House of Commons Hansard Debates for 18 May 1995

Mrs. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman clearly has not read the Nolan report and recommendations. That is not what Lord Nolan is suggesting.

Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): It was the hon. Lady's answer--not Nolan.

Mrs. Taylor: The hon. Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) doth protest too much. The fact that he has not read the report and its recommendations, and so does not know the context in which I am speaking, is his

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failing. I would have thought that he should do his homework before coming to such an important debate. Lord Nolan makes clear the circumstances in which such hearings should be published. One of the things that pleases the Opposition and that we appreciate about Lord Nolan's report is that he accepts our case that, wherever possible, the Privileges Committee should sit in public. That is a significant step forward.

Sir Peter Hordern (Horsham): Will the hon. Lady take into account the fact that many complaints are lodged before the Comptroller and Auditor General about his work in the public sector and that most of those never see the light of day? I assume that she is proposing that, if complaints are lodged against hon. Members, the official, whoever it may be, would work in a similar way to the CAG, that he would sift out what was necessary to refer to the Privileges Committee, as the CAG does in relation to the Public Accounts Committee, that he would make his report, but that it would always be up to the Privileges Committee to decide whether there was substance in that report.

Mrs. Taylor: The right hon. Gentleman understands the position completely. He also understands the concept of an appointment, which other Members do not. The officer would sift every inquiry. The officer would be charged with recommending to the Privileges Committee or to the Sub- Committee which Lord Nolan suggests whether there was a prima facie case. Any inquiry would be made only in those circumstances, and several layers of suggestion are recommended in the Nolan report, but, at the end of the day, Lord Nolan says that evidence and decisions must be made in public.

Mr. Leigh: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Taylor: No. I must make some progress and some other suggestions.

It seems that some Conservative Members do not want to have a serious debate on this matter, but we need to make some positive suggestions about what should happen. Some hon. Members are under a misapprehension about the proposal for a parliamentary commissioner for standards. I have heard it said that such a proposal would undermine the sovereignty of the House. That is not the case. It is being suggested not that Parliament's sovereignty should be diminished but that our work should be assisted by someone who is independent and in whom the public can have a high degree of confidence.

Ms Eagle: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a good idea to work on these proposals, as the Select Committee on Members' Interests sometimes has difficulty gathering evidence? The fact that it has limited resources to do so in relation to issues that are often of great importance to the Members concerned must be borne in mind.

Mrs. Taylor: My hon. Friend has significant experience of the difficulties of serving as a member of that Committee. Its members, who have had to deal with many complaints in the recent past, have found it difficult. I recognise the problem there. It would be helpful to them

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or to their successors in the Sub-Committee of the Privileges Committee if they had the assistance of someone of that sort.

Mr. Leigh: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Taylor: We should move on to consider what sort of person and what sort of position this is. My suggestion to the Nolan committee, and the suggestion that is in its report, is that we should consider the position with regard to the Comptroller and Auditor General, who is appointed by letters patent on the advice of the Prime Minister following consultation with the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. We could consider the way in which the parliamentary ombudsmen is appointed. It is extremely important that we should move very quickly. We should aim to have someone in place by the beginning of the new parliamentary Session in the autumn.

Mr. Steen: I deeply resent the implication in Nolan that all of us are crooks. Does the hon. Lady believe that appointing an ethics officer, as she is implying, will solve the whole problem for the nation, and that all the problems that she says exist will disappear as soon as that officer is appointed? Why does she think that that will happen?

Mrs. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman clearly has not read Lord Nolan's report or his recommendations. That is a slur on Lord Nolan and all the members of the committee. There is no suggestion in the report that all Members of the House are crooks. Hon. Members resent Members on any side making such allegations. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reconsider what he has said.

Mr. Leigh rose --

Mrs. Taylor: I must move on because I have a serious point to make. I sometimes think that Conservative Members are not interested in serious points.

The changes that have been recommended by Lord Nolan could come into place relatively quickly. There are other changes that will take a little longer and will need some discussion--for example, those to our Committee procedure, including changes in relation to the Privileges Committee and the possible establishment of a Sub-Committee. That is important. One of the factors that we must bear in mind is that those changes must not be allowed to cause any hiatus by which any of the outstanding matters subject to investigation by Committees fall by the wayside. Important investigations are still being undertaken by the Privileges Committee and by the Select Committee on Members' Interests. We must protect those investigations, despite the difficulties and, sometimes, inadequacies of our procedures. We must ensure that that happens. It is important to ensure that all those outstanding investigations are completed in a proper way.

As I said, there is a need for urgency on this matter--I cannot stress that enough. The public will not understand why, having received Lord Nolan's report, we do not accept it and move on from there. It was extraordinary to listen to the Prime Minister's responses at Question Time to the questions of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister set up an independent review body to investigate standards of conduct in public life, not least because of the concern caused by some of his own Back Benchers. The Nolan committee has

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recommended that Members of Parliament should reveal their interests, including the amount that they are paid by outside bodies. That is one of the Nolan committee's most central points, and we accept that recommendation.

Today, however, the Prime Minister announced not only that he did not have a view as to whether those central recommendations should be accepted by the House but that he was now prepared to leave the decision to the very same Back Benchers whose financial interests brought the House into disrepute in the first place. That is a remarkable admission by the Prime Minister and it shows perhaps that his concern about our image and the workings of the House is skin-deep.

Mr. Garrett: Does my hon. Friend recognise that there will be great pressure on a future Labour Government to increase restraints on outside earnings by Members of Parliament, whatever the hardship that that causes among those on the Conservative Benches, and that we should think hard about what we are going to do, so that we can produce policies that enable Members on both sides of the House who fear such restraints to refrain from running in the next election?

Mrs. Taylor: My hon. Friend is right. Whatever we decide today--and, indeed, any action that we take as a consequence of Lord Nolan's recommendations--will not constitute the last word. Problems remain, and we shall have to return to them on other occasions.

I wanted to discuss the future work of the Nolan committee in connection with the need for a register in the House of Lords, the need for an inquiry into local government and the urgent need for an inquiry into party political funding. We shall have to deal with those issues at a later date. I have, however, made positive suggestions in regard to how the House could amend the Register of Members' Interests so that interests and payments are fully declared. I have also suggested a code of conduct for hon. Members, the work being led by the Clerk of the House, and the appointment of a parliamentary commissioner for standards.

Those are things that the House can do in the near future. If we are to begin to restore public confidence in our democracy, our parliamentary system and the House of Commons, we must get on with them as quickly as possible.

5.40 pm

Sir Edward Heath (Old Bexley and Sidcup): Before Madam Speaker left the Chair, she asked two things of us: that we declare our interests, and that we speak briefly. I immediately declare my interests, which are set out on the record that was filled in, in the usual way, at the beginning of the year. It is absolutely accurate, and I regret to say that there has been no increase since it was written.

I shall endeavour to be brief. I do not intend to discuss many aspects of the report--particularly the civil service; it has always had its orders, instructions and regulations, and they must be reviewed from time to time. I must emphasise, however, that the number of cases involving lack of integrity in our civil service is minimal compared with that in other countries. Our civil service is the envy of most of the rest of the world.

I agree that we should look at quangos. I am not in favour of increasing the number of quangos; I am in favour of reducing it. They have taken over many of the

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proper occupations of elected members of local government, and that can be dealt with. As for the audit, I always greatly respect what is said by the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon), and his views should be given serious consideration.

Let me again declare an interest: I am a member of the public review board of Arthur Andersen, the world's largest firm of accountants, and I am aware of the relationship between accountants and their clients. Our accountants are not allowed to have lunch with their clients, because they might then be accused of being influenced by those clients when reaching the conclusions in their reports. I do not propose to discuss that in detail, however; I propose to discuss matters which affect the House.

I have seldom found myself in greater disagreement with the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) than I have this evening. She constantly emphasised the question of public unease. I must confess that public unease about this matter will not have been lessened by the conduct of the House during the debate. Moreover, the part played by the House in public unease--of which I am fully aware, as it is constantly demonstrated in reports of public opinion--is minute in comparison with public unease about other aspects of our national life. I immediately recognise those other aspects of public unease, and they must be put right, but they do not involve the House. The hon. Member for Dewsbury constantly emphasised the need for haste. What is necessary is proper consideration. When haste overtakes proper consideration, we often end up with the wrong answer. I have criticised our own Government for that: they rush in and make decisions without proper consideration. The House should not fall prey to such an approach.

When I entered the House 45 years ago, in 1950, we recognised every Member of Parliament--man or woman--as a person of integrity. That was the attitude, and it was fully accepted. We have now reached a stage at which every man and woman in the House is an object of suspicion. Why has that come about? I do not consider it healthy or satisfactory, and we must not fall prey to that approach either.

In those days, chairmen of major companies were Members of Parliament, as were trade union leaders. Both groups made important contributions and, I believe, benefited from being here, mixing with other right hon. and hon. Members and hearing debates at first hand. I was sorry when the trade union movement ruled that union leaders could no longer become Members of Parliament. I think that that was a grave mistake: the unions lost by it, and we in the House of Commons lost by it.

When a company chairman addressed the House, he would merely say, "I remind the House that I am chairman of such and such a company, which is engaged in such and such activities." All that was accepted; we knew about it anyway. It was not necessary to make such a declaration at Question Time, because it took up time unnecessarily. That is how the system operated, and it operated satisfactorily. We now have an entirely different situation, which I think is regrettable.

How often, during my time here, have we had a major problem? We had a problem in the mid-1970s, involving three Members of Parliament. The Committee of Privileges had its hearings; Reggie Maudling was

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exonerated, another Member resigned and a verdict was delivered on the third. That was that: everyone recognised that we had done our duty, and done it properly.

Recently, two Members of Parliament were set up by a national newspaper and unfortunately fell wrong. The case was investigated immediately; a conclusion was reached, the House debated it and action was taken. The Members were suspended for two different terms, and lost their remuneration during that time.

There is no reason for anxiety about that. We were carrying out our duty, and doing it properly: there were no problems. So where are all the other cases? In 45 years, I can recall only those two instances, one involving three Members and the other two. We ought to pride ourselves on the fact that we dealt with those cases at once. It is now proposed that we set up a bureaucratic organisation--for it is bound to be bureaucratic. What will it be able to do to find out what is going on? We in the House know far more about what is going on with our fellow Members than any bureaucrat brought in from outside. We have our own machinery for dealing with such matters. We all have a Whips Office, and we can suggest the necessary action.

Ms Eagle: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Sir Edward Heath: Not for a moment. I want to finish what I am saying.

What can that gentleman do? He cannot go into the Smoking Room and say, "By the way, have you heard such and such about so and so? Do you think that I should look into it?" This is a practical problem. What saddens me about Lord Nolan is that, although he is an admirable judge, he seems to lack a certain worldliness--an ability to realise what actually goes on in this world of ours. We must be careful not to fall into that trap.

The next question is how much we should include in the register. I fully accept that Opposition Members, and perhaps some Conservative Members, are in anguish about the fact that all this information is not public and published. Let me relieve them of their anguish: nothing whatever--legal, political, party or domestic--prevents any of them from publishing every detail of their public and private lives. They can publish all their earnings, their wives' earnings and their family earnings; they can publish the amount that they give in housekeeping money, where they go for their holidays and who pays for their meals. They can publish everything. I do not know why they hesitate. They would be in a very strong position: they could say, "This is the new Labour party--we publish it all." One might add, "Please don't write to the wife saying that she ought to get more housekeeping money." One could add such provisos the whole time. All those things can be printed. I guarantee that if every Opposition Member, in anguish, now gives full details of their public and private lives, I will get a publisher, and I will put that in the register as an interest--a very close interest.

We must be sensible about the matter. There is such a thing as the privacy of the individual. I have always understood that that was one of the important tenets of the philosophy of the Labour party. It believes in the privacy of the individual: very well, then--let it support that in this House. What shall we gain by setting out all that information? It will be a serious blow to democracy

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in this country. [Interruption.] There is nothing to laugh at, because there are examples of what has happened elsewhere. There is the example, in particular, of the United States after Watergate, when the behaviour of the press and others to the families involved was so appalling that many people whom I know in the United States said that they would never put themselves in a position where the privacy of their families could be destroyed as it was destroyed for those who were involved in Watergate. The result has been that such people have not gone into American public life. That is plain to see for anyone who has studied the subject. I do not want that to happen in Britain. People will say that they are not prepared to be subjected to the sort of inquiries that the new bureaucrat would carry out, the results of which would lead to the information being put in the register. It is bad enough as it is.

I shall give a personal example. Last year, there was a row over Lloyd's, which is still being misrepresented in this week's press. It is said that we deliberately confronted the Members' Interests Committee and refused to do what it wanted. We did not do that. We asked for a discussion and we got one. My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith), the Chairman of that Committee, is here. After nearly two hours of discussion, the Committee realised that the situation was not what it had thought when it had discussed the matter alone and it quite properly changed its view. That was the proper procedure to follow.

Yet that story still appears. The press and The Guardian have not yet apologised. They took my photograph outside today, so perhaps that will lead to something. There were other accusations about our losses and debts meaning that we would have to leave Parliament. I have no debts to Lloyd's. Why should I be tied up with losses of £22 million? That is the sort of thing that is happening. It will be much worse if we start trying to put all that into the register. It has been suggested that the arrangements should be specified, or even put into statute. That is not humanly possible. There are so many cases to consider. If I have lunch with a friend in business and that friend is then made chairman of a firm, what am I to do about it? Do I have to stop lunching with him? What happens if an Evening Standard correspondent sees us lunching together in some restaurant and then writes that I will do what the chairman of that company wants? It is an impossible position. [Hon. Members:-- "That is trivialising the debate."] It is Opposition Members who are trivialising it.

Mr. Spearing: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Sir Edward Heath: I am sorry, but I am doing rather well and I do not want to be interrupted.

I recently entertained a diplomat and others at lunch. We had a happy party. He sent me a nice letter of thanks and a bottle of port. What should I do? Should I immediately ask that it be published in the register that I received a bottle of port? Or should I tell the diplomat, "I am awfully sorry; you are very kind, but I am afraid that I have to return it to you. Otherwise, it will be alleged that I will help the company with its problems." Rightly or wrongly, I decided to do neither. All that I did was to write thanking him very much for a bottle of 1970 port, although I would have much preferred 1927.

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The great danger is that the Nolan report will damage the House. It will also damage the Labour party, because the new members being sought for the new Labour party in the hope of forming a new Government will not be attracted by the kind of proposals to which the hon. Member for Dewsbury has given her full consent.

The leader of the Labour party said some astonishing things this afternoon. He said that the Nolan committee is the Prime Minister's committee. It is nothing of the sort: it is an independent committee. The right hon. Gentleman also said that because the committee had reported we must accept it and put its proposals into operation straight away. It is not for a moment the job of the House automatically to accept committee reports. The report has to be thoroughly examined and dealt with. If we do that, people outside who understand such things will say that we have acted rather sensibly. It will then lie in our hands to deal with the problems which really cause public unease.

Mr. Spearing: The right hon. Gentleman talks about public unease and the changes between the 1950s and the 1990s. Does he agree that the real reason for public unease is the devaluation of the ethic of public service, of public services and, by a few hon. Members, of the office of Member of Parliament? That is the trouble.

Sir Edward Heath: I have dealt with Members of Parliament. We dealt with those problems at once and satisfactorily in the House and people realise that.

One matter to which the hon. Member for Dewsbury referred in rather covert form, and which has caused public unease over the past two or three years, is the question of sexual behaviour, which Nolan does not mention. However, the chap in the pub does not talk about setting up an extra bureaucrat to deal with these things; he talks about hon. Members and their sexual behaviour. That has caused a great deal of public unease.

Lord Nolan can do nothing about that problem. He can set out requirements, one of which concerns ethics, but how will he define "ethical"? Hon. Members have many different ethical beliefs, and that is rightly so. To try to typify that and say what every Member of Parliament has to adhere to, believe in and accept as ethical bears no resemblance to human life or the world at large.

I hope that every hon. Member will give the matter serious thought and consideration. Let us abandon inter-party warfare and get down to the things that really affect the public.

5.57 pm

Mr. Peter Shore (Bethnal Green and Stepney): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath). As Father of the House, he speaks with special authority on those matters that particularly concern the House and which have been dealt with in the Nolan report.

I must say to the right hon. Gentleman, with all proper respect, that I think that he has misjudged two things. First, there is the extent of public unease about the things that have been going on in the House. To describe that public unease as small is, frankly, not to recognise the unhappy truth of the matter. I wish, indeed, that it was so. I wish that the matter could be swept aside, because, like all hon. Members, I have a keen regard for the reputation of House and believe that its reputation is essential to the proper working of our democracy.

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Secondly, I disagree with what the right hon. Gentleman said about the changes since 1950, when he first came into the House--not that there have not been huge changes, and the right hon. Gentleman described some of them fairly and well. He missed one of the most significant things that has occurred during the past 20 or 25 years: the growth of consultancies. I am talking not about the increase in the number of Members of Parliament having outside jobs and interests, much of which, I think, adds to the experience and authority of the House, but about the practice of Members of Parliament hiring themselves out to external interests in return for reward. Those Members are trading not their accumulated knowledge and wisdom gained from whatever occupations they had previously and are continuing but the special privilege that they have precisely because they are Members of Parliament--access to Ministers and the undoubtedly greater opportunity that they have to further and favour particular causes. That, in my view, is what lies at the centre of the concern about Members of Parliament. I shall come back to that issue in a moment.

The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup said that the demand for openness is often carried much too far. He is certainly right to warn us about following the American route. The idea that we should all publish our income tax returns is nonsense. It does nothing to improve public confidence in Members of Parliament but does much to undermine their own self-respect and standing in the community.

There is no proposal in the Nolan report that Members of Parliament should, as it were, reveal any income derived from any source, other than that which they earn for being Members of Parliament and thus employed by consultancies. No one is saying that a farmer, insurance agent, stockbroker, artist or author will have to declare his income. We are concerned only with those incomes related to what happens in the House.

Mr. McLoughlin rose --

Mr. Shore: No. I now put that point to one side.

I deal now with the most serious point made by a number of hon. Members and which was touched on by the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, especially in an interview that he gave this morning on Radio 4. A number of writers have also dealt with it, including Mr. Simon Heffer who wrote in The Daily Telegraph yesterday that Nolan's recommendations involve the

"over-arching constitutional danger of Parliament surrendering the right to regulate itself to a committee".

Clearly, that refers to the proposal to appoint a parliamentary commissioner for standards. It is true that he would have the power to investigate complaints made to him and to initiate inquiries. However, serious complaints would be referred by him, as the report makes plain, to a Committee of the House. The most appropriate Committee would appear to be the Privileges Committee or a sub-Committee of it, as the report suggests.

That Committee would, as now, carry out investigations into allegations of misconduct and decide what, if any, penalties were appropriate. In other words, a Committee of the House--the Privileges Committee--would decide, not someone from outside. It would continue to make the decisions and recommendations and the House would

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retain the right to say yea or nay to the Privileges Committee. There is a big difference between that and the impression that has been given that the commissioner for standards would do something on his own account to take over the workings of the House.

Mr. Leigh rose --

Mr. Shore: No, not yet.

The analogies that the committee had in mind when that proposal was made were with the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) has already referred. Indeed, the Comptroller and Auditor General today has considerable power of investigation, but he works to and assists the Public Accounts Committee, which has the on-going responsibility to invigilate Government expenditure. Similarly, it is Members of Parliament who hold the Executive and the Executive's servants to account for what they do, but they are assisted in this work by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, who also has independent powers of investigation. No one seriously suggests that the appointment of either the Comptroller and Auditor General or the Commissioner has involved the surrender of parliamentary rights and duties. That analogy must be considered seriously in judging this proposal. The job of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards would be to assist, not replace, responsibilities in the House of Commons already exercised by the relevant Select Committees and the House itself. I hope that what I have said has allayed some anxieties.

Sir Edward Heath: I think that the right hon. Gentleman has missed the point, but we clearly disagree. What I object to is someone from outside cross-questioning us as Members of Parliament and then deciding whether there is something that he should refer to a committee. That is out of the question; Members of Parliament should deal with matters as they do at the moment.

Mr. Shore: It is more of a procedural matter. We can go into it in detail. I am very much in favour of further detailed consideration by the House, perhaps in the form of a motion moved by the Leader of the House or in the relevant Select Committees. What we are dealing with in this Second Reading debate, if it can be so described, is the broad proposition which is analogous with the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration.

Mr. Shersby: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the responsibility of the Comptroller and Auditor General is for matters of economy, efficiency and effectiveness in Government Departments and by the accounting officers for those Departments--or, in other words, the civil service? The Comptroller and Auditor General has no remit whatever to supervise the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of this sovereign Parliament, so I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman's analogy is not strictly correct.

Mr. Shore: I willingly concede that it is not too precise, but the Parliamentary Commissioner for

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Administration investigates individual complaints and comes up with information that Members of Parliament have probably tried to find themselves. They have probably found it impossible to get and are therefore assisted by the Parliamentary Commissioner.

I wish to comment on one or two general points that have emerged from the debate so far. I was relatively pleased with the opening speech of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. It is good to know that the Government have accepted a number of the proposals without demur. It is important that we should go ahead with the proposals for scrutinising the appointment of ex-Ministers who are applying for jobs immediately after they have left office. That is right. It works very well with senior civil servants and I see no reason why it should not work well with ex-Ministers.

I am also pleased that the code of conduct for civil servants is to go ahead and that new channels, as it were, of appeal will be made available. That is very important.

On the general question of quangos, I am sure that the new procedures will help. My hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury made the much larger point that the very role of quangos needs to be reconsidered, but that was not a matter for the Nolan committee. We were dealing above all with how members were appointed to quangos and whether the procedures could be made less vulnerable to criticism and less prone--I put it no more strongly--to the exercise of political patronage than quangos inevitably are today. I think that the suggested procedures will help.

Mr. McLoughlin: May I take the right hon. Gentleman back a little to what he said about the way in which the Nolan committee, of which he was a distinguished member, came to its conclusion on which payments to hon. Members should be published? How did the committee distinguish between remuneration from a newspaper article written by a Member of Parliament as a result of his membership of the House and remuneration of a Member of Parliament for his appointment as a non-executive director of a company, offered to him simply because he was a Member of the House and had some influence?

Mr. Shore: We can debate that in detail later, but common sense should tell the hon. Gentleman that there is a difference between a Member of Parliament writing an article and being paid for it and a Member of Parliament receiving an undeclared sum of money to use his influence on behalf of a commercial firm or enterprise. He ought to understand that difference, but, if he does not, we are in some trouble.

I shall devote the remainder of my speech to the issue of consultancies, which is very much at the heart of our concerns. There is a class of consultancies which the Nolan committee thinks is sufficiently clear and objectionable to recommend a straightforward ban. In paragraph 55 under the heading "General consultancies" the committee states,

"we can see no justification for consultancy agreements between Members and public relations or lobbying firms, which are themselves acting as advisers and advocates for a constantly changing range of miscellaneous and often undisclosed interests . . . We consider that this is precisely the situation which the Prime Minister has described as `a hiring fair'."

So much for the moment for that class of consultancies, but that does not settle the matter. According to figures derived from the 1995 Register of Members' Interests,

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only 26 hon. Members have consultancy agreements with public relations or lobbying firms, while a further 142 have consultancies with other types of companies or with trade associations. In addition, 27 hon. Members have paid consultancies with trade unions, including the Police Federation. They are generally unions not affiliated to the Labour party but those that are affiliated support, through a different form of sponsorship, some 184 hon. Members by making payments to their constituency parties and to their general election funds. Those trade union arrangements may well have to be scrutinised, but I do not think that I am being partisan when I say that it is the 142 paid consultancies with companies and trade associations which are the focus of public concern.

What are the rules affecting these and other consultancies? The rules of Parliament are far from clear. Reference has been made to the 1947 resolution which stated that there should be,

"no contractual agreement with an outside body controlling or limiting the Member's complete independence or stipulating that he should act in any way as a representative of such an outside body." That seems clear enough in dealing with contractual agreements that have been entered into by an hon. Member with an outside financial interest. But then the question arises: what about paid consultancies which are not binding in the sense of the words that are used in the 1947 resolution but which nevertheless involved a Member using his influence voluntarily but not contractually for the same ends? What about consultancies that are wholly or mainly advisory in which a Member of Parliament undertakes not to initiate any action in the House but consents only to give general advice to an outside body on parliamentary affairs?

An attempt to stiffen the rules on consultancies was made in 1969 by the Strauss committee which was also a committee on Members' interests. Its recommendation is worth reading because it is very important. It stated:

"it is contrary to the usage and dignity of the House that a Member should bring forward by any speech or question, or advocate in this House or among his fellow Members any Bill, Motion, matter or cause for a fee, payment, retainer or reward, direct or indirect, which he has received, is receiving or expects to receive." That is a strong recommendation, and perhaps that explains why the Strauss committee resolution was never debated and the Front Benches of both parties agreed to put it on one side.

The Strauss approach draws a clear line between advocacy, using the facilities of the House, and advice given to people externally, and recommends that we should be very severe against advocacy. That approach is rather attractive, but it is by no means easy, as the House will recognise, to define with precision the difference between advocacy and advice. They tend to overlap.

Mr. Garel-Jones: As the right hon. Gentleman says, the devil in this matter is in the detail. I shall give my own case. I work as an adviser for British Petroleum. Before signing a contract with the company, I had an exchange of letters in which it was made perfectly clear that on no account would I raise questions, lobby or be active for it in the House. My activities for the company are entirely confined to Latin America. It would be naive to think that a company such as BP does not have a public affairs department. There is an inevitable interface with Parliament and Government, and from time to time people

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in the public affairs department telephone me and ask for my advice on a particular matter. Naturally, I give my advice.

I hope that the House will be careful and will speedily implement Nolan's recommendations and that, above all, it will be detailed. I am sure that I speak for many of my hon. Friends when I say that I want clear guidance. I want to know where I stand and if the guidance that the House gives is not acceptable to me I shall take the consequences, and so will the House.

Mr. Shore: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention because it clearly illustrates the difference between consultancies. The one that he describes is clearly aimed at giving information and advice outside, and the right hon. Gentleman is not being used to achieve particular objectives for the company. The House must seriously explore consultancies to see whether a line can be firmly drawn or whether it must be drawn elsewhere.

There is another complication. Must a distinction be drawn between the commercial sponsorship of Members of Parliament and charitable, professional and trade union bodies which also appoint Members of Parliament as consultants on the general understanding that, while they are not bound by their sponsor's wishes, they will usually be willing to support their sponsor's interests? That is another category of agreement to which we must attend and try to reach a conclusion about.

Finally, in examining the history of how Parliament has attempted from 1947 to deal with these matters of concern, I shall look at the Register of Members' Interests. Consultancy agreements come third in the separate categories of registrable interests that are demanded. Under the heading of "clients" which is category 3, it states that Members must disclose the names of clients,

"for whom they provide services which depend essentially upon or arrive out of, membership of the House; for example, sponsoring functions in the parliamentary buildings, making representations to Government Departments or providing advice on parliamentary or public affairs."

The demands by the register clearly contemplate that a Member may have received material benefits,

"which might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her actions, speeches or votes in Parliament",

and which, in the case of consultancy agreements, may involve Members being paid for making representations to Government Departments on issues which inevitably will normally be concerned with matters to be transacted in Parliament. The Nolan committee correctly comments:

"the contrast between the 1947 Resolution and the rules governing the register is in our view totally unsatisfactory. It is small wonder that it has given rise to confusion in the minds of Members of Parliament themselves".

On that great range of consultancies, other than that defined group which I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the Nolan committee has not come to any definite conclusion.

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