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Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire): In extenso.
Mr. Tyler: In extenso. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his correction.
All the measures make good sense, including the amendments to Standing Orders Nos. 149 and 150. I was slightly worried when it sounded like the Leader of the House and the Chairman of the Committee were giving way somewhat on the need for independent legal advice. I noted that one of the Wicks committee's key conclusions was:
- "to deliver public confidence now, the post of Commissioner alone is an insufficient representation of an independent or external element in the House's system of regulation."
I have no problem with paragraphs (2B), (2C) and (2D) of the motion because they are perfectly sensible. Paragraphs (2E), (2F) and (2G) also hang together and follow through perfectly well. Paragraph (2H) will just provide that we should receive an annual report.
My only worry is a matter to which the Leader of the House referred that should nevertheless be given greater prominence at this time on a Thursday afternoon: the ministerial code. I hope that it will be taken seriously within government. I recall raising the issue during a debate on a specific case. I welcome the Leader of the House's assurance that the ministerial code will shortly be published again in its revised form. The full co-operation of Members of the Government with the official process of the House and a system of full disclosure must be axiomatic and at the centre of things. The Leader of the House has given us an assurance, and we heard from the reply to the hon. Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley) that the Prime Minister will be the policeman of the process. However, he—or she—will be an interested party, so I would want to ensure that the Committee is entirely happy with the arrangement. It might wish to return to the matter if there is a problem.
The ministerial code is something of a shadowy document and might not be quite as sufficient as the impression that has been given. There is an important question about special advisers and political advisers who report to Ministers, although that is a subject for another day's debate. I hope that Leader of the House's personal verbal reassurance this afternoon will be reiterated by the Prime Minister in public, together with a published new document that takes full account of the recommendations.
3.28 pm
Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West): I served on the Standards and Privileges Committee and left after the appointment of Sir Philip Mawer. I made it plain that that was in no sense a protest against him. It was the result of what I regarded as deficiencies in the treatment by the House of the former Commissioner, Elizabeth Filkin. Sir Philip is considering an issue in relation to me. I do not want to hide the fact that I might be the subject of a formal complaint, which may get reported at some stage, but I do not want to go into details because it might be prejudicial one way or the other.
Two parts of the way in which we got into this are worth recalling. The eighth report by the Wicks committee was a result of Sir Nigel's response to a letter I sent saying that, in my view, there was unhappiness in the House. The response by the Government and the Standards and Privileges Committee to the report by the Wicks committee is good.
In particular, I support the adaptation of the Wicks recommendation that the Commissioner, with two assessors, should be able to take forward significant disputes of fact. I am less happy about the cross-questioning of witnesses, in part because my experience started with the al-Fayed and Hamilton case. If the two of them had had the chance of knocking spots off each other, there would have been more new designs than Tate Modern could put on the side of a river cruiser. Experience will show how often that procedure is used and what the results will be.
The second genesis of the arrangements is that we now have a system under which complaints can be considered rather than leaving them up to the interests of the press. I pay tribute to the role of the press in sucking up all the dirt and trying to decide which bits matter, but on the whole it is not the best way of settling matters of fact. The existence of the role of the Commissioner and the way in which the job has been fulfilled by Sir Gordon Downey, Elizabeth Filkin and Sir Philip Mawer is a tribute to each holder of that post. I observe that two of the holders have been knighted; the reason for the middle holder of the post not being knighted cannot simply be that she is not a man. Her career was interrupted by the way we treated her and, given her public service, I commend, in public and in private, that the Prime Minister's office find a way of remedying what I regard as an extra deficiency.
If I look back over my experience, I can come up with two issues that might have gone to a Commissioner. One, which did not receive a great deal of publicity, was when someone thought that our late colleague, Jocelyn Cadbury, had been involved in nefarious dealings with drugs, and that so had I. He was dead; I was not. About half the British press camped outside a motel in Basingstoke, waiting for me to come along with the loot to exchange for illegal substances. When eventually it turned out that some juvenile had managed to put together a couple of links in "Who's Who" and had lived very nicely in the motel at the expense of a number of television companies and newspaper groups, I wondered what would have happened had that been a proper accusation rather than a "Ha, ha, ha. Look how the media have been misled by a junior fraudster."
There are difficulties. If a complaint is made against a Member of Parliament, it puts us in the position of having to disprove something. That is why I commend
our present procedures, which look into questions of fact and consider whether there is sufficient evidence, on the face of it, to justify an investigation by the Commissioner and to put a Member of Parliament to the inconvenience of responding to questions.
Mr. Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead): Does the hon. Gentleman think that we could change the titles of the reports? The list of titles at the back of the Standards and Privileges Committee report acts to re-echo the accusations that were made. Those accusations were sometimes not proven or even dismissed, yet named individuals are still included in the titles. Once a matter has been dealt with, it might be helpful to refer to those reports without referring to the Member of Parliament by name.
Peter Bottomley: That is a generous thought. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Committee and the Commissioner can consider that.
I have dealt with the need for the Commissioner to determine whether there is a degree of fact, or apparent fact, before a formal investigation can start. I commend that approach to the media.
The second example from my past was when I took up the case of a black social worker in my constituency who suffered from the actions of a branch union official, who threw him out of the union without due process. After a year and a half, the union determined the case in the social worker's favour, so my representations led to justice. However, because of that union official, whom I consider a bad person, and a sad local councillor—I am going back some years—many parts of the media took the view that allegations that I had taken children from a home in my constituency to parties in Brighton were worth investigation. At the last moment, that led to interviews with me and to a newspaper report, which in effect said, "Minister in sex case row". I was a Minister; there was no sex case; there was no row.
On advice from someone with much experience in journalism, I said in simple terms: "It is not true. I did not do it. I shall sue." I then checked that the media understood that all those words had one syllable and were therefore capable of comprehension. Sadly, the thing had been printed and it led to lawyers earning a fair amount of money, although it was resolved before court.
That kind of accusation falls between criminal activity, which the Commissioner and Wicks systems do not look into, and inappropriate behaviour by a Member of Parliament. At times, there will be pressure to discover whether we are performing our constituency duties in a proper way. I would probably be failed on that quite often but, on other issues, many of us do not have a great deal to fear if we respond appropriately to questions that the Commissioner may ask when deciding whether a complaint needs to be looked into.
The eighth report of the Wicks committee was necessary. If I wrote such a report, I would not recommend the convention that the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee should be a member of the Opposition. Robert Sheldon's chairmanship of the Committee illustrates that point. However, if there is a general view that a non-Government Member should chair the Committee, so
be it. I accept what the Leader of the House said about it not being necessary to write that into Standing Orders—it will be fine if Members abide by the convention.We can put behind us issues arising from the way in which the second Commissioner was treated, although they will be recorded in the history books. There are a number of unexplained things, and there is a delicacy in the report by the House of Commons Commission that I will not embarrass Members by pointing out. The Commission's words may be literally true, but the word "not" could be inserted and they would still be true.
Together, the House, the Commissioner, the House of Commons Commission and the Wicks Committee have managed further to correct things that have already improved the situation, and I, too, commend the proposals before the House this afternoon.
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