. Members :-- "No."] Why do we not see the accounts to establish that?

Mr. Tim Smith : They are published.

Mr. Campbell-Savours : No, they are not. If the accounts are published, I can ask the hon. Gentleman, can I?

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hogg) : You can see the accounts of Grantham conservative associatioat any time, if you want.

Mr. Campbell-Savours : I will take the right hon. and learned Gentleman up on that offer. I hope that that will be recorded in Hansard.

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. We cannot have general conversations.

Mrs. Beckett : I do not wish to dwell on this any further, although I suspect that other hon. Members will do so on other occasions. If it is the case that £18 million was raised among some 650 associations, that seems to be a substantial interest which does not appear in any way to be covered by the register as it stands at present or, indeed, by the proposals before us tonight. The second issue that I raise is the more general issue, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) in the Select Committee. The issue was whether the amounts that individual Members raised, rather than the fact that they received a pecuniary

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or other reward, should be quantified either as a sum or as a band. I am aware that there was discussion in the Committee and a vote, and that the proposal was defeated on two grounds. One ground was the general issue of individual privacy and the second was the ground that what might be a significant sum to one Member, because of his financial circumstances, might be of less significance to another Member in different circumstances.

Although I can follow that argument, I point out that if a donation or gift of £10,000 or £25,000 is of no consequence to an hon. Member because his wealth is so great, the likelihood is that the sum would show up in the register because the hon. Member would list the other interests and concerns that had made such an amount pale into insignificance, in his terms. So the argument does not stand up in general terms

We should consider putting the matter in the public domain, perhaps through a band within a certain range.

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Such donations should not be excluded. I suspect that the Select Committee will have to return to the matter in the future, just as some of the issues contained in the report that we are discussing tonight are issues with which the Select Committee previously thought that it did not need to deal, but which it has over time come to realise are necessary.

The issue of strengthening the register is important. The Leader of the House referred to the information coming from the register which exists for members of staff, such as researchers. That, too, is the right step. The Opposition take the view strongly that, although we all want to respect the proper privacy of hon. Members, on the other hand we are all working within the public domain and owe to the public their right of scrutiny and their right to information which should properly be available to them.

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10.52 pm

Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith (Wealden) : I thank my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for moving the motion, with a minor modification, and for his general support. That was appreciated by all members of the Select Committee on Members' Interests. I also express my gratitude to the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) for giving a broad welcome to the report, although with certain more substantial differences of opinion.

For the benefit of some new Members whom I see here tonight, I should say that we all recognise that having to register and to ensure that is something that we have to do because if we do not, some people might think that we are corrupt.

I remind the House that when we agreed to introduce the register in 1974- 75, we did not do so because we believed that there was corruption in the House. I believe that compared with any other Parliament or democratic assembly in the world, we are the least corrupt. We agreed to the introduction of the register because we believed in the need for openness and for transparency in a representative democracy. The point that has been made on other occasions--I do not apologise for making it again--is that in the absence of openness, rumour and innuendo can flourish, especially in the media. I leave it at that.

It is not a pleasant task to look into complaints. We do not relish it at all. The House asked us to see how the duties of Members, under the regulations laid down, could be made clearer. That was the sole purpose of the exercise.

Other matters had to be considered, of course. When there is some ambiguity, there is bound to be inconsistency in the way in which Members declare their interests. Making things more explicit was therefore another objective.

As I have dealt with this matter at greater length on a previous occasion, I do not want to labour the point. I do not want to weary the House by going over ground that was covered a little more than a year ago. Nor do I want to duplicate the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. However, I must emphasise that when we embarked on this exercise none of us thought that we would burst upon the House of Commons with a report setting out a whole lot of new and draconian rules. The objective is to make the existing rules clearer and more specific and to try to establish as the standard the current best practice in registering financial interests. We realise that some hon. Members would like to go further. The right hon. Member for Derby, South referred to one very important division in the Committee and, I expect, in the House as a whole. That division concerns whether we ought to recommend recording the actual amounts of remuneration deriving from outside interests. This is a delicate issue. It may not go away, but we have tried to proceed on the basis of consent. I very much appreciate the fact that, during my years as its Chairman, the Committee has been able to proceed with reasonable unanimity, helpfulness and co-operation across the often rather large gulf between us.

I want to emphasise that the report was debated last year. It has been on the Table. I am grateful that it has now

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come before the House for debate, but I should be even more grateful had it come sooner. Hon. Members have had time to consider what changes, if any, should be made in it. I wish that the Committee's recommendation about early-day motions could be accepted, but I appreciate the practical considerations that the Leader of the House has mentioned, and I should not want this comparatively minor point to be an obstacle to progress on the report's central proposals. The last thing we want to do is introduce some cumbersome bureaucracy.

I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) was totally satisfied with the reasons for registering a property in Lewisham. We found that there were often generic entries, such as ownership of a farm. Some hon. Members have registered properties that are apparently their private residencies, although that is not required. In the report, my hon. Friend will find these words :

"We accept that it would be unduly burdensome to require Members to list all their individual land and property holdings in minute detail. This would, moreover, breach the principle of reasonable privacy, to which we attach importance. But we do consider that more uniformity of practice is desirable and that entries should be reasonably specific as to the nature of the property and its general location. For example, Woodland in Perthshire' or Six lock-up rental garages in Lewisham, SE London' ".

We thought that that would be a perfectly acceptable form of entry.

Mr. Marlow : Why does my hon. Friend think that it is useful to know that the garages are in Lewisham rather than Lambeth?

Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith : I do not think that I would go so far as to say that. Anyone with a hang-up about the geographical location could discuss it with the registrar. I do not see that, for these purposes, there is any difference between garages in Lambeth and garages in Lewisham.

Mr. Campbell-Savours : Or London.

Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith : Or London.

The little extra information enables us to judge the extent to which, for example, a farm is a smallholding in a rough area, such as the one I represent, with poor land and clay, as opposed to some of the lush pastures of the exquisite farmland in Perthshire. That is what we are trying to elicit from hon. Members who register under this heading.

I should like to outline the next steps, assuming that the motion is accepted. The next printed edition of the register is to be published early next year. It is customary for the registrar to circulate all hon. Members some weeks before the register is reprinted to remind them of the need to update their entries. Without that annual reminder, it is amazing how forgetful we can be. That circulation, probably in November, will be the obvious occasion on which to send out the new registration form for the first time. Because the new form differs from the old one in some material respects, it will be necessary for hon. Members to return the completed form, just as they did after the general election, and not merely to amend their existing entries.

In accordance with paragraphs 68 and 70 of the report, the registrar will also be drawing up an explanatory leaflet to assist hon. Members in completing the new forms. That is important. The leaflet will need to be examined by the Select Committee, but it should be ready for circulation at

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