HC Deb 07 March 1978 vol 945 cc1350-6
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

I beg to move Amendment No. 80, in page 7, line 23, at end insert and such disclosures of pecuniary interest shall be entered in a register, compiled in such a form as the standing orders shall provide, and deposited with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council".

The Second Deputy Chairman

With this, we may take Amendment No. 81, in page 7, line 27, leave out "£500" and insert "£1,000".

Mr. Bennett

Perhaps I may turn first to Amendment No. 81. I have put this down as a probing amendment. I tabled a similar amendment on the Scotland Bill, although on that occasion the official Opposition tabled further amendments not only to raise the sum but also to impose disqualification for anyone in breach of this particular part of the standing orders.

During discussions on the Scotland Bill, the Minister suggested that the Government were having second thoughts about imposing a duty on the courts to supervise the standing orders of the Assembly. At that stage he suggested that the Government might alter the Scotland Bill at some later stage. Before I develop my points further, will the Minister say whether the Government are having second thoughts about the Wales Bill? Do they consider that it is appropriate for the courts to supervise the standing orders of the Assembly? Will my hon. Friend enlighten me on that point?

Mr. Alec Jones

In the event the Government decided not to bring forward a proposal such as my hon. Friend has mentioned but to retain the penalty of £500 because, on balance, we believe it to be at an appropriate level.

Mr. Bennett

I thank my hon. Friend for that clarification. I therefore take it that it is the Government's intention to set up this rather odd situation of the courts having to supervise the standing orders and also to impose a fine, or the possibility of a fine, of only £500. If one considers the possibilities for people to behave corruptly, that is a very small fine indeed. If the Government are to retain this proposal they ought to consider making the penalty rather more severe by accepting the amendment that I have tabled. The Government should consider on Report the possibility of disqualifying someone from continuing as a Member of the Assembly if he has been found guilty of that sort of offence.

In Amendment No. 80, I have suggested that we should have had the standing orders set out before the referendum and certainly before the election takes place. I accept that the Government are reluctant to do that, but certainly on the question of pecuniary interests the Government should make absolutely clear the kind of standing orders that they would require.

We have heard suggestions that in local government it is left to local government bodies to provide their own standing orders. On matters of open access, information and declaration of interests, local government has been particularly bad at making standing orders covering the rights of the Press and public to hear proceedings and at declaring interests. In this area we should have something tied down in standing orders.

The Bill uses the word "shall" in relation to standing orders dealing with pecuniary interests. However, I believe that it should be spelled out much more clearly. We have seen the difficulty of imposing this sort of standing order on a body. We had a long debate on Members' interests in this House. We amended the Standing Orders and then found that because one hon. Member refused to comply with that, he brought the whole question of a register of Members' interests into disrepute. Because of the political composition of the House of Commons, it is reluctant to deal with the problem.

Do we approach the problem in a dif- ferent way and set it all down in the statute? Plainly this would have been more satisfactory. This problem of a declaration of Members' interests in the Welsh Assembly should be treated in this way. Ideally, Members should have to make a declaration of interest before they are elected. We should require that each candidate make a declaration so that it is quite clear what interests people are representing and what financial interests they have. It is unsatisfactory for the Assembly itself to impose regulations.

I hope that the Minister will look at this carefully and make it clear that the Government expect the Welsh Assembly to make sure that people declare their financial interests before they speak and that there is a register of Members' interests. The Government should say that this will be a statutory register, and it will not be permissible for Members of the Assembly to waive this requirement. I hope that the Government will look at this sympathetically.

Mr. Brittan

I intervene briefly to take up the points made by the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett).

I have considerable reservations, as do many of my hon. Friends, about Amendment No. 80 in view of the experience of the House of Commons with the Register of Interests. It does seem a little wry that we should be debating a matter of this kind when we cannot deal with it satisfactorily in the House of Commons. We should resolve our own problems first—if they are capable of resolution—before we tell anyone else what to do about a register of interests.

I have a considerable degree of sympathy with the thinking behind Amendment No. 81. It is important that there should be as great a degree of protection that is possible against improper financial activities in the Welsh Assembly, or in any other deliberative or legislative body or Executive set up by this House.

9.30 p.m.

I note, in passing, that in the Scotland and Wales Bill the fine was set at £400. However, by the time we reached this Bill the fine had increased to £500. Whether that is an adequate reflection of the degree of inflation experienced by the Labour Government, I leave for others to consider and to probe.

The principle that there should be a proper sanction against financial impropriety is important. I do not wish to tread on delicate areas, but it is right to say that if over a period of time a body is dominated by one party, there is always the risk of financial impropriety. That risk is less likely to occur where there is hotly contested balance between the parties. That is nothing special to Wales, although it has received a great deal of notoriety because of the trials which have taken place in the last few years in regard to the activities of some members of Welsh local authorities. Since I come from a North-Eastern constituency, I assure those hon. Members on both sides of the political fence who represent Welsh constituencies that the North-East is by no means immune from the same problem. The problem is not a function of a particular part of the country, but illustrates the dangers that can arise if there is one-party government.

Clause 17 in its unamended form is no guarantee against the kind of deplorable activities about which some of us read in the Daily Telegraph on 28th February. Amendment No. 80 is not a protection against such events occurring because corruption will occur, and often occurs, where there is one-party government. Nevertheless, it is right that there should be as high a degree of protection as can be obtained by means of statute, and the fine is the only sanction that is available to us.

I believe that many Conservative Members will feel sympathetic towards Amendment No. 81 since it increases the sanction that is available to prevent improprieties from occurring.

Mr. Alec Jones

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) introduced an identical amendment in Committee on the Scotland Bill. I understand that he is concerned to see a common United Kingdom standard in declaring pecuniary interests and wants the Bill to provide clearer guidelines. But that is not so easy to achieve when one realises the vast variety of bodies—whether it be this Chamber, an Assembly, county council or district council or the whole gamut of semi-public bodies—that exist throughout the country.

What we have done in Clause 17 is to say that the disclosure of pecuniary interests shall be mandatory. The Assembly's standing orders will require Members to disclose their pecuniary interests, and the provision goes on to say that contravention of the standing orders would carry a criminal offence and a fine of up to a maximum of £500.

The question is how the disclosure of pecuniary interest is to be carried out. It is true that the Assembly could follow the pattern in the Local Government Act 1972, in which disclosures are recorded in a book that is kept specifically for the purpose. When we take into account that that provision is regarded as sufficient for a council the size of the GLC, which is responsible to 10 million or 12 million people and for many millions of pounds, it is somewhat difficult convincingly to argue that it is necessary to go much beyond that when deciding how the Assembly should approach the matter.

The Assembly could follow the example of the House of Commons, which has a Register of Members' Interests. It is maintained by a registrar, who is an Officer of the House, and overseen by a Select Committee. However, I suspect that some hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport, North, would not regard our register as being perfect by any means. It seems that we have been somewhat reluctant to do much about that. That is a failure of the House of Commons.

If we take into account the variety of worries that have been raised and the many examples that have been put before the Committee, it seems that this is a matter that should be left to the Assembly, given the instruction in Clause 17 that the standing orders must require Members to declare their interests and the criminal offence nature of the fine. We can argue about the size of the fine, but I believe that we have gone as far as is reasonable in laying down instructions to the Assembly as to how the issue should be handled.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

My hon. Friend has suggested that I find the present system operating in this place unsatisfactory and that it is a failure of the House of Commons. Does not that illustrate the danger of leaving the determination of standing orders to the Assembly? It may or may not be convenient for it to deal with this matter. If standing orders were laid down in the Act, it would not be for the Assembly to decide on its standing orders and, presumably, to enforce them. We are in difficulty with our Members' interests because it has been left to us to impose sanctions upon ourselves and to carry them out.

Mr. Jones

I should have greater sympathy with that point of view if what we were discussing was an attempt to impose some similar strict regime as we are seeking or would seek, to impose on the Assembly, or any other body. If we were taking that course, I should be far more sympathetic. However, as we are talking only about the Assembly, I take the view that we have probably gone about as far as we can go at this stage.

As for the level of the fine, I accept that the level of any fine, like all numbers, is often a balance of judgment. It happens that £400 was included in the Scotland and Wales Bill. When the Criminal Law Act 1977 came on the scene, which revised fines for summary offences, it became necessary to revise the fine and to take into account that Act. The fine in the Local Government Act 1972 for nondisclosure remains at £200, but as we were taking into account the Criminal Law Act when revising the fine it seemed that the £400 fine should be brought to some point on the scale and that £500 was probably about the right figure.

The fine is not a small sum. If someone were to ask me to prove that £500 was absolutely the correct figure, in all honesty I must say that I should find it extremely difficult to do so. I should probably try to talk the matter out. I believe it right that we should have a mandatory standing order dealing with this matter, but at this stage I believe that it should be left to the Assembly. Without going to the gallows on the issue, I believe that the fine of £500 is just about right.

For these reasons I invite my hon. Friend to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Dalyell

I am beginning to wonder precisely what the Assembly will spend its time doing. It will have a fruitful time discussing its own standing orders, freedom of information, and its own this, that and the other. If the Scottish Assembly has problems finding enough for its Members to do and if the Welsh Assembly is to be full time and to operate along the lines of this Parliament without legislative and economic powers, what on earth will it find to fill in its time for 37 weeks of the year without discussing its own standing orders?

Amendment negatived.

Clause 17 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

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