Foreword
This is the fifth and final Annual Report which I
shall submit as Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. My five
year term finishes at the end of December 2012. The process of
appointing my successor started in May. I look forward to welcoming
the new Parliamentary Commissioner to this office later this year.
It has been a tumultuous five years. This started
in the early weeks of my tenure, following the Committee's Report
about a Member who claimed against parliamentary expenses for
a member of his family who was in fact a full-time university
student in the North of England at the time. The pressure of complaints
built during the course of that first year, reaching new levels
of prominence when I inquired into a complaint against the then
Speaker (which I did not uphold) and complaints against a number
of members of the Cabinet, not all of which I upheld. It reached
its zenith during the expenses crisis starting in the Spring of
2009. Each morning for some 25 days, the public, individual Members
and the House were brought low by what was being published. Not
all the matters reported were heinous or amounted to misconduct,
but there was enough to be clear that the House had lost its bearings
on expenses.
With the new Parliament elected in May 2010, and
with the work of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority
(IPSA) on expenses now settling down into a more established,
more experienced and better understood structure, I hope that
those bearings have now been re-established. I believe Members
should be able to receive without rancour the level and type of
expenses they and their offices need to support them in their
parliamentary and constituency duties. Anything less than that
is a disservice to our citizens. Anything more is a waste.
Following the House's agreement in December 2010
to increase the amount of published information about the Commissioner's
work, in the last year I have published monthly updates on my
webpages of statistics about the complaints I have received and
my current inquiries. I have also published my determination letters
and the supporting evidence for cases which I have rectified or
where I have not upheld a breach. These changes have resulted
in one of the highest degrees of transparency in any parliamentary
or other disciplinary system. The necessary confidentiality of
inquiries in progress has not been compromised, but the public
can now see for themselves which Members are subject to inquiry
and are now able to judge for themselves the fairness and thoroughness
of the House's disciplinary system.
Meanwhile, the number of new complaints coming into
my office continued to fall. That was to be expected, not least
because expenses matters in the current Parliament are for the
Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and its Compliance
Officer to resolve. Nevertheless, I received over 100 formal complaints
against 93 Members and former Members and many more e-mailed complaints,
most of which fell outside my remit, often because they objected
to the way a Member handled the constituent's case or to a Member's
views and opinions. Both are properly matters for the Members'
own judgement in respect of which they can be held to account
by the electorate. Quite properly they are not matters for the
Commissioner. Of the 12 complaints I resolved this year, almost
60% were about conduct in previous Parliaments. All of those concerning
conduct in this Parliament related to parliamentary matters such
as registration, declaration and the use of stationery, none of
which suggested that those Members had exploited the House for
any private or personal benefit.
Nevertheless, the reputation of the House remains
at risk. Trust once lost will take time and a consistent and continued
record of maintaining high standards of conduct before it can
be restored. That is true of any national institution. It is particularly
true of the House. As the expenses crisis showed, unless apparently
minor breaches of the rules of conduct are challenged and remedied,
they can all too easily become endemic and inflamed and so seriously
damage the reputation of the House from within. I would urge Members
and their offices to make sure they are familiar with all the
relevant rules and regularly to check on their compliance. No
Member should take these matters for granted. I, and my office,
are always ready to provide advice or assistance to Members.
With fewer complaints inquiries, I have been pleased
to be able to concentrate more fully on the standards framework
within which the House operates. The House now has a revised and
updated Code of Conduct. That is the outcome of the consultation
and review I completed last year and of the report to the House
on my conclusions by the Committee on Standards and Privileges.
I was pleased that the House accepted almost all of the recommendations
for a revised Code. As a result, except in one respect, I believe
the House has a clear, practical, principled, relevant and easy
to understand Code.
I was disappointed that the House decided to prevent
the Commissioner from investigating the conduct of any Member
in their private and personal lives which had significantly damaged
the reputation and integrity of the House or its Members generally.
The result is that the House is either powerless to protect fully
the integrity of Parliament, on which our democracy depends, or
it has no recognised structure of independent investigation for
such matters. In my judgement that is bad for the reputation of
the House and equally bad for any individual Member involved.
I hope that before too long the House might find an opportunity
to consider this matter further, in the light of the proposal
made by the Chair of the Committee on Standards and Privileges
which I refer to in Chapter 1 of my Report.
My Report also identifies the consultative work I
have carried out this year on a new Guide to the Rules to underpin
the new Code. This will give the House the opportunity to review
the rules on lobbying by Members and to agree to a shorter and
clearer set of requirements for the registration and declaration
of interests. My Report also identifies the work I have done to
simplify and update the previous procedural notes, creating one
comprehensive note reflecting my current procedures.
My aim in all this work has been to use my experience
as Commissioner to support the House in having relevant, up-to-date
and accessible rules of conduct. At the same time I have sought
to ensure that the supporting rules and procedures give the best
prospect of assisting Members in complying with the rules and
of resolving problems fairly when they may not have done so. I
aim, therefore, to pass on to my successor a system for Members'
conduct which meets both the needs of Parliament and the expectations
of the public.
I know that the new Commissioner will be greatly
assisted by the excellent staff in the Commissioner's Office and
by a new Committee on Standards which will oversee the new Commissioner's
work. If the House is as well served by that Committee as I believe
it has been by the Committee on Standards and Privileges under
its successive Chairs, then the new Commissioner will be in the
best position possible to carry out the duties of this office
with the confidence that the Commissioner has, as he or she must
have, the full support of the whole House.
I will leave this office at the end of this calendar
year very grateful to the House for the honour of serving it and
the wider public in this important role.
26 June 2012 John Lyon CB
| 
