Memorandum submitted by the Rt Hon Kenneth
Clarke QC MP
I am writing to give you my comments on the
consultation paper that your Committee issued on proposed amendments
to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members. I have read this
document and I do have reservations about one or two points in
it.
My main reservation is that the Committee is
not contemplating any provision to cover frivolous or vexatious
complaints against Members of Parliament. I am afraid that I think
that there has been a tendency to lose sight of the original purpose
of these rules. There were undoubtedly several cases of improper
behaviour on the part of MPs in the last Parliament, which led
to considerable public scandal and the need to revisit the Rules
of the House. Unfortunately, the resulting rules have become very
detailed and legalistic. The result has been that the work of
the Committee in the present Parliament has been dominated by
a series of complaints based more on process than practical point.
Allegations are made against leading Members of the House for
political or mischievous reasons, about supposed breaches of the
terms of the Rules, which occur in circumstances where no reasonable
person could possibly imagine that the conduct of the MP was affected
at all.
I will not single out particular cases from
the long list of Reports that you have produced, except perhaps
the complaints about William Hague's use of a gym and John Prescott's
use of a flat, which were obviously ridiculous and politically
motivated. I am not particularly affected by the complaint against
me, although that arose in absurd circumstances. I had travelled
to a political conference in Greece, paying my own air fare to
do so, and the conference was a general discussion on current
affairs in which many leading political figures from the United
State and Europe, of all political persuasions, took part. I discovered
upon leaving that the hotel bill for the delegates was being met
by some Greek sponsor, whose name I was unaware of. I then found
that the other British participant, Tony Blair, and I were being
accused of failing to declare the payment of our hotel bill. As
I paid hundreds of pounds to take part in a political discussion,
I do not believe that this small benefit from the sponsor of the
conference could be regarded by anybody as buying my services
as an MP.
Although the Committee tends to dismiss or issue
mild rebukes in these cases, it is unfortunately not how they
are perceived by the media or the general public. Even the mildest
Report is usually reported somewhere in a snide and suggestive
fashion. The general impression has been created that Parliament
is consumed by disputes over the financial affairs and propriety
of its Members. I fear that the whole process tends only to bring
the House of Commons and professional politicians into a lower
level of public repute. I think that the system is tending to
feed cynicism and apathy about public affairs and politics, which
it was originally intended to redress.
I would therefore suggest that the Committee
should be given the discretion to take no action on any complaints
which it receives where the allegation, even if true, could not
reasonably be thought to influence the MP's actions, speeches
or votes in Parliament in any way. It would lighten the burden
of the Committee and also result in Reports only being issued
when serious complaints of malpractice or corruption were being
made.
The only other detailed point which I would
like to address is the section from paragraphs 32-37, about agreements
for the provision of services. This is an attempt to sort out
a mess which has arisen on the question of paid public lectures
or speeches. In one or two recent cases the Committee has started
to act on advice that it has received, that frequent paid speeches,
when arranged through a speaking agency, should be regarded as
the equivalent of employment agreements under the previously approved
Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members.
The original resolution of November 1995 required
Members to submit a copy of agreements when they undertook to
provide services in their capacity as a Member of Parliament.
It was quite obvious, in the context of 1995, that the House was
intending to address the problem that had arisen from the practice
of MPs being hired as Parliamentary "consultants", in
order to lobby on behalf of and advise commercial interests of
various kinds. The Guide to the Rules put out in July 1996 stated
in paragraph 41 that "the new requirement for employment
agreements to be put in writing will apply principally to any
arrangements whereby a Member may offer advice about Parliamentary
matters". Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, it was
decided to extend this to other regular commitments outside Parliament,
so that regular paid newspaper columns or TV programmes were also
drawn in. There is no particular harm in people registering agreements
to provide regular newspaper columns or TV appearances, and I
have always done so myself. It always was a rather peculiar notion,
however, that an agreement to do a regular TV programme for, say,
Bloomberg TV, somehow implied an obligation to provide Parliamentary
services or advocacy on behalf of the TV company. The extension
was completely pointless.
A very large number of MPs take on paid lecturing
or speaking engagements from time to time. In recent months the
Committee has suddenly decided that this should be covered by
the rule on employment agreements in certain circumstances. It
is now being recommended that MPs list the names of organisations
that have paid them more than £500 for a lecture or speech.
I see little harm in that. However, the argument is being maintained
that, if the speeches have been arranged by a speaking agency,
then the MPs should put in an employment agreement if the same
agency is involved more than three times a year.
This requirement was an absurdity when such
agreements were to be described as employments. The fact is that
an MP may accept an invitation to lecture for a fee with some
outside company or organisation. His only obligation is to make
a speech, and there is not the slightest assumption on either
side that he will provide any other kind of service to the company.
Some organisations choose, for reasons best
known to themselves, to approach MPs through speaking agencies.
When a Member accepts an engagement of that kind, he is merely
entering into an agreement to deliver a lecture at a set time
and place, and the speaking agency is acting as the agent of the
organisation. There may be cases where the MP enters into some
wider agreement, such as an exclusive arrangement with one speaking
agency, or some arrangement whereby the speaking agency seeks
further work for him. Normally, however, the arrangement is merely
that one speech will be given at a set time and place for one
fee, which the speaking agency eventually pays on behalf of its
client.
As I read paragraphs 32-34 of the consultation
document, a Member is now going to be asked to deposit an agreement
for the provision of services if the same agency is involved in
three or more of these occasions in a year. I cannot imagine how
such an agreement could be drawn up except on the basis of the
total fiction that there is some service to be provided in such
a case. Where the same agency has arranged more than three speaking
engagements in a year, it seems to me the only agreement that
could be deposited is that no obligation of any kind had been
entered into between the speaking agency and the Member of Parliament,
outside the particular speaking engagement involved. I do not
see how on earth it can be thought that the speaking agency is
expecting any other or any future obligation from the MP concerned.
The mischief in such a proposal is that it would
try to bring such arrangements within the 1995 rules, so that
the agreement would be expected to include the amount to be paid
for the services to be provided. Taken literally, as there are
no services to be provided in future, the response would be nil.
However, I have no doubt it would be argued that the Member should
specify how much he has been paid for the past services comprised
in the three speaking engagements. This will no doubt feed public
curiosity about the amount that MPs earn outside Parliament. It
has always been the principal desire of some sections of the press
and media to obtain information of this kind because they find
that their readers are extremely interested in the level of other
people's earnings. This, however, is merely pandering to public
curiosity and does not serve any worthwhile public interest of
the kind that the Committee is supposed to be protecting.
Hitherto, we have just about succeeded in holding
the line that MPs are entitled to the same level of privacy that
other citizens are entitled to expect in their activities outside
Parliament, when those activities can have no bearing at all on
their role as MPs. This really is being rapidly eroded and we
do appear to be racing towards the American position, whereby
individual tax returns and health records are made freely available
to the public. In my opinion, that development has had an extremely
damaging effect on the standards of public life and the quality
of people attracted into public life in the USA. I do hope, therefore,
that we can avoid that in this country.
I continue to believe that standards of public
life in the UK and in the House of Commons in particular remain
some of the highest in the world. We are doing ourselves no service
by drawing up rules which fit the cynical expectation that scandalous
conduct could be uncovered amongst our legislators, so long as
ever more complex rules and procedures are drawn up to govern
them. I fear that the rules as a whole are becoming pedantic and
legalistic. I hope the Committee will consider carefully the two
particular proposals that I make to resist this tide.
11 October 2000
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