Parliamentary Standards Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Lester, has raised an extremely important issue, one of the most important issues that we deal with only tangentially in this Bill. It is something that has caused me anguish over a number of years. I served on the Members’ Interests Committee in the House of Commons from 1983 to 1992 and on the Privileges Committee from 1996 to 2001. There were a number of occasions when Members felt that they had been unjustly treated by the Privileges Committee. While I could not argue in defence of Neil Hamilton, during the course of his case he raised issues that I believe were of fundamental importance and which did not bring the Privileges Committee, in its procedures—if I may use the term—into good repute. On two occasions, certainly, I remember moving amendments to deal with the whole question of appeal. That is because the issue is one of appeal, and Members feel aggrieved when there is no structure to enable them to do so. Those Members who are interested, the anoraks in this area—I think it is particularly interesting—might wish to consider the review of the first report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life entitled Reinforcing Standards, carried out by the noble Lord, Lord Neill, who unfortunately is not in his place. I am sure that if he had been, he would have wanted to refer to this report. In his review he refers to the original recommendations and I shall quote from that. The original Committee on Standards in Public Life stated that, ""we consider that a sub-committee of the Committee of Privileges consisting of up to seven very senior Members would be the best body to take forward individual cases recommended by the Commissioner for further consideration; we recommend that such a sub-committee should be established … as the sub-committee would report to the full Privileges Committee, this would have the practical effect of giving the Member a right of appeal to that Committee. Only the most serious cases should need to be considered by the whole House"." I was one of the Members who opposed the recommendation at the time, but I was wrong, as I learnt over the years. I do not think it is too late to go back to this issue. Looking back on my experience over those years, I think that the structure of the Committee on Standards and Privileges is wrong. It should be, moreover, a judicial committee, and it might well be that it should comprise in major part people from outside the Commons—they may well be people from this House. The sub-committee would carry out the functions of the existing committee. Then the higher committee, consisting of people from a judicial background because these would be judicial appointments, would become the appellate body. I believe that that would satisfy the anxieties of Members hauled before these committees under the new structure. In my view, that would deal with the problem just identified by the noble Lord. The noble Lord talked about an appellate body within the House of Commons itself, and that is critically important. I would say to Sir George Young that I know it means that the members of that committee would give up some of their responsibilities and their existing powers, but they have to consider this. It is an important issue. Members who read the appendices to the judgment in the Downey report on the Hamilton case will find repeated references to Hamilton and his grievance over the lack of an appeal being available to him. Indeed, I remember a division in the committee after Ann Widdecombe spoke of her great concern, which led her to vote against much of the Hamilton report. She gave a long explanation of why she felt uneasy. If I remember rightly, she resigned from the committee over this on an issue of principle. I am sure the record of the time will correct me if I am wrong. I say to my noble friend that we cannot do a great deal about this in the Bill, but I hope the message goes out to the House of Commons that it should get this problem sorted out because it leads to injustices.