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Mr. Boateng: The question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) is not answered completely by the Attorney-General's intervention. What would occur if the hon. Member concerned had made a number of interventions or raised a number of points during Committee proceedings, which are obviously part of the parliamentary record? If that hon. Member subsequently waives his privilege, surely it is open to the defendant to say, "We should have access to that information which reflects his motives and conduct but which appears in a document to which other hon. Members who have not waived their privilege have contributed." As the Attorney-General said, one imagines that such a document would be owned by the Committee and by the House. It would hamper the defendant if he
were not given access to that document. We are opening that area to the scrutiny of the courts if we allow clause 13 to stand.
Mr. Newton: I have already said that my right hon. and learned Friend will seek to assist the House later if that should prove helpful. Meanwhile, we must remember that the House allows the courts to refer to Hansard.
Mr. John Morris (Aberavon): As the Attorney-General intends to assist the House further, I ask him to consider that we are seeking to allow the protection of Parliament to be raised as the clause would apply to parliamentary proceedings that at present cannot be impeached or questioned in any court or place outside Parliament. That is the starting point. Clause 13(2) states:
- "Where a person waives that protection--
(a) any such enactment or rule of law shall not apply to prevent evidence being given, questions being asked or statements, submissions, comments or findings being made about his conduct".
Mr. Newton: I shall not elaborate further upon the remarks of my right hon. and learned Friend, beyond saying that, according to the advice given to me, the short answer is that such a document could not be made available without a separate decision of the House. I hope that that provides the reassurance that both the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and the hon. Member for Brent, South are seeking.
Dr. Tony Wright (Cannock and Burntwood): I do not wish to explore the content of the answer by the Leader of the House, but I must put several points to him. Does not that important exchange illustrate a fundamental difficulty with the clause? The House--particularly the Standards and Privileges Committee--has laboured mightily over the years to try to define what constitutes proceedings in Parliament. The clause, quite casually and without reference to any Committee or to previous deliberations, announces that there may be a waiver and that proceedings in Parliament shall be thus and thus. The first time that it is tested, we find that we do not know what the Bill says. Does that not illustrate precisely the difficulties of dealing with a major constitutional issue in a wholly casual manner?
Mr. Newton: I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he will be able to develop that point, which, in a sense, has already been developed by the hon. Members for Brent, South and for Workington. No one--certainly not me--is seeking to present the argument as though every single case was conclusive and one way. There clearly is a balance of considerations, and every hon. Member will have to make up his or her own mind at the end of the debate about where the balance lies between the risks that have been focused on in the past few minutes and the injustice that many people feel that two hon. Members have experienced as a result of what has occurred in recent times.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: The right hon. Gentleman is Chairman of the Select Committee on Standards and
Privileges. I have been a member of that Committee sufficiently long to realise that the test that he sets in any debate is that we go to the very nth degree to ensure that what we are doing is absolutely correct, because we do not--especially the right hon. Gentleman as Chairman--want to be party to mistakes. Does he not feel that, on this very important issue, he should be sitting in the Chair of the Committee and that we should be taking evidence to ensure that a mistake is not made? The Committee might well approve it. I simply do not know. We may reject it. But we cannot afford to take that risk without the fullest inquiry.
Mr. Newton: I am grateful for the complimentary nature of the hon. Gentleman's earlier remarks. There was sufficient concern in another place to consider it right to raise the issue in relation to the Bill, and in the event they decided to insert what is now clause 13. That--inescapably, it seems to me--gives me a duty to set out as fairly as I can the balance of consideration for the House to take into account when deciding whether it wishes to proceed. Clearly, the hon. Gentleman will argue that it would be a mistake for the House to proceed in this way, either because he is against it or because he feels that the implications have not been sufficiently explored. That is a point for him to argue, and if he does so with sufficient persuasion no doubt the House will reach a different decision from that currently in the Bill. That is what we are talking about tonight.
Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr): The other place agreed clause 13. The great distinction between clause 13 and new clause 9 is that the latter exclusively affects Members of Parliament of either House. Clause 13 gives the power to waive privilege to all witnesses before Select Committees and to any and every Officer of the House who may be called to give evidence. What are the consequences of witnesses who come before a Select Committee in the knowledge that, in future, they may want to waive their privilege if a case comes to court? Surely the place to discuss the consequences and ramifications of the possible distortion of the evidence that such a witness may give is the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, which the right hon. Gentleman chairs with such distinction, and not on the Floor of the House, as we have not debated clause stand part and the clause was not in the Bill at the beginning.
Mr. Newton: I am grateful for the last part of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. The rest are points of argument about what decision the House will have to take at the conclusion of the debate. I hope that it is clear by now that nobody--certainly not me--is dismissing the points that have been made, although on balance I would probably come to a different conclusion as an individual. There clearly are, as I have acknowledged, a number of factors that the House needs to take into account when considering the matter. Indeed, I had hoped to set them out relatively briefly in the course of my remarks.
Sir Peter Tapsell: It has been more than three centuries since the Bill of Rights 1688 was put on the statute book. Am I right in thinking that the tradition of the House is that if the integrity of an hon. Member in discharging his parliamentary duties is seriously impugned by an outside body, the Privileges Committee investigates the matter,
that if it is found that the hon. Member has seriously misbehaved, he is punished by the House, and that if the allegations against the hon. Member are unfounded, the person or organisation bringing the allegation is seriously punished by the House? Why could not the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges have dealt with this matter?6.15 pm
Mr. Newton: Perhaps others will wish to comment, because it is not for me to say why particular people took particular actions at particular times. I have to cope with the fact that the clause was added to the Bill in another place, as they felt that it was an appropriate way of tackling what everybody acknowledges is a problem. Whatever else may be realistic to suppose about the activities of the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, it should also be acknowledged that it would not be in a position to impose an award of damages against a person who was judged to have libelled somebody. There would be widespread objection--certainly in this day and age--to some fine or award of damages being imposed by a Committee of the House in the circumstances that my hon. Friend seems to be postulating.
Sir Peter Tapsell: With great respect, I do not think that my right hon. Friend has answered the question. I did not raise the question of damages, which arise only if the case goes to court. Why cannot the merits of the case be handled by the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges and a decision made in the terms that I mentioned in my earlier question? I thought that that was why the Committee existed.
Mr. Newton: The Committee of Privileges--the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, as it now is--obviously seeks to examine matters that are referred to it. On the cases that led to the debate tonight, I have already made the point that it was felt appropriate in another place to tackle the matter by a change in the law to enable Members of Parliament to pursue their cases through the courts in such circumstances in the same way as anybody else. That does not exclude the Select Committee from investigating the matter, were it to be asked to do so, but many people would feel that that alone would not be adequate where a Member of Parliament was in effect--or felt that he had been--libelled in respect of his actions within the House.
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