House of Commons Hansard Debates for 6 Nov 1995

Mr. John Evans (St. Helens, North): I proudly declare that I am a skilled member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and have been since I was 16. That

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organisation pays the sum of £600 to my constituency Labour party as well as an agreed amount of my election expenses. Those are duly recorded in the candidates' return, and always have been. I pay tribute to the Leader of the House and to my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) for the way in which, together, they led the Select Committee and worked hard to seek considerable areas of unanimity. However, I make the plea that never again should the House of Commons inflict such a duty on hon. Members and expect them to produce such a detailed report in such a short time. I shall comment on two issues, one of which was raised by the right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins), who served on the Committee: the absurd suggestion that if the House tonight agrees to the recommendation on disclosure of earnings, it will result in far fewer people wishing to stand as Members of Parliament. Indeed, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, it would change the very nature of the House of Commons. There was a story in The Observer last week, which I understand emanated from the Paymaster General, that if the House votes that earnings should be revealed, about 100 Tory Members will leave the House at the next election.

If there is any truth in the claim that a whole phalanx of Tories will stand down and that there will be great difficulty in attracting new candidates to take their place, that is a shocking commentary on the modern Tory party. Essentially it means that the principal interest of so many Tories is not to be elected to the House to serve their constituents or their country, but to get their hands on fat juicy consultancies to enhance their standard of living. I do not believe that there is a single word of truth in such utter nonsense. However, if senior members of the Government make such statements, it is hardly surprising if people begin to wonder what on earth the Tory party is up to.

The second point that I want to raise relates to delegations to Ministers, something on which the Committee spent some time. I made it clear in Committee that I felt it to be one of the gravest areas of concern in the entire issue of sleaze in public life. After all, if a consultant to a company can arrange a meeting for the chairman or chief executive of that company with a Minister of the Crown, he certainly justifies his salary of £5,000, £10,000 or £20,000. If the allegations in The Sunday Times about the hon. Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Porter) were anywhere near the truth, the position is even worse than I suspected. It is not just a question of paid Members of Parliament fixing meetings for their own employers, but apparently individual Members of Parliament are anxious to meet clients who want to meet Ministers.

I can only assume that the statements of the hon. Member for Wirral, South in The Sunday Times are true, a newspaper with the background of The Sunday Times would not print them. The matter will be raised with the hon. Member for Wirral, South and he will have to deal with the occasion on which he was approached by business men claiming to be acting for the good of British industry. The hon. Gentleman said:

"And I say,`oh yeah.' In fact, what they are doing is try to use some sort of political input to advance a commercial interest. Nothing the matter with that. I have no complaint about that at all. But if it's a commercial enterprise, I'm commercial."

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That is the clearest indication--

Mr. Barry Porter (Wirral, South): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Evans: I wrote to the hon. Gentleman. I cannot give way because I have only 10 minutes. I will talk to the hon. Gentleman outside the Chamber.

Mr. Porter: I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for the courtesy of letting me know that he was going to raise this matter in the House. Perhaps he would be good enough the read the last paragraph of what The Sunday Times said. In case he does not have it, I shall remind him. It said that I am not in breach of any rules of this House or of any law.

Mr. Evans: The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on the kernel of the argument. If he is not in breach of any rules then, by God, the rules of the House need changing.

Of course, such conduct will be dealt with in future by the new parliamentary Committee and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. The need for such an expensive post--and it is expensive, at £78,000 for a four-day week--has been created by the activities of a handful of hon. Members who were willing to take cash for questions or expensive freebies in the Ritz hotel in Paris and by the Prime Minister's knee-jerk reaction to the allegations of sleaze and his establishment of the Nolan committee.

The Nolan committee established that there is widespread public concern about declining standards in public life. According to an opinion poll on page 108 of the Nolan report, 64 per cent. agreed with the statement:

"Most MPs make a lot of money by using public office improperly".

Nolan also revealed that 168 hon. Members had 356 consultancies between them. The fact that most of those 168 are Tories revealed the size of the problem that the Prime Minister inherited when Nolan called for disclosure of the earnings of Members of Parliament. The Prime Minister dealt with the problem in typical fashion by setting up another committee, the Select Committee on Standards in Public Life, and charging it with producing a report before the summer recess. It did; and recommended--and the House accepted--the appointment of a new commissioner, a new Select Committee on Standards and Privileges and a new code of conduct for Members. However, the Committee was divided on the issue of disclosure of earnings. Labour Members backed Nolan and, to no one's surprise, Tory Members on the Committee rejected disclosure.

The Chairman of the Select Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Leader of the House, dared not, at that stage, reject Nolan out of hand. After all, the Prime Minister had on 20 May, just two days after the acrimonious debate on 18 May, stated:

"I do not just accept the broad thrust of Nolan. I agree with it."

The Leader of the House produced a formula for the debate on the Select Committee's first report on 19 July which stated that the Committee needed more time to study all the aspects of disclosure of earnings. The Leader of the House--he will not mind me saying this--was conducting a charade. The Tory members of the Committee had no intention whatsoever of supporting disclosure. In the Select Committee, we were not

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deadlocked over the issue, as the press frequently reported. The only discussion we had on the subject took about five minutes, when we had a vote on the principles of the five options relating to Lord Nolan's demand for disclosure of earnings.

The options started with full disclosure, which the Opposition parties voted for, and then moved, by stages, further away from disclosure until there was no absolutely no disclosure--and the Tories voted for that. The Committee then agreed, without further ado or debate, that both sides would write their own versions of what they wanted in the final report and that we would vote on them in the Committee's formal and final session. That is what we did. The Tories have made a silly mistake. A third option was available to them which called for disclosure of earnings to the new commissioner only. If they had accepted that, many Conservative Members who are concerned about the matter would have been happy. They could have lived with that and voted for it. Of course, the Tories rejected it.

If the Tories win the vote tonight, they will again leave the British people with the impression that they have something dreadful to hide. That will not go away and, as the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) said, it will certainly be an issue at the next general election.

6.35 pm

Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling): The two issues that have run through the debate are the declaration of earnings and the implications of the ban on advocacy, which, I believe, are much more profound than some hon. Members have suggested.

I will state my position on the declaration of earnings. I believe that the Nolan recommendations were poorly drafted. They certainly failed to clarify what was meant by "contract" and by "agreement". As to the basic principle, I do not have any objection on grounds of principle to the proposition that, where hon. Members supplement their income by providing parliamentary services to outside bodies, both the source and quanta of the sums earned should be declarable. I shall support that Nolan recommendation tonight.

The main issue before the House tonight is the implications of the declaration of the ban on what has been known as paid advocacy. The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) suggested in her opening remarks that the 1947 declaration against paid advocacy has had a material effect on the conduct of the House. In the more than 20 years that I have been in the House, paid advocacy has been alive and well throughout the House.

There have been any number of debates featuring hon. Members who have declared an interest in an outside organisation, whether a trade association or trade union, and who have clearly advocated the interest of that organisation in the course of the debate. I do not know that the 1947 declaration has had much impact, if that was indeed for what it was intended.

The so-called addendum that the Government are moving is designed to carry the matter further. That has some very real implications for what I believe to be the most fundamental right of hon. Members--the right to

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speak in our proceedings in a wholly uninhibited way and to take part in our proceedings on the same basis as would any other hon. Member.

I draw the House's attention to the fact that the motion before us, over which the hon. Member for Dewsbury skipped extraordinarily lightly, proposes to a huge extent the banning of the initiation of debates by those who receive not only payments but benefits in kind, direct or indirect. I should have thought that that would have been a matter of some interest to the Labour party. The Nolan committee reported that there are 221 hon. Members with sponsorships, financial consultancies or other sorts of financial interests from trade unions. I wonder why the Labour party is not more concerned about the implications of that ban on initiating debate.

Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Sir John Stanley: I have only a short time.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said in opening the debate that, although such hon. Members may not initiate debates, they could take part in them. However, my right hon. Friend used a form of words whereby he said that, although they could take part, they would have to choose their words with care. He used the same expression in his interview on the "Today" programme last Friday. No Member of this House should be in the business of some form of self-imposed censorship--choosing his or her words carefully. I do not intend to choose my words carefully within the bounds of parliamentary expression. I am obliged to say what I think and be absolutely straight about what I believe is on the agenda. Moreover, there is not merely to be an inhibition of power to be able to initiate debates. Paragraph 23 of the Select Committee's report postulated that hon. Members might, in some circumstances, be debarred from taking part in debates at all. That is a most profound inhibition and potential intrusion on hon. Members' right of free speech. The relevant sentence says:

"On the other hand, it is not practicable to lay down in advance, with the precision that a Resolution of the House would require, all the circumstances in which it would or would not be proper for a Member with a paid interest to take part in a debate."

It will have profound consequences if we contemplate circumstances in which a large number of hon. Members were prevented from initiating debates, obliged to choose their words with care if they were to take part in debates and, in some circumstances, were unable to participate in debates at all.

Those are profoundly important matters, and it is not sufficient for the Select Committee simply to say that they should be left to the new commissioner, who is simply an official of the House, the new Select Committee or the new code of conduct. I do not criticise the Committee, which has done a Herculean job. It has had to work under a totally artificial time constraint, which seemed to be dictated by the political requirements of the Opposition.

I see no need to rush these proposals, because the implications of a ban on advocacy for the most fundamental right of all Members of Parliament--the right of freedom of speech--must be thought through infinitely more carefully. We must know precisely who

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will be banned from what, which is not clear at present. The motions before us tonight should be withdrawn and the matter referred back to the Select Committee. It is for the whole House, and the House alone, to decide who will be banned from what in participating in our proceedings.

6.42 pm

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North): My interests are recorded in the Register of Members' Interests in the usual way.

It gives me no pleasure to say that we heard a mischievous and disagreeable speech from the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath). It was totally distorted, as is his article in the Evening Standard today. He gave the impression in his speech that all is well in the House, there is no need for change and we are an incorruptible Assembly. I would remind him--he is no longer in his place--how this matter began and why the Nolan committee was set up in the first place: it was the cash-for-questions scandal.

When we first debated the matter, I said that The Sunday Times should be not criticised for what it did. Rather, it should be congratulated because, had it not carried out such an investigation, those matters would not have come to light and the reforms and recommendations before the House today would never have been agreed to. Although I am willing to, and often do, criticise that newspaper, I believe that it was in the overall interests of the House and of parliamentary democracy to bring those matters to light. That is why I believe that what it did was justified.

It is important to recognise--the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup did not recognise this--that the main controversy over financial disclosure arises not from some sinister Labour party plot but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) said, from the Nolan committee's recommendation. The Prime Minister was right to set up the Nolan committee and had our full support in so doing, so it is difficult to understand why, having said when it reported that he would support it, he has now opted out.

He has caved in to Conservative Back Benchers--some of whom are here tonight; others are not--who were totally opposed to setting up the Nolan committee in the first place. They made it perfectly clear that they did not like the idea and saw no reason why the committee should be set up. Their agitation alerted the Tory Whips to a position that has led the Prime Minister not to support a crucial part of the Nolan recommendations.

On privacy, I believe that some aspects of our personal lives are indeed our business. There was no justification for the tabloids recently exposing some of the so-called "scandals", be they about Conservative or Opposition Members, because the public interest was in no way involved. Certain aspects of hon. Members' private lives have no relevance to their parliamentary duties. However, hon. Members cannot take the view, which some Tory Members wish to take, that financial matters are purely our business and that there is no reason why the public should know what we earn from outside sources. I do not accept that view for a moment. In other countries, such as the United States, far more information must be given than what the Nolan committee recommends.

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I doubt whether many hon. Members would dispute that there is public support on the crucial question whether matters relating to parliamentary activity--those financial details--should be given. There is overwhelming support in the country, far outside the Labour party, for the recommendation. Conservative Members who are adamant in their opposition to it form a small minority in the country. Even the newspapers that would normally support the Conservative cause have not supported the Tory Members who are opposed to Nolan on this issue. I cannot but emphasise, and I doubt whether any Conservative Members could disagree, that among the public at large there is overwhelming support for giving information on activities that arise from our parliamentary duties, as recommended by Nolan, in bands. What is wrong with that? Why are Conservative Members so reluctant to give that information?

If we lose tonight's vote, it will be a defeat not just for this crucial amendment but for the House. It will demonstrate that we are unable to reform ourselves, which will reflect on us all, including those hon. Members who vote for the amendment. There will continue to be a general feeling in the country that we are all in this for ourselves and are all on the make. That would be a most unjust attitude to take, but it is undoubtedly being taken.

As some of my hon. Friends have said, if the amendment about financial disclosure is not carried tonight, the issue will not go away. It will come back in this Parliament and even more so in the next. It will be a continued sore within the parliamentary and democratic system. Why do not we demonstrate our courage tonight and admit that parliamentary reform of this nature is necessary? It is what the country wants and I believe that the country is right to want it. If it is justified, why should we defy public opinion in this way? I trust that, despite all the difficulties of getting a majority for the amendment tonight, it will be carried.

6.49 pm

Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne): Even though I have no interests covered by the resolutions, I decided to become actively involved in the matter because I am fed up with being called a sleazebag. Every time that all Tory Members of Parliament are attacked, I am included, and quite frankly, it hurts. I have absolutely no doubt, however, that the overwhelming majority of Members of Parliament, whatever their political party, are decent, honourable and hard-working people. However, the public no longer think that that is true. They have reached that conclusion because of the well-publicised activities of a few hon. Members. Tonight, we have the chance to put that behind us. If it hurts us to do that, I am afraid that we have only ourselves to blame.

Because time is short, I want to confine my remarks to one issue--the disclosure of relevant outside earnings. I have come to the conclusion that we simply must disclose them. I admit that, in an ideal world, I would disagree with that and would not want to disclose such information; but we do not live in an ideal world, and we are not in an ideal House. In my judgment, the disclosure of relevant earnings has become the price that we must pay. If we do not pay that price tonight, the issue will come back, and next time the price will be higher. If we do not pay it then, the issue will come back yet again and the price will have gone up once more.

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I understand the arguments of colleagues and hon. Friends--that privacy is important, and that the slippery slope beckons. My constituents and the contents of my mailbag tell me that the public do not buy those arguments. They do not believe that the Select Committee has gone far enough.

The recommendations of the Select Committee go further in respect of advocacy, and my constituents and everyone else I have spoken to are absolutely delighted about that. The Select Committee stopped short, however, of the Nolan recommendations on the giving of advice. The public will not understand that, and will not be reassured by that.

Recent history has left us in the House with no choice other than not only to be above reproach but to have 150 per cent. proof that we are so. That is why we have to pay the price that some of us do not like.

I should like to mention two matters of detail covered by my amendments. The first relates to the question of disclosing bands, to which my amendments (d) and (e) refer. I am against disclosing income in bands, for two simple reasons. First, the Select Committee report requires us to draw up contracts in detail, and to submit them. If we go for bands, we shall have to Tippex out the amount in the agreement and then write another letter. I do not particularly want to do that.

Secondly, I hope that it has occurred to hon. Members that, if we agree to bands and someone chooses to pay us £100 for giving advice, we will then be put in the band ranging from £1 to £1,000. You can bet your bottom dollar, Madam Speaker, that The Sun and the Daily Mirror will report that we have received £1,000, not £100, because we are in that band. I caution against bands, but I will not go to the stake for that principle.

My amendments (j) and (o) would make financial information declarable after the next general election. I must make it clear, however, that my amendments are not designed to put off the decision of principle until after the election. We shall take that decision of principle tonight, and we will then be left to implement everything barring making a declaration about amounts of money. I believe that that is the correct approach, for two reasons.

First, some hon. Members find a salary of £33,000 more than enough, and I respect them for that. Others come to the House, however, with certain commitments, and having made salaries well in excess of a hon. Member's salary. I respect them for that, too. There is absolutely nothing dishonourable about being in that position. If we expect those people to change the circumstances in which they find themselves, I judge that five months is not time enough for them to do so. I believe that they should be given until the date of the next general election.

Secondly, the declaration of that financial information should be put off until after the next election because of the antics of some on the Opposition Benches. I respect and agree with the official line of the Labour party that such available information is for the good of the House. Some Opposition Members, however, are already grubbing around for votes. Some of them are crowing merrily and saying, "Just you wait until the next general election, when we have the resolution. We will use it for party political purposes." I deplore such an attitude. By removing the temptation to acquire any such financial information before the next general election, my amendments enable the Labour party to prove that its members are not grubbing around for votes.

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Tonight, the House faces a clear, straightforward and simple challenge: do we have what it takes to restore public confidence in the House of Commons? Are we prepared to swallow hard and pay a high price to redeem our reputation? Tonight, we do not have to decide whether we support the Government or the Labour party. Over the past few days, journalists have kept on asking me whether I intend to vote with the Labour party. One even asked me whether I planned to do the same as the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth). The answer to that was simple--hell will freeze over before I join the Labour party.

Tonight, I am not voting for the Labour party; tonight no one will be voting for Labour--people will be voting for Parliament. I am not voting against my friends and my Government, but I am voting against sleaze, and I urge the House to do the same.

6.56 pm

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington): My constituency receives financial support from Unison.

I congratulate the Select Committee on producing an excellent report after a lot of work. In particular, I further congratulate it on going down the route that I think I might modestly say that I set out during the course of my contribution to the July debate, when I referred to an extension of the 1947 resolution.

In the seconds available to me, I should like to pose the House a series of questions. What does the House believe that the public believe having read the article in yesterday's edition of The Sunday Times ? Does the House believe that the public would expect us to deal with the issue of hon. Members being paid to seek introductions to Ministers for their clients? Does the House believe that that is what the public want, or does it believe that we should leave the matter alone and not meddle?

As the resolutions stand on advocacy, we are doing nothing to deal with the problem that was highlighted in The Sunday Times . The practices of those who want to sell access to Ministers will remain under the resolutions before us tonight. I believe that that is wrong.

The two amendments in my name deal with access to Ministers. The first deals with meetings--their initiation and arrangement, and participation in them. The second deals with correspondence with Ministers. In so far as both would prohibit such actions by Members of Parliament, I believe that they should be carried by the House this evening.

Mr. Salmond: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. There is only one amendment on the Order Paper, amendment No. 2(p), which deals with one of the key issues in Nolan--the banning of multi-client lobbying public relations organisations having contracts with Members of Parliament. As you have not called anyone to speak for that amendment, Madam Speaker, how on earth can the debate be considered to be balanced? Is it the fault of the Leader of the House, who called a three-hour debate and so restricted the right of hon. Members to propose those amendments?

Madam Speaker: I think that a number of hon. Members will find themselves very disappointed and

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frustrated today because of this short debate. They have not been called or even been able to expand on the views that they already hold.

6.59 pm

Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr): As a result of the debate, right hon. and hon. Members have become aware of the importance of the resolution of the House of 15 July 1947 relating to privileges--a resolution which probably no one has ever read and which probably was never drawn specifically to the attention of a Member on being elected to the House, because we have no induction procedure of any description.

I want to comment briefly on what the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir J. Stanley) said. Although he supported disclosure, he asserted that motion No. 1, which is in the name of the Leader of the House --he appeared to believe that it was in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor)--on amending and adding to the 1947 resolution, comes to the House with a unanimous recommendation from the Select Committee. The motion is in the name of the Leader of the House, whom we sincerely hope will be supported.

If right hon. and hon. Members want to sell for money their right to initiate debate on any issue, that is up to them; they do it knowingly and accordingly must be accountable to their constituents. There is a marked reluctance to reform. That has led directly to a failure to keep pace with the attitudes, outside the House, of a more mature and alert electorate.

Lord Nolan and his Committee did not invent that problem. Nor did the media invent that problem. During the debate, mention was made of yesterday's Sunday Times . One thing must be made abundantly clear about that. If, a year ago, as I understand it from The Sunday Times , it believed that a Member of Parliament, the hon. Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Porter), had done something wrong, it was the duty of The Sunday Times to draw the matter to the attention of the Register of Members' Interests, not sit on it and use it in the scurrilous way that it did yesterday.

One or two hon. Members have asked why we should be treated differently from other people. The answer, I submit, is simple. We really are different. We are a unique group of 651 ordinary people, elected to carry out an extraordinary task on behalf of our fellow citizens. As a group--as an institution--we have lost a good deal of trust from, and are held in very low esteem by, our fellow citizens. We must win back that trust as quickly as possible, for the House, our institution of Parliament, is on trial.

I do not speak from the Opposition Dispatch Box for the Labour party, any more than the Leader of the House spoke earlier for the Conservative party. If we make the vote a party battle, we demean the House and ourselves. [Interruption.] Hon. Members may chaff at that, but that is the reality. I speak for those who accept the need for reform radical enough to show that we understand the public anxiety. That is what it is about.

The reform must involve transparency, to show that we are not on the make. Secrecy about earnings that are directly related to elected membership of the House sends a message that we are on the make. As the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) said, that taints us with sleaze. I genuinely believe that transparency will sterilise the sleaze argument once and for all.

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The right hon. Member for Hove (Sir T. Sainsbury) made an interesting and constructive speech. He mentioned a couple of issues that deserve a response from the Opposition, and certainly from the person on the Opposition Dispatch Box who is winding up the debate. We chose the amendments to operate from the new Session on 15 November, simply to stay as near in line with Lord Nolan's Committee's proposals as possible. We deliberately sought not to deviate from the Nolan Committee report, although I accept that the right hon. Gentleman's argument has validity.

I also want to say to the right hon. Member for Hove, on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury and myself--for I do not speak for the Labour party on that subject but I know that I speak for a considerable number of Opposition Members--that we have no long-term aim to abolish outside interests or to seek disclosure of an hon. Member's total income. We have no long-term agenda in that respect. I say to those hon. Members who might feel that the issue has already become too partisan, that I regret that, as do my hon. Friends. I know what it is like to sit on the Government Benches, wondering whether to support my tribe, and being effectively forced to do so by the antics of the tribe on the Opposition Benches. That does not, however, alter the fundamental issue, which is winning back the trust of the public through transparency.

I ask all hon. Members tonight to reach outside those tribal boundaries--we are freely elected to do so occasionally, and tonight is one of those occasions--in the interests of winning back the trust of those who sent us to this place.

7.5 pm

Mr. Newton: Those right hon. and hon. Members who have been present throughout the debate--which has done, as did our previous debate, considerable credit to the House in spite of occasional heated moments-- will realise that, on many of the issues that were mentioned, there is little that I can add to what I said in my speech opening the debate. I certainly do not wish to take up the time available to other Members, making a long, repetitive speech. However, obviously I should comment further on some issues.

First, I shall say a word about what my right hon. Friends the Members for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) and for Bridgwater (Mr. King) and several others said during the debate, or said sotto voce by coming and whispering in my ear as I sat on the Treasury Bench, about the rush with which everything has been done and the disadvantages that they believe have resulted. No one who has served on the Committee or taken part in the process would wish to dismiss that. Obviously, everything has been done in a great hurry, but that, I say to my colleagues on both sides of the House, is the position in which, as a House, we were placed by the situation that had developed.

I have no doubt that, had we sought another six, eight or nine months of delay, in which we would have been attacked collectively, not from one side or the other, for failing to respond to public anxiety, and had we let those arguments range and rage in the way that they have done, it would have gravely further damaged the reputation of all of us and of the House. Therefore, it was right to proceed fast. Although I did not wish to spend virtually

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every waking hour in a Select Committee, trying to do the job that we have done, I believe that it was worth it, and that we have made real progress to the advantage of the House.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) and several others raised the question that my right hon, Friend put as if there were created some hiatus or gap between our comments in the paragraphs of the report referring to speeches, and the terms of the resolution. I would not dismiss what has been said, but it is inconceivable that the commissioner and the new committee would totally disregard the clear basis on which the House has been invited to take a decision tonight. Were that to happen--I do not believe that it could--I would certainly want to give careful and urgent consideration to the position that that would create, for example, for my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Sims) and others. I will say--I mention something that my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) said--that that would be a much stronger argument were I seeking to persuade the House tonight to pass an Act of Parliament or a set of regulations in which we really would be subject to a great deal of legalistic textual

interpretation. However, I do not believe that that fear is well founded.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup mentioned unfounded complaints being widely circulated. Paragraph 26 of our first report states:

"Where, however, the Commissioner decided that no prima facie case had been established, he would merely report the facts to the committee. The Committee would inform both the complainant and the Member concerned, but no details of the complaint would be published."

That passage is underlined in red, so it must have been mentioned earlier. In view of what my right hon. Friend said, it is important for me to put that on the record again.

The other worry that has echoed through today's debate--I understand why, as we on the Committee also wrestled with it--was most eloquently expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen). He doubted whether the line could be held in the position where the Committee had proposed it. He may be right on that. One of the problems that we all have to wrestle with is that the world has moved on--that is true even since I entered the House in 1974, and since the creation of the Register of Members' Interests. New problems have arisen, public perceptions have changed, the view about what should be disclosed or registered has changed. Clearly, there may have to be further changes in future. I believe that we could respectably hold the line on the Select Committee's proposal and my resolutions.

The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) invited me to confirm what I had said about her amendment (b) not taking us straight to the publication of tax returns. I readily confirm that that is my reading of her amendment. I want to reiterate that I am concerned that her proposal will make it much more difficult to hold the line proposed by the Select Committee and will push us steadily further down a path that almost no one in the House wishes to tread and very few think right or desirable.

Mrs. Ann Taylor: I confirm that I do not wish to go down that path, and neither do the amendment's co-proposers. Will the Leader of the House confirm that the amendment that I tabled on disclosure relates only to

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the agreements that he is recommending, which should be deposited with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and is therefore limited?

Mr. Newton: That is certainly my understanding. I have never sought to mislead anyone about anything in the affair. I hope that the hon. Lady and all hon. Members will bear in mind when they decide how to vote that I have no doubt that, even though the hon. Lady says that she does not want to move in that direction, her amendment (b) will create a far greater risk of an inescapable slide towards the end that she does not want. I therefore cannot recommend her amendment to the House, and I hope that it will approve my motions. Question put:--

The House divided: Ayes 587, Noes 2.

Division No. 233] [7.13 pm

AYES

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Abbott, Ms Diane

Adams, Mrs Irene

Ainger, Nick

Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

Aitken, Rt Hon Jonathan

Alexander, Richard

Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

Allen, Graham

Alton, David

Amess, David

Ancram, Michael

Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

Arbuthnot, James

Armstrong, Hilary

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

Ashton, Joe

Atkins, Rt Hon Robert

Atkinson, David (Bour'mouth E)

Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

Austin-Walker, John

Baker, Rt Hon Kenneth (Mole V)

Baker, Nicholas (North Dorset)

Baldry, Tony

Banks, Matthew (Southport)

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Barnes, Harry

Barron, Kevin

Bates, Michael

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