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5.43 pm
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey): My right hon. and hon. Friends and I warmly welcome both your statements, Madam Speaker, of Monday and Tuesday and the motion tabled by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller), which we support without reservation. We also clearly welcome the fact that the Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House want expeditiously to refer the matter to the Committee. That is a welcome start. I subscribe entirely to the views expressed by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) about declaration of interests for those standing for elections and about legislation. I share the hope of that outcome.
I should like to make four points about procedure. First, I agree with the point made by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris)--it is clear that it would be entirely inappropriate to investigate the activity of an individual or two without looking at those who may be connected to them. Out of fairness to all hon. Members, the Committee must consider all those who, by implication, as well as other ways, are associated with the allegations.
Secondly, it would be extremely unsatisfactory if this matter remained in Committee and was not reported to the Floor of the House before the end of this Parliament. Although it is obviously not entirely within the Government's control, the election could be as late as May next year. I hope that the Leader of the House, as the Committee Chairman, and Committee members will try to ensure that the Committee does its job as quickly as is compatible with its important task. Speed is important because justice and truth delayed is justice and truth denied to the public at the next election.
Thirdly, Sir Gordon Downey will produce his own report. We understand that he has been working hard already. That report must enter the public domain. It is important that advice from the Officer of the House charged with investigative and other responsibilities is a public document. If we are to restore public confidence in our procedures, as your statement, Madam Speaker, sought to establish that we would, that document must be published.
Fourthly, and perhaps most important, I hope that the Leader of the House will make it clear--obviously not now at the Dispatch Box, but by another method later tonight--that the vote in Committee will be free of party line. I also hope that, when the matter comes back before the House, there will be a free vote with no party line. It would be entirely unacceptable if any report and any subsequent motions that came before the House were accompanied by any party political attempt to determine the result of a vote. Indeed, it would be incompatible with the request that the Committee investigate.
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover):
I wish that I could get excited about the idea that the House of Commons, with all its mumbo jumbo, by sending the matter to a Committee of the House of Commons, will resolve it and satisfy the public. The truth is that the public know that self-regulation is wrong.
I have stood up in the House with many of my hon. Friends countless times to say that it is wrong for the police to investigate their own complaints and that investigation should be done by some outside body. We say it about the Stock Exchange, Lloyd's, and even about hospital trusts, which now investigate the complaints that we send in. Previously, another health service body used to investigate them. Somehow or other, for this place, it is right for a Committee to deal with such matters.
I read the other week that our Labour Front-Bench team--new Labour or whatever it is--were on the point of calling for a judicial inquiry. I thought that that was a smart move. Somehow or other they backed off. They should have stuck to their original proposition. There has been a litany of Select Committees. Although on some Committees hon. Members beaver away out of the glare of publicity about some matter before them--I recognise that much work goes into them--I do not approve of Select Committees. I am not on any; I do not believe in them. I do not believe in the system of sloppy consensus and the all-party embrace.
On this issue, the public are watching. They do not know about what takes place on many other Select Committees, but they know about this one. They think that the House of Commons should do better, and that the matter should be dealt with by somebody outside. There should be a judicial inquiry.
Just imagine what the story is about. It is about a Tory Whip being told, presumably by one of the higher-ups in the Government, to finger a Committee--to ensure that it
uses its Tory majority to get the right result. I was not surprised when I read about that in The Guardian. What surprised me was the fact that the Whip--
Mr. Brian Sedgemore (Hackney, South and Shoreditch):
Put it on paper.
Mr. Skinner:
Yes, the fact that he put it on paper. Then, because the Whip put it all on paper and handled the matter sensitively, he was promoted. That was what surprised me.
Cynic though I may be, I must point out that when the Committee is set up again, it will be another Tory-dominated Committee. The Tory Government have a majority of one, so they tell me, and the two people principally involved in the allegations are the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) and the Paymaster General, the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts). Can the House imagine in its wildest dreams--I cannot--that the Tory Government who are hanging on for a May general election will throw away their majority by coming to any conclusion other than to save the skins of two of their Members of Parliament? I do not believe that they will do anything else.
Almost every Select Committee that has operated in the glare of publicity has backed the Government. I have watched them all. There was the Committee that investigated the coal industry, and many more. At the end of the day, when the chips are down, we always find that the Tory Government's majority holds sway.
That is why I am not convinced that the road that we are now travelling will resolve the matter. One of my colleagues told me earlier, "Dennis, ask them to make sure that all the papers--not just some, not just those that went to court--are submitted to the inquiry. What is more, would it not be a good idea if all the papers were put in the Library, so that those of us who are not on the Committee can read them?" What about that? Let us have some transparency. That is the new word that everybody keeps trotting out in this place.
The whole story has been a litany of failure. In 1976 we managed to set up a Register of Members' Interests. Some people said, "Stuff it. I'm not putting my name in there." Then the Nolan committee was set up, with some Members of Parliament and a few members of the chattering classes. It was the first time for many years that people had been brought in from the outside. That committee made a marginal proposition to improve the so-called register.
What happened? The Government ran away from some of the proposals, and when the new rules were introduced and it was declared that everybody must declare their income from moonlighting, about 30 Tory Members of Parliament said, "We're not putting our income in."
So the public outside say, "Oh yes? They are going to send the investigation to another Committee of the great and good in the House of Commons. What will happen to it there?" Most of them will draw the same conclusion as I do about where we will be when it is all done. That will probably be after the general election, because the Government will find ways of dragging it out. They will use Whips and every other means to ensure that the process goes on until after the election.
The net result will be that the Government will think that they have swept the whole thing under the carpet, but then something else will happen and people in the press
and the other media will say that Parliament has been brought into disrepute. Then the Government will try again to cobble some other form of mumbo jumbo to look after the business in the House.
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) on what he has done today. However, I would hesitate to approve a motion that did not make it perfectly clear that the Committee would sit in public.
We have been through the argument before, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) made the same point when he was excluded from the Privileges Committee. There is nothing in the motion, and no commitment from the Leader of the House, who will chair the Committee, to say that the proceedings will be held in public.
If the Committee does not sit in public, there will not be public confidence. There can be no public confidence if such matters are dealt with as they were by the former Privileges Committee. I hope that that point will be well taken by the Leader of the House and by those who will sit on the Committee.
Until recently, the view expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), that self-regulation was not appropriate, would not have been accepted by most people. Most, including me, would have said that we should regulate our own affairs--indeed, that we had a duty and responsibility to do so. That is a long tradition, and I would have said to my hon. Friend that I disagreed with him about it. I continue to disagree with him, but to a far lesser extent.
The situation is grave. I do not want to exaggerate it or give the impression that people have lost confidence in Members of Parliament altogether and no longer come to our surgeries or write to us. That would be nonsense. We know that when people have problems they often come to us and hope that we will do our best to resolve them, and I do not want to give a different impression, but people's view of Parliament as a whole should alarm us.
This is a narrow motion, and I do not want to broaden the debate--indeed, you would not allow me to do so, Madam Speaker--but the fact that 67 per cent. of the people consulted in a recent opinion poll published in The Guardian believe that we are generally on the make is certainly alarming and disturbing. The effects of the misdeeds, or alleged misdeeds, of one or two hon. Members have spread to the House of Commons as a whole, so we cannot simply dismiss the point of view that the time may come, if it has not come already, when self-regulation is no longer appropriate.
The Nolan committee has already been appointed. Years ago, it would have been unthinkable that such a committee would be set up to consider standards in the
House. The conventional view would have been obvious--that that was our job--but few people disagreed with the decision that was taken, rightly in all the circumstances at that time, to set up the committee.
The important aspect of the matter before us--and of related matters--is that they constitute a test. If the Committee works as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover assumes it will, the time will have come when no confidence in self-regulation will be left. People will argue strongly outside that if other organisations have avoided self-regulation, there is no reason why the House of Commons should cling to the past.
That is the test. How will the Committee go about its business? Will it sit in public, as I have asked? Shall we ensure that the Government majority on the Committee does not act in such a way as to make it clear that the inquiry will not be the impartial inquiry that is essential not only in the context of the matter before us, but for the sake of the reputation of the House?
I have nothing against the Paymaster General, the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts)--certainly nothing personal. Some might say that, if we must have Tory Members, we might as well have Tories such as him. I have no desire to see the hon. Gentleman scapegoated. A serious allegation has been made, and he has a perfect right to defend himself. We all agree on that, but his defence should be heard in public before the Committee, and if others are involved, we should know.
I shall certainly not vote against the motion, but I believe that it sets the House a test. If our reputation is to survive and people are to have confidence in Parliament as a whole, it is essential that when this subject, and other far more serious allegations, are investigated--after all, the matter before us is fairly minor compared with the other matter that will be before the Committee--it is seen that the Committee can act impartially, so as to make it clear that we are capable of running and regulating our affairs.
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