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Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Inverclyde): What about a gardener?
Sir Peter Tapsell: If there is a garden, there must also be a gardener.
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington): May I put the hon. Gentleman out of his agony? The whole question of the Portuguese properties was dismissed by the Committee, so he has no case.
Sir Peter Tapsell: I am not in any sort of agony--rather the reverse. The hon. Gentleman refers to one of the issues about which I am complaining. He says that the Committee dismissed the question of the Portuguese properties, but a considerable section of the published evidence in the report is about them. He is a long-serving and distinguished member of the Committee and he says that the issue was dismissed. Therefore, it was all a
mare's nest, but references to overseas trusts and the Portuguese properties were put before the public eye. That would lead people to suppose that my hon. Friend was involved in a carefully organised and fairly substantial overseas operation in which she avoided paying tax because she had an overseas trust.
I mentioned the issues of staff and tax, because the figure of £3,400 that the report quotes would have long since been swallowed up. The owners of overseas properties find that it is extremely difficult to make a profit out of them because of the overheads that I have described.
My hon. Friend's personality is an important part of the process. From my reading of the report, it seems that what really upset the Committee was not so much what she did, but the way she responded to the questioning to which she was subjected. The right hon. Member for Swansea, West mentioned the propriety of her responses, and my hon. Friend admitted in her speech that she was unwise in the way that she handled the affair and her defence. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire spelt that out in technical terms and was right to do so. However, is it correct that my hon. Friend should be so severely punished because of that behaviour?
Mr. Martin Bell (Tatton):
There are times when I wonder whether all Members of the House live on the same planet.
I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) for her outstandingly moderate and gracious speech in what must be difficult circumstances for her.
I regret the absence, through ill health, of the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon). He has conducted this investigation as he conducts all investigations--with outstanding fairness and rigour. I also pay tribute to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, who is fully living up to the demanding standards set by her predecessor.
As a member of the Committee who sits for no party on the Opposition Benches, it is important that I make the point that the Committee is not partisan; it is not Labour-dominated; it is not Labour-run; and it does not divide on party lines. If it did, I would not serve on it for five minutes--and neither, I am sure, would Opposition Members or Members on the Government Benches.
I know that objections have been raised in the press, and some journalists are suggesting that our procedures have become too rigorous. They are rigorous because they have to be, because we want this Parliament to be held in higher esteem than the previous Parliament. We owe that to ourselves, our constituents and the institution in which we sit.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
I am exceedingly uneasy. I say to the former Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell), that when he said that it is difficult to represent oneself, he was wrong--it is impossible to represent oneself.
I say that with some passion because I was in the position of having to try to represent myself in the light of a privileges investigation into chemical and biological warfare, and my talking freely to the late Laurence Marks of The Observer a third of a century ago. I was not allowed to have a lawyer present. When one appears before the Committee and one is not a lawyer, it is impossible to try to defend oneself, especially if one is not used to such situations. I was completely tied up by woolly questions from non-lawyers, and the then Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), then simply asked me, "Mr. Dalyell, did you really mean that?" I was then reduced to a state of sheepishness.
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham):
Will the hon. Gentleman note that the Government have accepted the force of what he has just said in the context of the BSE inquiry? He will know that all those who have had to appear before that inquiry have had the advantage of legal advice beforehand, and of representation, if they chose to have it, at the inquiry itself.
Mr. Dalyell:
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is a QC, and I do not in any way hesitate on the point that he made.
Sir George Young (North-West Hampshire):
I echo what others have said and wish the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) a speedy and complete recovery from his illness. The House owes a debt to the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) for the way in which he presented the report, as well as to his Select Committee.
I am sorry that the husband of my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) is in poor health. I understand the additional pressure that that has put on her. I hope that nothing that I say about the report will undermine the sympathy that I feel for her on that score.
By comparison with some of the other cases that the Select Committee has recently had to investigate, the original offence--the original offence--of non-declaration was a minor one. Of course my hon. Friend should have declared her interest in private rented property before she introduced two ten-minute Bills. As a Housing Minister in
the early 1990s, I was well aware of my hon. Friend's views on the private rented sector, which accorded with her generally libertarian and free-market views on other matters. I did not for a moment believe that her espousal of a free market in housing, and a belief that rent control was wrong, were driven by her own private interests.
If that had been my hon. Friend's only offence, I am not sure that we would even be having this debate. The Select Committee has adjudicated on a number of occasions where interests should have been declared and were not. Hon. Members have survived the usual, rather minor, press interest that ensued, with their reputations intact. Indeed, some on both sides have gone on to hold very high office.
What clearly exasperated the Select Committee in this case was the smokescreen that descended, which caused it to veer all over the road, and to stop and ask a few people for directions before it eventually found a way through. The Committee's strong conclusion in paragraph 42, and the sentence at the higher end of the tariff scale in paragraph 51, flowed from the general obfuscation, and in particular from my hon. Friend's denials of links with offshore companies.
In the present case, three things have happened which have led us to where we are today. First, as I said, my hon. Friend was initially unable to respond accurately to the questions put to her by the Committee, and found herself tangled in the subsequent web.
Secondly, my hon. Friend has not found it possible to accept the verdict of her colleagues, who I think displayed some patience in dealing with the case, or to express her regret for what happened. If she had felt able to do that, she would have found the House to be generous and forgiving.
Thirdly, my hon. Friend has cast aspersions on the neutrality of the Committee and therefore on the roles of my right hon. and hon. Friends who serve on it and on the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell). Neither my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley) nor my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) would assent to what they believed to be a miscarriage of justice just because they were in a minority. I give away no secrets when I say that both of them are outwith the conventional range of discipline of my party: I cannot imagine that they would have subjected themselves to the discipline of another.
My hon. Friend the Member for Billericay suggested that the procedure that found her guilty was tainted. A number of those who have spoken have mentioned the relevant report of Lord Neill's committee, "Reinforcing Standards". Of course, we should debate that report, which has been published since we last had a report from the Select Committee. It made recommendations about serious contested allegations. Whether that would cover my hon. Friend is a matter for debate. As I said, I personally do not regard her original offence as particularly serious.
Neill stated in paragraph 3.51:
We considered whether an accused MP should have the right to elect the full tribunal procedure in all contested cases, whether a minor or a serious case. We concluded that they should not.
1 Mar 2000 : Column 444
I agree with what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) said. Once a case has escalated to the extent to which my hon. Friend's case has now escalated, there is a strong argument for the sort of assistance that was mentioned.
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