BUSINESS INTERESTS OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT (REGISTER) (Hansard, 10 May 1967)

§ Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, West)

I beg to move That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the establishment of a register of the outside business interests of Members of Parliament. My purpose is to establish an official public register of the pecuniary interests and emoluments of Members of both 1416 Houses. I think that it would be generally accepted that our public political life, especially in Parliament, is probably freer from corruption than in any other country in the world. But we tend to accept that all too smugly as a self-evident proposition, without requiring positive proof of it.

I do not accept that posture. I believe that our Parliament is relatively incorrupt, but I am afraid not wholly so. My views on this matter are fortified by the recently issued book, "The Business Background of M.P.s", by Mr. Andrew Roth. Mr. Roth quotes the specific instance of Commander Courtney, who was Member of Parliament for Harrow, East from 1959 to 1966. I need not go into the details of that case, but Mr. Roth refers to articles written by the Commander for the Sunday Telegraph in which he said, among other things: My election as Conservative M.P. for Harrow, East improved my business affairs … On the one hand I had acquired an access to the Board of Trade and other Ministries which could and did prove valuable. Then Mr. Roth draws attention to an article in the Sunday Times of 12th February, 1967, concerning the business activities of another hon. Member. Again, I deliberately refrain from going into the details, partly because they are to be found in Mr. Roth's book and in the Sunday Times article to which it refers. I say merely that that hon. Member had not listed his activities in "Who's Who", nor declared his interest in certain companies to the House of Commons, nor volunteered the information to Mr. Roth for inclusion in his succession of books on M.P.s' business interests.

Certain hon. Members, including the one just mentioned, have been connected with recently crashed cut-price motor car insurance companies, including the notorious Savundra empire. Yet another hon. Member was intimately associated with the John Bloom companies which came crashing down some while ago and which are currently under investigation by the Board of Trade. Other hon. Members of both Houses had associated with what Mr. Roth describes as an "armchair farming" firm, Anglian Pig Breeders, which went into liquidation in December, 1965.

It may be that all the hon. Members concerned in these ventures were innocent 1417 dupes used by companies engaged in rather dubious business practices which felt that the association of hon. Members' names with their activities might help to create an aura of respectability and honesty sufficiently convincing to gull the public.

I would be the last to deny the right of any Member of either House to have outside business interests. Most Members seem to be quite willing to disclose what those interests are, but this at the moment is entirely voluntary. One example quoted by Mr. Roth deserves to be put on record.

The House will recall that hon. Members got a substantial increase in their salaries in the autumn of 1964 as the result of a recommendation by an impartial outside body. In July, 1966, a certain hon. Member asked that all hon. Members' salaries should be cut by 10 per cent. in view of the economic situation. A month later, that same hon. Member acquired two directorships in American drug companies. I find the chronological juxtaposition of these two incidents portraying something which to my mind is deplorably squalid.

I recall a further incident—that of the Burmah Oil Company. This was probably the most sordid example in recent ha story of how Parliament can be used and abused in the interests of big business. In the course of the debate on the issue, I listed the names of Members of another place, 38 in all, who were shareholders in the Burmah Oil Company and many of whom had not attended the Lords for years but who attended for that debate in order to vote something like £40 million of public money for their company.

It seems to me, therefore, that the need for a statutory register of business interests is overwhelming. The Times, in its editorial comment on the Bill last Monday, was wrong in assuming that there would be no public interest in the matter or that the information disclosed is … ascertainable already within the Palace of Westminster … It is not. Or at least, if it is, it is due to the activities of people like Mr. Roth. Some hon. Members are very cagey in divulging their interests. A much more profound and accurate comment was 1418 made by Mr. David Wood, also of The Times, when he reviewed Mr. Roth's book on 17th April Mr. Wood wrote: The substantial point that arises from Roth's researches is that membership of the Commons, like membership of an Administration, does bring invitations to serve business interests in more ways than one. It is not just a question of the directorships that go in plenty to former Conservative Ministers: it is also a question of retainers as advisers and consultants that may come a politician's way, no matter which side of the House he sits. The Times was right in saying, however, that mere observation of the House's convention to declare one's interest when speaking in debate is not enough. That is so because, firstly, the interested Member may not choose to speak; secondly, he can exert greater influence behind the scenes than he can in public debate; and, thirdly, he does not have to declare an interest in asking Questions in the House.

When discussing this with a Privy Councillor, who is a Member of this House, I was told that some hon. Members have been known to have been paid by outside interests a fixed sum for asking Parliamentary Questions on their behalf, and this was confirmed in discussion with the correspondent of an eminently reputable newspaper, who made specific reference to a former Member for one of the Northern Ireland constituencies.

How would the Bill work? Each financial year, each hon. Member would be required to fill in a form giving details of directorships held, the names of the companies and a brief explanation of the nature of their business. Secondly, he would be compelled to declare any individual shareholdings in any company above the value, say, of £500. Thirdly, he would be compelled to declare the nature of other emoluments over an annual value of £500 paid by any outside body. This would include, for example, hon. Members sponsored by trade unions. I know that they are quite willing to put this on record. Everyone knows who they are and, generally speaking, what the unions do for them. These declarations would, of course, exclude casual fees like those for appearances on television.

The penalty for failure to disclose—but I do not expect that any hon. Member 1419 would be unwilling to disclose his interests—would be decided by the Committee of Privileges on the merits of each case. I reject completely The Times' verdict that my suggestion … would be corporately self-insulting. I also repudiate the suggestion that the Bill would contain an implication that hon. Members … can no longer be trusted to behave with honour and discretion in a way that once they could. Hon. Members on both sides of this House support the principle of a statutory register. Nor do I accept the view that, because a particular legislative Measure gives one particular party a political advantage, it should not be introduced. I have never felt inhibited by considerations of that kind.

§ Mr. T. L. Iremonger (Ilford, North)

I rise to ask the House to refuse the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) leave to bring in this Bill. The House has a great affection for the hon. Gentleman and we are all very glad to see that he has recovered so admirably from his recent heart condition and is in such very robust form again. If he had had to do what I had to do to get here today, he would have dropped dead on the way. Who knows but that the same may not happen to me!

In normal circumstances, the House would have been inclined, knowing the hon. Gentleman to have dismissed this Parliamentary exercise with the affectionate tolerance which it usually extends to him, but I feel that there is need to go a little further than that. I want first, bluntly and straightforwardly, to say to him that he owes it in all honour to say outside the House what he has said about Commander Courtney and what he has said—although he was not quite so brave in mentioning them by name— about my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Sir W. Teeling), my hon. Friend the Member for Heston and Isleworth (Mr. Reader Harris) and his own right hon. Friend, the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey), who was connected with the pig farming enterprise the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

My main objection, as the hon. Gentleman attempted to anticipate, is that it casts an aspersion upon the honour of 1420 the House collectively. If there is any one quality which the House has demanded from its Members—it is the quality which it has made a synonym for membership—that is the quality that a Member has when he is entitled to be named by other Members in the term "honourable Gentleman".

The hon. Member for Fife, West has impugned the integrity of the House and the integrity of all hon. Members with business interests, whatever he may mean by that. But the hon. Gentleman has also impugned the integrity of hon. Members with any other kind of pecuniary interest, although, of course, "pecuniary interest" does not carry quite the same party political stigma as "business interest", since we on this side of the House are proud to say that it is our supporters and, to a large extent, we ourselves who have maintained the business supremacy of this nation.

The House is equally entitled to take a critical look at the hon. Member for Fife, West. In examining him, we see a perfectly pardonable old-fashioned romanticism which imagines that there is something sinister about business, about the free enterprise system, and some peculiarly uneconomic principle that guides boards of directors of public companies and makes them think, quite stupidly, that having an M.P. on the board gives them some special magic or assistance in conducting their affairs. I know of no company which would be so stupid, and if Members of Parliament are on boards of directors it is because their fellow directors consider that the business help they can give them fully justifies it and that they can justify it to the shareholders.

We should also examine what could be the possible means of "business and pecuniary interest" and consider the practical effect of registering such things. An interest or action is either definable or demonstrable and subject, therefore, to rules which may be drawn and drafted, or it is not demonstrable and definable in such a way. If it is not demonstrable and definable, then any rules made governing it are meaningless and, therefore, unenforceable.

In asking the House to reject this Motion, it is my submission that the concepts which the hon. Member has put to the House are not definable interests 1421 with any manifest meaning in relation to hon. Members and their membership of this House; and to suggest that such things should be registered is not an attempt to enforce any beneficial rule that might be obvious but is an attempt to cast a malicious smear on the House in general, and in particular on hon. Members on this side of the House who believe in the enterprise system.

In so far as interests and actions in this House are definable and demonstrable, Erskine May is both clear and full on the subject. It would be a waste of the time of the House for me to rehearse what Erskine May says but I will put on record both references, which are contained—in the Sixteenth (1957) Edition—in pages 439 to 443 and also page 125 in respect of contempt which, if the hon. Member cares to examine it, he will find refers to an offence that he has committed himself, subject only to the protection that he has as a Member of this House—because he has brought the House into dishonour and disrepute by what he has said.

In the few moments remaining I want to point out to the hon. Member that when he accuses an hon. Member of having been paid a sum of money for risking a Question in the House it is an offence. It is contempt of the House, and it is specifically mentioned and defined in Erskine May.

Therefore, having, as I felt obliged to dO, put upon the hon. Member in honour the obligation to name hon. Members outside and to name in the House those Members whom he was accusing of corruption in their capacity as hon. Members, I also put upon him in honour the obligation to name outside, and also in this House, the hon. Member whom he said has committed the Parliamentary offence as laid down in Erskine May.

I do not know what the hon. Gentleman has in view as the idealistic concept of membership of this House— whether he means that we and those of our fellow countrymen who put ourselves at the service of our country in this House should be monks, totally divorced from the beginning unto the end—or for how long—from any relationship at all with the ordinary conduct of the 1422 life of this nation, or whether we are only etiolated insects, turned out from underneath some academic stone, at a salary of up to £3,000 a year.

It is difficult to see what the hon. Member means. Are we to be born in a kind of Aldous Huxleyesque test tube as Members of Parliament, never allowed to be tainted with any contact with the life and business of those whose destiny is largely in our hands? I do not like the idea of this register. It has a nasty taint of the Gestapo—to use a famous phrase. It is difficult to think how, once the hon. Member has this register, which everyone will have to fill in, he will be able to resist demands that hon. Members' telephone conversations should be tapped in order to be quite sure that they are not having anything on the side that they should not be having.

I want to make a somewhat disagreeable suggestion, in reply to the hon. Member. It is not only business interests which might corrupt hon. Members in their membership of the House; there are other interests. Part of the difficulty that we are in in relation to the post mortem on Suez is that it was impossible, in time of peace, with no 18B Regulation, for the House to go into secret session and for the Prime Minister to say things that he did not want to say with card-carrying members of the Communist Party sitting on this side of the House in those days.

I hope that the House will reject the Motion with the contempt that it deserves, and not connive at or abet the hon. Member in the aspersions that he has cast on this honourable House.