House of Commons Hansard Debates for 18 May 1995

Mr. John Morris (Aberavon): First, I declare my interests, in the same way as the right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) did, as recorded in the Register of Members' Interests. I agree entirely with his observations on the way in which Members' and Ministers' pay has fallen back. The new chief executive

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of a middle-ranking unitary authority in local government will be paid as much as, if not more than, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That must be wholly wrong.

When I became Secretary of State for Wales, seven of the chief executives of county councils in Wales were paid more than the person who was the chief civil servant in Wales. There is something wrong. I express my gratitude to Lord Nolan and his committee and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) and the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), who are members of it, whom I congratulate on their speeches. I was curious why the committee had to set out "the seven principles of public life" in more than 200 words. I should have thought that we should all know the difference between "right and wrong" and "right and wrong" as public representatives. The fact that Lord Nolan and his committee felt the need to state that does, in itself, no credit to public life.

Despite all the criticisms, I am confident that probably all of us, when we come to the House, come with the highest possible aims. What is regrettable is the steady erosion of understanding of what should be acceptable. Nolan has rightly made us take stock.

As I told the committee in my written observations, when I entered the House, the political consultant was hardly known. The first that I heard of them was in relation to teachers and the police, and now 30 per cent. of eligible Members are registered paid parliamentary consultants.

Nolan has grasped the nettle as regards multi-client consultancies in recommending that the involvement of Members in such consultancies should be immediately banned. I agree. They epitomise "the hiring fair" that the Prime Minister described.

Nolan has kicked into touch the problem of parliamentary consultancies in themselves. I concede, on reflection, that there is at least an argument for distinguishing paid advice from paid advocacy, and I want to hear more about that. I believe, however, that to be paid as an advocate in the House by an outside interest is incompatible with being a Member of the House. The Member is no more than a hired gun.

I do not blame the Nolan committee for wanting to hear more from Parliament. It has not heard a great deal so far. In any event, it intends to return to the matter in a year's time to review the position.

I wrote to Nolan in the following terms:

"Your committee may wish to consider what difference there is between hard cash for an immediate specified return and a consultant who may book a room for a dinner, make an appointment with a Minister, or even perhaps put down an occasional question."

The House has approved the recommendation of the Privileges Committee, in the recent cases before it, as regards the behaviour that we felt fell short of the standards that the House was entitled to expect of its Members. The Privileges Committee said:

"We see no sustainable distinction between a payment of £1,000 for tabling a parliamentary question and a consultancy for which the fee is £1,000 and the only requirement is the tabling of a parliamentary question".

Personally, I would go further: I see no distinction between being paid to table a parliamentary question either on its own or as part of one's paid duties as a consultant. It is the same concept of a "hired gun".

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The Privileges Committee has deferred its consideration of that part of the remit from Madam Speaker dealing with a general position on the need to clarify the law of Parliament regarding consultancies. We did so pending the Nolan report. Lord Nolan and his committee have come and gone on that aspect for the moment. I suppose that the Privileges Committee, either as part of its original remit or as a result of further instructions from the House, must now return to it; hence, I have gained the impression that Nolan has kicked the ball into touch on that issue.

I find the delicacy on the part of the Nolan committee in this difficult to reconcile with the fact that it had the temerity to give birth to a draft code of conduct for Members of Parliament. On page 39, under the heading "Financial Interests", the report states: "A Member must not promote any matter in Parliament in return for payment."

Subject to clarification as to what "in Parliament" means, that is ample to cover the whole range of parliamentary consultants, be they single or multi --otherwise, what was Nolan up to? I applaud the committee's ingenuity. I take on board the observations of the right hon. Member for Worthing, who referred to the constitutional powers of the independent commissioner. It is a good idea to ensure at least that control remains with Parliament in the form of the Privileges Committee, warts and all. I welcome the recommendation for the Committee to meet in public, and in debate a fortnight ago I suggested that the Committee should be much smaller.

I turn to the employment of ex-Ministers. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster--I am glad that he is in the Chamber--must feel pretty sore, having received a black eye from the committee over his bland assumption that all was well or steady as she goes. As we were reminded this afternoon, he gave that evidence on behalf of the Government. I find it deeply offensive that Ministers who have played a major part in privatising an industry or in establishing quangos can take up a major paid role in those bodies, scarcely before the ink is dry on the statute that created them. There should be a firm cordon sanitaire for that kind of employment.

We are talking not about employment generally but about jobs that Ministers have created themselves. That is what we are talking about; let us not confuse it with hon. Members who are looking for work to feed their children. What is necessary for civil servants should be necessary also for Ministers. The minimum waiting period before seeking other employment is two years, and perhaps it should be three. I see no distinction between Cabinet Ministers and junior Ministers in that regard.

As to quangos, the present situation is intolerable. I wish that Lord Nolan and his committee had examined the situation in Wales, of which the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is well aware. I was glad to hear the Chancellor confirm that the Chief Whip--the Patronage Secretary--will play a much lesser role. The Chief Whip is the conduit for political influence when making appointments and I am glad that his role is to change.

In the 11 years that I served as a Minister, I was never conscious of receiving any guidance from on high, offered by the Chief Whip or anyone else, when making appointments. I performed the same role as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in his previous office. Any

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appointments that I made, right or wrong, were my decisions and mine alone. The Chief Whip did not play a part in that process. In Wales and elsewhere, we have seen wives of Members, wives of Ministers, ex-Members of Parliament and ex-Members of the European Parliament appointed to quangos. They may be very worthy appointments; indeed, I am sure that they are. However, would they have been appointed but for the fact of who they are? I am glad that there will be an independent aspect to appointing people to serve on quangos.

7.24 pm

Sir Archibald Hamilton (Epsom and Ewell): I, too, declare my interests, which appear in the Register of Members' Interests. They include a number of consultancies and directorships. Unlike most hon. Members who have spoken in the debate today, I am rather disappointed by the Nolan report. I thought that it represented an opportunity to clarify some extremely complex and difficult areas and I am not certain that it has done that.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) recognised the public disquiet about standards of behaviour in public life, while acknowledging that some expert witnesses had appeared before the committee and said that that disquiet was unjustified. However, he did nothing to attribute blame for the gap between the two positions. It may have something to do with the media, which insist upon reporting everything in the most unfavourable terms possible. We are becoming so cowed by the media that we rarely dare to speak out against them in any way.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater also spelled out clearly to the House what an incredibly incorruptible political system we have compared with many other countries. He illustrated his point graphically by referring to the number of Italian parliamentarians who face being put in the slammer and so on. It would have been useful to include that information in the report. It is extremely important to put in context the problems that we are discussing today, because they are minuscule compared with the problems facing parliaments and democracies all over the western world.

We have an admirable civil service. The permanent under-secretary is the accounting officer in any Department and there is a clear division of responsibilities. I think that that is one of the reasons why our system is extremely difficult to corrupt through financial fraud and so on. I believe that the report should have paid tribute to that fact.

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins), who said that we cannot view the issues in isolation without considering the salaries of Members of Parliament. We must attract professional middle- class people to this House as they have a tremendous amount to offer. But if they are told--as I suspect Labour Members will tell them--that they will receive a salary of £32,000 per annum, they will not come.

Lord Nolan entered chambers in 1953 and was married in that same year. I am informed that he became a tax barrister and I am sure that his earnings, in today's terms, were well in excess of £32,000. He managed to educate his son at a public school and I suspect that he educated

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his two daughters in the same way. I assure him that one cannot do that today on £32,000. At one stage perhaps Lord Nolan contemplated becoming a Member of Parliament and came to the conclusion that the salary was too small for him to consider so doing. We must put the issues into perspective and remember that a number of hon. Members, not unnaturally, have aspirations to earn more than £32,000 per annum. They do not consider that to be a fortune--although I have no doubt that their constituents might think that it is.

We must also look hard at the question of a waiting period for Ministers before taking up employment after leaving office. I do not believe that Ministers are comparable with civil servants. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater said, civil servants are able to anticipate their retirement and they receive generous pensions with which to retire. It is quite different when a Minister leaves office. It may be an involuntary act anyway, and he may still be young and burdened with heavy expenses. We should bear in mind the fact that the House has decided that redundancy pay for Ministers should be set at three months' salary. If we then make them wait two years before they can pick up another job, it is clear that the whole question of redundancy money will have to be reviewed--in particular, whether it should last much longer.

My other criticism of the report concerns its findings on disclosing remuneration. That is just a ploy to embarrass in front of our constituents those of us who receive consultancy fees. The argument seems based on the idea that if I earn £1,000 a year as a consultant I shall not be doing much in the House for that, but if I earn £20,000 a year in consultancy fees I must be doing infinitely more in the House. In fact, the reverse is true: many consultancy agreements involving large sums of money mean that much more is being asked of Members in terms of work outside the House. Consultancy agreements often mean representing companies which go in for a wide range of activities. I work for an American defence contractor, and I spend some of my time looking for companies over here for it to acquire--that has nothing to do with Parliament.

I turn next to the vexed issue of the distinction between advocacy and advice. It is thought wrong to be paid to be an advocate. Let us face it, Nolan has made it clear--as a long-term recommendation--that there should be a total ban on all forms of advocacy in the House by hon. Members who may be pursuing the interests of bodies with which they have entered into consultancy or sponsorship agreements. What is the difference between someone with a consultancy agreement and someone who is a lawyer or a solicitor tabling amendments to a Criminal Justice Bill? In principle I see no difference at all. The latter will be employed, perhaps, by a firm of solicitors; if he failed to table the amendments or failed to press the case that the partnership thought important, the firm could sack him.

If we press ahead in this way we shall remove professionals who have something to say about the law and something to contribute to Criminal Justice Bills. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel- Jones) believes, too, farmers would not be able to speak about agriculture, or accountants about Finance Bills, and Members sponsored by trade unions would be

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unable to comment on labour relations legislation. Even Opposition Members who are lecturers would be unable to comment on education Bills. That is the logical conclusion of banning paid advocacy in the House. We cannot draw the line between a Member with a consultancy agreement and a Member who is paid by a particular profession. We need to get away from glib assumptions about a division between advocacy and advice, because it will be extremely difficult to make such distinctions without removing the expertise that we need in this House for commenting on legislation.

I shall end by discussing the commissioner for standards. Many of us are worried that we may create an independent post that will end up being responsible to no one and creating mayhem in this place--even though we may have voted to set up the post in the first place. The solution to the problem is to make Madam Speaker the commissioner for standards. I am sure that she has many other things to do besides inquiring into whether Members of Parliament are behaving properly, so if she does not want to take on the responsibility herself I suggest that she appoint someone who is answerable to her. The role would then become part of the Speaker's Office and would be clearly seen to be independent and answerable to the House. That would remove many of our fears about an independent commissioner over whom, once we had appointed him or her, we would have no control at all. 7.34 pm

Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield): I, like others, declare my interests: as a writer, broadcaster and shareholder. I should also announce that I have been a paid consultant for 45 years, first for Bristol, South-East and then for Chesterfield. The idea that a Member of Parliament can be a consultant only on behalf of companies or individuals--and be paid especially for that--is an illusion. This is not really a new problem. I am alarmed when I am told that we have had a marvellous system hitherto. Lloyd George, whom I met nearly 60 years ago, sold titles. Then we had the Marconi scandal--not to mention 10,000 Enclosure Acts, under which this House handed over the common land to rich farmers. So let us not mislead ourselves: there has always been a problem, but it has always been limited in terms of the numbers of people involved.

The House is in such difficulties now not because one or two Members have done what they have done but because the House failed to take seriously its responsibility to lay down what our standards should be. So the Prime Minister used, of all things, the royal prerogative to set up a royal commission to examine the conduct of the House of Commons--clean contrary to article 9 of the Bill of Rights, which stipulates that no one from outside may presume to regulate what we do here. [Interruption.] Of course Lord Nolan's committee is a permanent royal commission, set up by the Prime Minister without consulting the House--he just announced it--to examine what we should do next. When the House is treated in that way, surely it must begin to take seriously what it has failed to do. My argument is a simple one and is already known, but I wish to spell it out to the House in some detail: we should lay down what it is lawful for a Member to do and a Member who does not stay within the law will not be eligible to be a Member.

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I am very doubtful about an ethics commissioner. When I first heard about "ethics man" taking over our affairs, I wondered whether the speaker had a lisp. I have 40,000 ethics commissioners in my constituency and if I act illegally I am answerable to them. We have heard talk of an induction scheme. Are we going to insist on qualifications for getting into the House of Commons? Many Members who have spoken today seem not to understand that democracy is not about qualifications. No one needs to have any qualifications whatever to get into Parliament; if we insisted on them, many people would never get in here. It is, however, much harder to get elected than to pass an exam. We are answerable to our constituents--that is what democracy is about.

Mr. Budgen: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that all this talk about the seven principles of public life--

Mr. Benn: I have just realised that I have only 10 minutes in which to speak, so I am afraid that I cannot allow the hon. Gentleman to read out the seven principles. I hope that he will forgive any discourtesy.

There are 400 classes of person who are disqualified from sitting in this House of Commons--I know because I have been through them all. Judges cannot sit here--Lord Nolan could not sit. Roman Catholic priests cannot sit here. No one has suggested that they should be allowed to do so provided we have a "religious commissioner" to determine whether they are qualified. They were excluded because in the old, prejudiced days it was thought that the Pope ran every Catholic priest. That is not true any more, of course. Anglican Ministers cannot sit here either.

I repeat that we should state what behaviour we object to and then make it illegal. Without wanting to get at anyone, I object to the thought that people who are elected to serve their constituents and pursue their convictions should act, for money, to promote the economic interests of a company. I have no objection to people representing bodies like the Police Federation, or to people being barristers or writers--how could I, when I am one myself--but when I hear a Member advancing an argument in the House I want to know that it is his own argument, or that he is representing his constituency, and not that he is being paid to put an argument to the House. His electors are entitled to the same reassurance.

I have drafted an early-day motion which appears on today's Order Paper and which one or two Members may have seen. It would add to the list of disqualifying offices

"any person . . . who is specifically paid to promote or seek to promote the financial, commercial or industrial interests of a company inside Parliament or in dealings with Government Departments".

That could not be clearer. That is different from being on a board and advising on this or that. Being a company director is different from being in this place and being paid to book a room and to use it--

Sir David Mitchell: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Benn: I cannot give way because I do not have time. Being a company director is different from being in this place and booking a room or seeing the appropriate Minister to arrange something. Such activity in this place should be a disqualification.

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Against that background, there is no need for an ethics commissioner. If someone breaks the law, he or she will be taken to court. The hearing will take place in public, unlike the hearings of the Privileges Committee, which take place in private. The hearing takes place and the Member will be liable to disqualification. As for classes of person, that is a matter of judgment. I am not committed to that form of words. If there is a wish to ban trade union representatives, let those who take that view make the case and try to carry the day. The same applies to solicitors and writers, for example. Whatever we do, the procedures must be embodied in law: let us not start with the idea of there being some administrator who will take us aside.

Ethics cover more than personal conduct. For example, would an ethics commissioner say, "Mr. Benn, you should not have supported the poll tax protestors"? Are we not to do this or that? Before we know where we are, democracy will be subordinated to some allegedly objective test.

I was amused when the right hon. Member for Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) said that he objected to a commissioner. He said, "Parliament can decide." He should apply that argument to our attitude towards Brussels. He has expressed the very objection that some of us have to the European Commission. He objects to the attitude of the Commission being applied to him.

I return to the point of order that I made yesterday. We are not facing the situation which confronted the country 300 years ago when the then king tried to arrest the five Members. Instead, the business community is trying to buy the five Members. If we do not take a strong line against the commercial corruption of Parliament, as exemplified by the strong line that was taken years ago against the attempt by the then monarch to control Parliament, we should give up.

We are in the present mess because as the House of Commons we have lost our self-respect. We should have dealt with the problem years ago. We should not have left it to emerge as it did so that the Nolan report would be imposed upon us by a worried Prime Minister. We should have taken action ourselves. Now that the issue has arisen, we should take our own action. Let us proceed by law. The law should be set out so that everyone knows what it is. Our constituents can then introduce ethical elements.

I am disappointed that the Nolan report does not contain a recommendation that every voter should receive from his returning officer, with his polling card, information about the interests of every candidate and not only those of the outgoing Member. If that information were available, everyone who voted would know that they were voting for an official of the Transport and General Workers Union or for someone sitting on 10 boards. Let the electors choose: it is one of the characteristics of a democracy that they should decide. This is not a little club that we protect with little rules. That is not what it is about. We are not here because we like one another: we are in this place because we have been sent here, and the ultimate discipline on our conduct is the view that those who sent us here take when they decide to return us or to send us packing. 7.43 pm

Sir Giles Shaw (Pudsey): It is splendid to be able to take up the remarks of the right hon. Member for

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Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) on one of his high days. He made an extremely interesting and exciting contribution to the debate. I fear that I would not have been able to enter Parliament under the stiff criteria that he laid down. I came from the humble world of industry. I was with a company that was making fruit gums, After Eight mints and other lovely products of that sort. There was a wish to improve the lot of other people and, above all, to create wealth. We wished also to create employment. We all wished to be members of a company that contributed to about one fifth of the working population of York. That is something rather different from that which is represented by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson). Both of us know about the company that I am talking about.

One of the strands of this place is that its Members are all from different backgrounds. We come from different places and we have different attitudes. That fabric makes this place, a place that has survived for hundreds of years. We must be extremely careful that we do not unpick it in a moment of deep penitence or one of deep-seated madness. Whatever else, we must work out correctly the problem that is before us. We must not panic. We must not say, "We cannot touch that which now exists." It is only right that we must react to any problem that confronts us.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), the Father of the House, reminded us of the position in 1947 and referred to the report of the Strauss committee. As I understand it, that was the last occasion on which such issues were considered. It is only right that they should be examined again. Equally, it is right that the Nolan report should give us the opportunity to do so. As the right hon. Member for Chesterfield admirably stated, the outcome must be decided by the House and by no other authority. Under the heading "Members' Financial Interests", which begins with paragraph 9, the good Nolan committee states:

"The reasons for the public's reduced confidence in the financial probity of Members of Parliament are not hard to identify. The public reads extensive press reporting of cases in which Members have accepted money for asking parliamentary questions, are said to have stayed at expensive hotels at others' expense without declaring an interest and are employed by multi- client lobbying firms". There is all that huff and puff about what goes on in this place, but there is little grain of substance. We know full well from the sittings of the Privileges Committee--I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) is not in his place--what happened when it examined the two Members and money for questions. The newspaper that was involved had been given information by an unknown business man and the names of four Members. It found nothing during its investigation to substantiate the allegations relating to those Members. It then set out to try to entrap two Members. If that is the basis for huge public disquiet and embarrassment, I greatly regret it. We cannot consider these issues without taking into account the fact that some aspects of investigative journalism have started to replace some of the aspects of reporting facts. If that is the way in which the world lives, it is not surprising that we should find ourselves caught up in the present position. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King)

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said in his excellent speech, we are faced with problems with which we must deal in a way that is best for the interests of the House as a whole.

I have not properly declared my interest. I shall do so straightaway and as it is laid down in the good book. I have a non-executive directorship. That might worry the right hon. Member for Chesterfield. I had two such directorships but I resigned from one, finding it difficult to get to the meetings and deal with the issues that are the responsibility of non- executive directors because of the pressures in this place and the various activities that relate to it.

I understand why it is felt that consultancies are difficult. They are difficult to understand because people do not realise the importance of them. Those who have had management and industrial backgrounds find especially that consultancies are the natural route through which their interests can be expressed outside the House. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Sir A. Hamilton) said, lawyers have a remarkable capacity to earn money anywhere. They can earn money by their sheer skills. If someone has been involved in a background of manufacturing enterprise, it is not unreasonable that he should take an interest outside the House in sustaining manufacturing enterprises. Many manufacturing enterprises in Britain need the assistance of those who can help them to learn what it is to deal with the complexities of the rubric of the society in which they live, with the complexities of law and legislation or of getting export credit and everything that happens when trading overseas. All these aspects of business life affect small companies that are trying to make their way and, indeed, large ones. They look to many sources of advice, and sometimes they select Members. When it comes to the declaration of interests, including consultancies, I understand the recommendations of the Nolan committee. I understand also that lobbying must be of maximum interest to the committee. It is a difficult matter, but, on the other hand, lobbying Members has been endemic to the House ever since its foundation. In the press, the Members' Lobby is seen as an exchange of information of various sorts. That results in reputations being made in print and sometimes rising circulations. It would appear that those results are all to the benefit of newspapers. Members use the Lobby and the Lobby is the entrepo t of ideas that are subsequently exploited. Perhaps money does not change hands. Indeed, I doubt whether it ever does. But once we have such a system it is not surprising that we become involved with outside interests that are seeking to find ways of procuring an influence, perhaps at a modest level. Nevertheless, they seek to procure influence. But it is quite unreasonable for the committee to say that there should be a statement of the earnings from consultancies, but not a statement of the earnings from all other sources of external interest. It is inevitable that if the matter is dealt with only on the basis of consultancies, investigative journalists will have a field day. They will say, "Ah, Member X is getting a consultancy worth Y. What else is he getting?" They will look at his other interests and find out. They will find a way to expose a Member's external income.

That would be a travesty of the way in which we should react to the problem with which we are trying to deal. There must be a compensatory amount of privacy if there is to be a disclosure of pecuniary advantage. We must

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balance those two things. Some privacy is pretty crucial for a Member seeking to discharge his public office at a time such as this when we have media interest, 24 hours a day from all over the world, in what Members of Parliament may or may not be doing.

We must move slowly on the matter. We must take serious counsel. I was attracted by the suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones) that a committee of Privy Councillors from both sides of the House might be a conduit through which Nolan can be rationalised into what is practical, and what is practical can be applied without the distortions that may happen if the work is done at speed.

I also understand that we must merge the Privileges Committee with the Select Committee on Members' Interests. That is an excellent suggestion and if it is a smaller committee thereby, I for one would be delighted because the 17-man Privileges Committee that we now have is far too substantial for the efforts that we have to make. I respect what Nolan advises us to do. I understand his keenness to see change. I recognise that there are areas which must be changed. But if we are seriously to preserve our inheritance and not reduce the total panoply of the House for attracting people of talent and enterprise, those changes must be carefully worked out over time in order to be made practical and applicable to our Parliament, and then we can decide ourselves--no one else--to implement them.

7.51 pm

Mr. Alfred Morris (Manchester, Wythenshawe): The only interest that I have to declare--I do so with pride--is that I have long had the honour of sponsorship as a parliamentary candidate by the Co-operative Movement. As the House knows, I am also a member of the Committee of Privileges, but, of course, there is no financial interest there.

I shall not be speaking at length. My main purpose is most warmly to welcome Nolan's vindication of those who think it wrong for the Privileges Committee to be continuing to sit wholly in private at a time when Ministers talk of their commitment to open dealing and when, virtually by common consent of the major organs of opinion, the British people now want to see what is being done at Westminster in their name.

From the moment the Privileges Committee was reconstituted last July, I made plain my view that, wherever it could be avoided, we should no longer meet behind closed doors. The caveat "whenever it could be avoided" was to allow for occasions when, for some compelling reason, more especially one involving any possible breach of natural justice, the Committee ought to meet in camera. Yet we still meet in secret even when there is no conceivable legal or other reason for so doing and even when a witness specifically requests to be heard in public, as Peter Preston has done in the case of his impending appearance before the Committee.

The Prime Minister's insistence on secrecy, he told me, is based on precedent. "That's how it has always been" is his attitude. But if precedent had always been strictly adhered to, the Privileges Committee would still be meeting by candlelight and threatening, even imposing, fierce penalties against any journalist who dared to anticipate its reports. We heard earlier that Lord Nolan

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had looked at proceedings in the Privileges Committee going back to 1947. What some of its present members have done is to look back to the Committee's proceedings as long ago as the 17th century, and to do so is to crave further modernisation.

I hope very much that this first report of the Nolan committee will now very soon bring our proceedings out of the shadows and into the 20th century while there are still a few years of it left. That would remove a demeaning stain on the reputation of the House; at the same time it would improve the quality of justice dispensed by its most powerful Committee.

The decision now, as I understand the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, will be one for the House as a whole, free from any pressure from the Government, or from anyone else, and of that I approve. We ought never avoidably now to meet in secret in Committees of the House, not because it is unpopular with, in fact deeply resented by, the British people, but because it is patently wrong to do so.

For the same reason I hope that the Nolan committee will urgently reconsider and reverse its decision not to tackle the funding of political parties. It is indefensible that one political party, at a moment of unprecedented unpopularity, should be allowed a veto on this crucially important issue. Surely no inquiry into standards in public life, properly so-called, can possibly avoid the core issue of party funding. As Simon Jenkins, its former editor, said in The Times yesterday:

"It is hard to imagine anything more corrupting than party cash handed over in secret, whether from a property dealer, an Arab Prince or a banker desperate for a peerage."

For his part, speaking last Sunday on BBC television, Lord Nolan said of his committee:

"We are cast in the traditional role of an auditor, a watchdog not a bloodhound, and if a watchdog sees something which needs looking into, it should bark."

That gave the impression that he was determined to stand his ground on party funding, but his bark seems to have been silenced by the Government. That is damaging to his committee's reputation and extremely disappointing to those of us who were encouraged by some of the recommendations in his report.

The Prime Minister's first reaction to the report was to accept its "broad thrust", but he has gone no further since then. We must hope that those two words mean more than that he is prepared to endorse only the principles of acceptable conduct in public life set out in the report:

"selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership."

Some might say that for the Prime Minister even to accept the report's principles is an important step forward. Certainly some of them are not much in fashion in Whitehall now. Take accountability, openness and leadership. Our attempts to let the public see as much as possible of the Privilege Committee's proceedings was all about accountability and openness and it was leadership we were asking for in pressing the Prime Minister to depart from the ancient precedent to which he still clings in defence of secrecy.

The public now want not only to hear talk about precepts but to see them matched by practice. They are entitled to see beyond the doors of the Committee Rooms of the House, to know what is happening as it happens and to hear the Nolan committee barking loudly for full disclosure of all donations to all political parties.

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I have only one other brief comment to make as a member of the Privileges Committee. In picturesque language, Lord Nolan's report says:

"The Committee is assisted by a small secretariat."

It then goes on to list the names of 12 people who have assisted its work. Those who have criticised the pace of the Privileges Committee's work may like to know that our staffing consists of the admirable Jim Hastings, the Committee's clerk; one third of the time of Paul Derrett, a Committee assistant; and what is called "access" to a shared secretary. What word other than "small" would Lord Nolan use to describe a secretariat as small as that? He might like to come and bark in our forest or, alternatively, perhaps we should start barking too.

7.59 pm

Sir David Mitchell (Hampshire, North-West): I start by declaring my interest. I have been a Member of this House for 31 years and, for 22 of those, I have been a practising wine merchant.

Important and serious issues have arisen today. I identify three of them. The first is the extent to which we regulate ourselves. I am uneasy about upsetting the delicate balance between the judiciary, Parliament and the Executive. I firmly believe in self-regulation, but we must do that as effectively as is practicable.

The second issue is whether we should go for legalistic rules or a set of principles with a code of practice. Again, I am firmly in favour of the latter. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) that an adviser of one sort or another would be enormously helpful. When I came into the House, an older Member drew me a little map on the back of an envelope that showed where the Chamber, the dining room and the loo were, and he said, "That will do you for the first week." That was the whole induction course that I had on arriving in the House. There is something to be said for helping new Members particularly, and for making available to Members at any time someone who is what the Canadian Parliament would call an ethical adviser but, please, let us not call him a commissioner--that would not give the right sense at all.

Thirdly, there is far more right with our system than is being given credit for. But recent events have identified problems and clearly Lord Nolan has drawn attention to matters of uncertainty and confusion, and the need for clarification. I want to draw attention to two of those matters and to make two practical suggestions. The first concerns the declaration of Members' interests. I fear that, too often, the declaration of those interests has become an alibi for half covering them up. When tabling questions, writing to Ministers or speaking in the House, Members assume that, because they have registered their interest in the register, that is sufficient, but it is not. People do not go around with a copy of the Register of Members' Interests in their pockets. Interests must be declared at the relevant time. If one is to make a speech that has some relevance to one's interests, one should declare that. If one tables a parliamentary question or writes to a Minister and one has an interest, that interest should be declared.

I put forward one practical, brief suggestion that could be implemented almost immediately. When a Member tables an early-day motion and has a paid interest, he has

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to put an "R" on the Order Paper to indicate that interest. Either that or the letters IDI--I declare an interest-- should be put alongside a parliamentary question when a Member is in a paid position in relation to that question. That would be a practical and useful step forward. We on the Privileges Committee had the unhappy experience of dealing with two hon. Members. In that case, such a proposal would have helped to clarify the position.

The second change that I propose is this. At present, one must put an entry in the Register of Members' Interests within a month of acquiring that interest. I cannot for the life of me understand why there should be such a delay. If a Member has something to register, he should do so before he writes to Ministers, lobbies in any form, asks questions or makes speeches. That would have prevented one of the two cases before the Privileges Committee from occurring. I hope that the House will consider those two practical suggestions. The first is that a paid consultancy should be identified on a parliamentary question, and the second is that nothing should be done in relation to using the benefit of an interest until it has been put on the register.

We are all grateful to Lord Nolan for his work. He has done an immense amount in relation to hon. Members. I hope that he will not fail to turn his attention to the interests of Members in the upper House, who, in exactly the same way, can be influenced by the possible effect of a consultancy.

I come now to the vexed question of consultancies. They appear to be in two forms. The first relates to Members who watch Bills, watch draft regulations and the like, and generally advise a trade union, trade association or a large company. They perform an important role. These days, there are too many regulations, directives, and pieces of legislation, and companies often need someone to interpret, to guide and to show them the way through them, and to explain the effect on their business of what is going on.

I gingerly raise the possibility that was put to me by a much respected former Member, Sir Robin Maxwell-Hyslop. When Members act on behalf of companies and, as a result, table parliamentary questions, incurring public expenditure, perhaps we should consider whether that company should make some contribution to those costs. I am not sure, but that is a matter for further exploration. There is a big difference between a Member advising a company and, crossing a silent line, a company advising him about what it wants raised in the House. That invisible line divides what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. I should like to ban the latter, but I recognise that there is a thin line between the two, and that it is almost impossible for someone outside to discern whether that line has been crossed.

The best way that the House can help itself is to ensure that transparency exists, that, when someone has an interest, it is declared and available for everyone to consider and, most particularly, that it is declared when it is relevant to the business in hand.

The question of the declaration of the amount of money paid for a consultancy has been raised. Once it is on the register that someone is being paid, that should be sufficient. I do not think that it really matters whether the Member is paid £5,000 or £10,000.

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Mr. Doug Hoyle (Warrington, North): Oh yes it does.

Sir David Mitchell: The hon. Gentleman says, "Yes it does." No one in the debate has yet given a good reason--perhaps we shall hear one later- -why amounts should be declared. What is important is that when a Member does not act entirely as a freelance operator, when he is in some way financially benefiting from what he is doing, that should be declared. That it is declared is sufficient to give Members the warning that they ought to have.

In relation to Members' earnings from consultancies and the like, we cannot ignore the fact that Members are paid extraordinarily little for what they do. When I came into the House, I think that we were paid £3,800 a year; now it is over £30,000, but the purchasing power is within £100 of what it was 30 years ago. I do not know of any other profession that has seen no real increase in the value of its take-home salary over 30 years, a period in which the work load has gone up many times--from 25 or 30 letters a week to 200 letters a week. There is a multitude of other work, such as the Committees of the House. It was a part -time operation when I came in, but it is no longer so. It is very much a full-time one today.

I draw hon. Members' attention to the fact that, on 23 November 1994, I asked for a list of those Officers of the House who earn more than we do. Is it really right for nearly 150 of those who look after us to be paid more than we are? Are Members of Parliament really worth so much less than our excellent staff? Are they really worth so much less than those who administer the Palace of Westminster or service the House in many ways, and do it so very well for us? During--

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