Jim Fitzpatrick
Introduction
1. We have received from the Parliamentary Commissioner
for Standards the report of his investigation of a complaint made
in September 2009 against Jim Fitzpatrick, the Member for Poplar
and Canning Town. The complainant, Councillor Peter Golds, told
the Commissioner that Mr Fitzpatrick appeared to have used House
of Commons provided stationery and pre-paid envelopes when sending
unsolicited correspondence to constituents in July 2009.[1]
2. The Commissioner's memorandum is published
with this Report as Appendix 1. At our first meeting, in July
2010, we agreed to follow the practice of our predecessors, by
providing a Member who is the subject of a memorandum from the
Commissioner with a copy of the memorandum, and inviting him or
her to submit evidence. Mr Fitzpatrick chose to give both oral
and written evidence to the Committee. This too is published in
full, as Appendix 2.
The
Commissioner's findings
3. The correspondence at the root of this complaint
was in the form of an invitation to constituents of Mr Fitzpatrick
to attend a coffee morning to be held at a primary school, at
which constituents would be able to discuss crime and anti-social
behaviour with the local police Safer Neighbourhood Team. The
Commissioner accepts that it was within the rules for Mr Fitzpatrick
to fund this correspondence from Parliamentary allowances.[2]
However, he concludes that Mr Fitzpatrick broke the rules by using
the wrong allowance.
4. The rules relating to use of House-provided
stationery and pre-paid envelopes are set out in the Commissioner's
memorandum.[3] In outline,
these provided that pre-paid envelopes could be used to send replies
to individuals—including constituents—and to organisations
about an issue on which they had already contacted the Member.
A separate, cash-limited entitlement known as Communications Expenditure
could at the time be used to pay for some categories of Members'
unsolicited correspondence with constituents.
5. The Commissioner notes that some of the constituents
contacted by Mr Fitzpatrick in July 2009 received hand-delivered
letters inviting them to the meeting with police, which were funded
from Mr Fitzpatrick's Communications Expenditure. He concludes
that funding these letters from Communications Expenditure was
"entirely acceptable", because informing constituents
about such meetings was part of Mr Fitzpatrick's Parliamentary
duties.[4] About 200 further
invitations were printed on House of Commons stationery and sent
in second-class pre-paid envelopes to constituents who, Mr Fitzpatrick
believed, had contacted him previously about these issues. These
were charged to his provided stationery account.
6. In the Commissioner's view, "The common
format invitation which Mr Fitzpatrick sent to his constituents
cannot ... reasonably be said to meet the requirements or the
purpose of House of Commons provided stationery."[5]
Mr Fitzpatrick, in evidence to the Commissioner, maintained that
this use of his provided stationery account was justified by the
need for him to respond to his constituents' concerns about anti-social
behaviour in their neighbourhood and that it was within the rules.[6]
The Commissioner, citing the view of the Department of Resources,
disagrees.[7] He continues:
It would require a wholly unnatural—and, I
consider, unnecessary—application of the rules to the circumstances
described by Mr Fitzpatrick to suggest that Mr Fitzpatrick's provided
stationery account should have been used for these invitations.
Unnatural, because the clear purpose of the rule is to confine
the use of original House stationery for letters to constituents
to personal communications between the Member and their constituent
on specific matters raised by that constituent. Unnecessary, because
unsolicited common format letters could, at the time, have been
sent using the Communications Expenditure.[8]
7. The Commissioner concludes that Mr Fitzpatrick
was "in clear breach of the rules of the House" and
that the complaint is therefore upheld. He has also concluded—and
Mr Fitzpatrick has accepted—that Mr Fitzpatrick breached
the rules on other occasions in the two years to November 2009,
by misusing provided House stationery.[9]
The Commissioner is of the view that, on their merits, these breaches
are "well towards the less serious end of the spectrum."[10]
8. In February 2010, Mr Fitzpatrick agreed with
the Commissioner that he would rectify the matter by apologising
for breaching the rules and by transferring the relevant expenditure
to his 2009-10 Communications Expenditure entitlement.[11]
Under the rectification procedure, the Commissioner reports the
outcome of his inquiry to this Committee, but he does not submit
a memorandum and we make no Report to the House.
9. On 29 March, with the Dissolution of Parliament
fast approaching, Mr Fitzpatrick informed the Commissioner that
he would not, after all, accept rectification, and that he would
be requesting a hearing before this Committee. Mr Fitzpatrick
later wrote to the Commissioner informing him that, while he was
willing to transfer the expenditure to his Communications Expenditure
account, he no longer accepted that he had been in breach of the
rules of the House.[12]
The Commissioner comments:
It is difficult to see the point of principle which
Mr Fitzpatrick deemed required consideration by the Committee
and the House. The question is not whether he could write to his
constituents to invite them to a coffee morning. The only question
is which parliamentary allowance can be used to meet the costs
of sending that invitation. The Department's clear advice was
that provided House stationery could not be used. That was also
my own conclusion. It was a conclusion at one stage accepted by
Mr Fitzpatrick.[13]
10. In the Commissioner's judgment, the failure
of Mr Fitzpatrick to respond to his letter of 25 February for
over a month makes the case more serious than it would otherwise
have been. The Commissioner concludes, "This had the effect,
as he must have known it would have, of preventing this matter
being resolved before the General Election and delaying its resolution
into the new Parliament."[14]
Mr
Fitzpatrick's evidence
11. In his written evidence, Mr Fitzpatrick told
us that he had asked for his case to be sent to the Committee
for two reasons:
- He was concerned that accepting
he had breached the rules would carry "potential stigma",
notwithstanding the fact that he had not intended to misappropriate
or misuse public funds.
- He believed his actions were consistent with
his responsibility as a Member of Parliament to deal proactively
with an issue (anti-social behaviour or ASB) which was of great
importance to his constituents.
12. Mr Fitzpatrick pointed out that the Director
of Operations in the Department of Resources had commented that
his interpretation of the rules relating to use of envelopes was
not unreasonable.[15]
He defended his actions as being "only in furtherance of
constituents' concerns to get the ASB issue addressed" and
denied there was a party political element.
13. Finally, Mr Fitzpatrick welcomed the Commissioner's
general points about the need to review the rules relating to
Members' use of provided stationery.[16]
14. When he appeared before us, Mr Fitzpatrick
elaborated on these points. He said that being found "guilty
in breach of the rules" without, as he saw it, an opportunity
to explain his actions, would have made life very uncomfortable
for him.[17] Mr Fitzpatrick
stressed that "this was not a matter of trying to get financial
advantage" and that "I thought this was part of my responsibility
and duties" as a Member of Parliament. He added that he did
not contest the Commissioner's finding that he had breached the
rules, but he did believe that "the rules as they are defined
at the moment may be far too narrow to allow MPs to be as effective
as they might otherwise be."
15. When asked why he had changed his mind about
accepting rectification, Mr Fitzpatrick replied that, whereas
he had told the Commissioner in May 2010 that the decision "was
not influenced by the imminence of a general election" he
would now say that the decision had not been "wholly influenced"
by the imminence of the election.[18]
Mr Fitzpatrick told us about a meeting he had attended during
the election campaign, at which the complaint about his use of
expenses had been raised by a political opponent but he nonetheless
felt he had won the support of the meeting. He gave us to believe
that if he had by then been found to have breached the rules "that
would have been a very different issue."[19]
16. Mr Fitzpatrick accepted that he had been
"completely guilty of ... sloppy handling" of his allowances
and that if he had claimed the cost of the stationery and envelopes
in question from Communications Expenditure "this situation
wouldn't have arisen."[20]
17. In reply to a question about whether the
addressees of the 200 letters were people who had been logged
on a database as having raised ASB with him, Mr Fitzpatrick said
that predominantly the recipients would have been people who had
been recorded as having raised the issue before but he accepted
that he had not differentiated between categories of addressee
"as clinically as I ought to have done".[21]
Conclusions
18. Mr Fitzpatrick accepts that in July 2009
he sent about 200 communications printed on House of Commons provided
stationery and mailed in pre-paid second-class envelopes, with
the result that expenditure was charged to the wrong Parliamentary
allowance. He also accepts that he may have sent up to 1,500 similar
letters using provided stationery and pre-paid envelopes on other
occasions in the two years up to November 2009. In our view, this
was a minor breach of the rules. We agree with the Commissioner
that it would have been perfectly in order for Mr Fitzpatrick
to have used his Communications Expenditure entitlement to pay
for these letters and indeed Mr Fitzpatrick agreed as long ago
as February that the full cost of the envelopes and stationery—£557—should,
so far as possible, be transferred to his Communications Expenditure
for 2009-10. In fact, there was insufficient 'headroom' in Mr
Fitzpatrick's Communications Expenditure to accommodate the full
sum, but Mr Fitzpatrick agreed that he would pay the balance of
£24 from his own pocket.
19. This is exactly the sort of case that we
would expect to be dealt with under the rectification procedure:
the seriousness of the breach was well towards the lower end of
the scale; the sums involved were small; and we accept that there
was no intention on the part of Mr Fitzpatrick to deceive or to
obtain a benefit to which he was not entitled. As the Commissioner
has explained in his memorandum, rectification requires not only
repayment (or in this case, largely reallocation) of expenditure
but also acceptance that a breach of the rules has occurred and
an apology. The complainant would have been informed by the Commissioner
that this had happened and would have been free to make public
use of the information.
20. It is clear from his oral evidence that Mr
Fitzpatrick calculated that, if he accepted that he had breached
the rules and apologised for that breach, the information could
be used against him by his political opponents in the general
election campaign which was then imminent. This, together with
his view that the rules were unreasonably restrictive, caused
him "discomfort" and led him to change his mind just
two weeks before Parliament was dissolved—which was more
than a month after the Commissioner had sent him a draft of the
letter of rectification. Immediately after the election, Mr Fitzpatrick
denied to the Commissioner that the imminence of the general election
had had anything to do with his change of heart. However, he told
us in oral evidence that this was not wholly true.
21. We recognise the genuineness of Mr Fitzpatrick's
concerns about the restrictive nature of the rules about the use
of provided stationery and indeed we comment on this below. However,
we are bound to conclude that Mr Fitzpatrick's primary motivation
in eventually rejecting rectification of this complaint, having
previously agreed to it, was to avoid the fact that he had breached
the rules becoming public knowledge at a politically sensitive
time. This, rather than the minor breach of the rules, is the
matter that causes us most concern.
Recommendation
22. We are disappointed that Jim Fitzpatrick
chose in the run-up to the general election to rescind his acceptance
of an offer by the Commissioner to rectify what was a minor breach
of the rules—which would have required only an apology,
his agreement to transfer the expenditure to the correct account,
and the repayment of £24. We recommend that Mr Fitzpatrick
apologise to the House in writing, through this Committee, not
only for the breach but also for his conduct, which had the effect
of postponing the resolution of the complaint against him until
after the general election. We further recommend that Mr Fitzpatrick
repay to the House from his own pocket the entire £557 cost
of provided stationery and pre-paid envelopes misused by him in
the period 2007-09.
General
observations concerning the rules on use of stationery
23. The Commissioner has taken the opportunity
to make some more general observations concerning the rules which
govern Members' use of official stationery. These are set out
in full in his memorandum.[22]
We will draw these observations and the comments made by Mr Fitzpatrick
to the attention of the relevant authorities in the House and
to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.
1 Appendix 1, paragraph 2 Back
2
Appendix 1, paragraphs 68 and 69 Back
3
Appendix 1, paragraphs 3 to 14 Back
4
Appendix 1, paragraph 70 Back
5
Appendix 1, paragraph 74 Back
6
Appendix 1, paragraphs 65 and 71 Back
7
Appendix 1, paragraphs 63 and 72 Back
8
Appendix 1, paragraph 75 Back
9
Appendix 1, paragraphs 62 and 76 Back
10
Appendix 1, paragraph 80 Back
11
Appendix 1, paragraph 65 Back
12
Appendix 1, paragraph 65 Back
13
Appendix 1, paragraph 78 Back
14
Appendix 1, paragraph 80 Back
15
Appendix 1, paragraph 42 Back
16
Appendix 1, paragraph 82 Back
17
Q1 Back
18
Q2 Back
19
Q4 Back
20
Q3 Back
21
Qq 7 to 10 Back
22
Appendix 1, paragraphs 81 and 82 Back
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