Select Committee on Standards and Privileges Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80 - 99)

TUESDAY 25 JANUARY 2005

MR JONATHAN SAYEED MP

  Q80  Mr Thomas: 26 May 2004.

  Mr Sayeed: This is the charity auction?

  Q81  Mr Thomas: Yes.

  Mr Sayeed: Well, I say two months. I am not really—

  Q82  Mr Thomas: You had met them at the charity auction, had you?

  Mr Sayeed: No, I did not meet them at the charity auction.[25] I had met them previously on a visit to the United States, but I cannot tell you when that visit was without having to go through diaries, but those I do not have with me. I will not pretend they were close personal friends.

  Q83  Mr Thomas: Can you tell me if the lots provided at that charity auction, obviously included dinner at Strangers', but did it include a tour as well and did it include Gallery tickets?

  Mr Sayeed: Not Gallery tickets. The lot did not include a tour; I took them round on a tour. This was a straight charitable donation, not by The English Manner, I do not think, but—

  Q84  Mr Thomas: Not by The English Manner because the evidence says it was?

  Mr Sayeed: Yes, but whether that was to do with payments or not, I am sorry, I am not absolutely certain. The point about the charitable auction was that it was for charity. There was absolutely no profit or—

  Q85  Mr Thomas: I accept that, but the donation made in the auction, was the name "English Manner" associated with that donation?

  Mr Sayeed: I was not there, but I presume it must have been, yes, thinking about it now.

  Chairman: If there are no more questions on that particular section, perhaps we can move on to the last one which deals with late registration and information to the Department of Finance and Administration and whether the appropriate Chinese walls were in place.

  Q86  Mr Pound: Mr Sayeed, this was actually touched on earlier on by Mrs Browning and I apologise for revisiting it, but, for the sake of clarity, I think it is necessary. You repeatedly assured the Commissioner that you had only made four registered visits to the United States on behalf of English Manner, and you then discovered two more. Could you explain to us the process by which you subsequently discovered the other two trips.

  Mr Sayeed: Yes, I think this was actually prompted by a letter from the Registrar of Members' Interests and I said to my PA, "Are we absolutely certain there is nothing else I should have registered? Go through the diaries", and she found that she had not done something and I believe, and Sir Philip can confirm this, that she contacted Sir Philip to apologise for this. The process essentially is that I say to my office, "Make sure that everything is registered. If you are in any doubt, draft a letter and ask advice". When we all employ staff, and this to a certain extent goes to the problem with the website and also with late registration, we all employ staff and when we give them instructions and over a period of years you find out that those instructions are very well complied with, you trust people and you do not go around checking on each of the things that they do. Therefore, having given that instruction and my PA knowing that was the case, I was quite clear that everything that I had done was properly registered, and I have always thought that I have been meticulous in registration, that that was all up to date, but when we got the letter from the Registrar, she obviously checked again, maybe it was on my instructions, but I cannot say, to see that everything was. It probably was actually because the letter would have been to me, and she found these other two visits and then responded to that letter, registering them, so I can only apologise that it was late. Similarly, if I may just make the other point, I have employed Mrs Messervy in different functions since 1995 before I became a Member of Parliament again and I have found her to be absolutely meticulous, or I had found her to be absolutely meticulous, in what she did and I had grown to rely upon her, so when I was assured by her that after the departure of *** the website had been cleaned completely, I believed it.

  Q87  Mr Pound: When you referred to your PA earlier on as the person who had inaccurately submitted details of only four trips, is the PA your parliamentary PA, paid for by Parliament?

  Mr Sayeed: Yes.

  Q88  Mr Pound: But not Mrs Messervy?

  Mr Sayeed: No.

  Q89  Mr Pound: And when the two subsequent trips were—

  Mr Sayeed: Sorry, but can I just say that that parliamentary PA was the person who contacted Sir Philip to acknowledge that it was due to an error on her part that these two other trips had not been registered.

  Q90  Mr Pound: It may be an unfair question, but as they are a large body of trips to the United States, and there is an element of confusion there, can you explain why two trips to the United States, which certainly would have stuck in my mind, did not stick in your PA's mind?

  Mr Sayeed: No, I cannot.

  Q91  Chairman: Do you think it was fair in your memorandum to blame a member of your staff for what is the responsibility of a Member of Parliament to make sure that the register is accurate?

  Mr Sayeed: No, I am sorry, Sir George, I actually acknowledged that it was my responsibility, but I was trying to explain why or what happened and how it came about and that I acknowledged in my memorandum that it is my responsibility, if I can find the particular place.

  Q92  Chairman: "The reason was due to forgetfulness on the part of a member of staff in my office".[26] In view of the ultimate responsibility, I wondered whether that was a fair comment.

  Mr Sayeed: I accept that ultimately I am to blame. I am accepting the blame, but then I am giving the reason that it took place.[27]

  Chairman: Do colleagues want to ask any questions on this?

  Q93  Mr Dismore: Just a short one. I just want to get it straight about what you said about how these two trips came to be registered because if you look at page 13 in the footnote,[28] it says here that the notice of two further trips was given to the office of the Commissioner on 5 January 2005, which does not sound to me as though it was triggered by a letter from the Registrar, a general reminder notice, which came out some considerable time before.

  Mr Sayeed: I think you will find it was a letter in January which was sent.

  Sir Philip Mawer: Chairman, it was a letter circulated in December advising Members of the appearance of the printed edition of the Register and the need to make sure their entries were up to date for that purpose and the letter arrived on 5 January.

  Chairman: Before we come to your final statement, are there any final questions which any colleagues want to ask?

  Q94  Mr David: Can I ask about the employment of Mrs Messervy and I have a few brief questions on that. It seems to us that Mrs Messervy had a number of different roles.

  Mr Sayeed: Yes.

  Q95  Mr David: She worked as your constituency assistant, but she also did work in London presumably for yourself, but also for English Manner, and she was a director of English Manner. At various times she was the office-holder in your local Conservative Association.

  Mr Sayeed: Throughout the period, yes.

  Q96  Mr David: Can I ask you, do you think that was a rather confused set of roles and, with hindsight, it would have been far better if she had been given a clearly specified role or roles, particularly with regard to where she was based because I understand you made submissions to the House that she was employed in London, whereas in fact you have also described her as a constituency assistant at least in part?

  Mr Sayeed: I would be quite happy, as I am sure she would, to take advice on how best she should not just describe her role, but demonstrate the clear separation between her roles. In the evidence that I have given, I believe that this is something that happens in some ways fairly frequently when, for instance, a Member employs a member of their family to assist them in one form or another in their parliamentary duties. Now, that member of the family no doubt will assist them when it comes to an election or in canvassing between elections or running a house or doing a whole variety of things. We all recognise that they are able to separate those roles, that they are not abusing or misusing parliamentary facilities or abusing or misusing the income that they are given by virtue of their work in assisting the Member, and that they are actually doing the job for which they are paid from the parliamentary allowance. Now, in some ways I suppose there is an analogy with Mrs Messervy who, I accept, she and her husband are family friends, but she was able to separate her roles. Sir Philip, in his evidence, has found no occasion when she had ever used or misused parliamentary facilities to promote the company and that is in the evidence, though I cannot tell you exactly where it is, but I recognise it is there, and she was able to compartmentalise the different tasks that she did. Now, if there is advice that Sir Philip or anyone else can give as to how we can demonstrate that is the case, then I am very happy to take it. She did a very useful, and she continues to do a very useful, job as an assistant in the constituency and she is extremely able and she works extremely hard and she is perfectly capable of finding the time to do the different roles. I can only   assert, as she has asserted, that she compartmentalised those roles.

  Q97  Mr David: Was there a formal number of job descriptions because obviously she did not have one job, but a variety of different jobs and obviously there was a tendency for overlap between the different roles? Would it have been better if there had been a number of job descriptions clearly specifying what she did with each contract?

  Mr Sayeed: Well, as I said, when she was employed, there was no requirement for a job description, but I am quite prepared to take advice as to how best to put it in order to demonstrate a separation of roles and no conflict, but the salient point is that there has never been any actual conflict between her roles. I only employ her to do one job and for that job I have now submitted a job description.

  Q98  Mr David: So you would have had advice from the parliamentary authorities and the Department of Finance and Administration in terms of, for example, declaring where your assistant was based and whether she was full-time or part-time, and information would have been provided for you on not one, but I imagine many occasions?

  Mr Sayeed: Well, I get the same advice as we all get. I had been expecting Mrs Messervy to have come here on more than one occasion on a full-time basis for reasons that have been set out. As you know, we get the forms to complete by the Department, I think, in February for what is going to happen from April onwards and I completed two of them in good faith, expecting her to come and I did not correct when that did not occur and for that I can only repeat my apology. However, it made no difference to the secretarial allowance I was entitled to receive.

  Chairman: Are there any more questions that colleagues want to put to Mr Sayeed?

  Q99  Mr Dismore: I have two final questions. First of all, you have clearly put forward a very strong case that you have done nothing wrong, so why did you decide not to meet English Manner clients in the House anymore?

  Mr Sayeed: What I have actually said is that I will not meet them if they are friends and clients of English Manner.[29] The answer to your question is that I, quite frankly, could not bear for this to happen again and if what has happened is anything to do with Parliament, as it clearly is, and is the reason for my being here today and for this Committee to convene, then I do not want it to happen again, so it is better I just wash my hands of the whole thing.



25   Note by witness: I did not go to the charity auction. Back

26   Appendix 3. Back

27   Note by witness: The full quotation of that paragraph is "As regards the late notification of the Registrar of Members' Interests of two visits to the United States I accept that ultimately I am to blame. The reason was due to forgetfulness on the part of a member of staff in my office.". Back

28   Appendix 1, para 38. Back

29   Note by witness: I have made clear repeatedly that I did not meet clients of The English Manner at Parliament, I met them as friends. Back


 
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