§ [The Fifth Report from the Committee on Standards and Privileges, Session 2001–02, HC 605-I & II, on the Complaint against Mr. Keith Vaz, is relevant.]
§
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That this House—
§ Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East)I completely accept the report of the Standards and Privileges Committee and its recommendation. I apologise to the Committee and the House. In so doing, I underline my unreserved support for the integrity of the House and its procedures.
I am very pleased that the report clears me of all the main allegations made against me. I note what the Committee says about minor issues relating to events that took place eight and 15 years ago. However, the Committee was critical of me in respect of two further matters, the first of which relates to a telephone call that my mother received from, she believes, one of the complainants, a person all of whose allegations were dismissed by the Committee and who has for almost two years subjected my wife to constant attention.
That person, Eileen Eggington, who told Mrs. Filkin that she was a former protection officer of Margaret Thatcher and Salman Rushdie, has represented Rita Gresty, a former employee of my wife's law practice, in various claims against my wife, none of which has been sustained and none of which relates to me. Miss Eggington told Mrs. Filkin that Rita Gresty, sadly, has been suffering from a serious illness, and despite what has happened, I very much hope that she will make a full recovery.
I reported the call in good faith to the police and to Mrs. Filkin. My only concern in so doing was the welfare of my mother. My mother, a cancer patient who is seriously ill, has never been interviewed about those matters, although she is most willing to explain what happened. The police wrote to her on 25 January; I am most grateful for their response.
The second criticism is that I have not co-operated with Mrs. Filkin. I believe that I have co-operated in every possible way, and I have sought legal and other advice throughout the process to ensure that I have done so. I have given hundreds of answers and numerous supporting documents. I shall not rehearse again on the Floor of the House my real concerns about process. However, there is little point in having rules of procedure—written by the commissioner and agreed by the House on 5 April 2000—which appear not to have been adhered to.
May I make one plea for the future? It is that evidence collected by the commissioner should be retained so that the Member can examine it. My attempts to obtain a crucial tape recording of a meeting between Mrs. Filkin, Miss Eggington and Mrs. Gresty were frustrated when I was told on 5 February, three days before the report was published, that the tape had been erased. Mrs. Filkin 214 decided to publish her memorandum, as she herself stated, without my corrections of fact, comments or observations. She has a right to do so.
The inquiry, like others, has been dogged by leaks. Mrs. Filkin's report was given to a Sunday newspaper, and the Committee's draft report to another Sunday newspaper. I am grateful to the Chairman, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who has always been courteous and helpful to me, for initiating a leak inquiry. I am sure that he will pursue that vigorously, and I look forward to hearing the results. The leaking of a Select Committee report in this way is, of course, a contempt of the House.
Much has been made of my connection with members of the Asian community. I am proud of my ethnic origin. I am proud of what the Asian community has done. The community must always be allowed to take its rightful place in society, and I shall continue to raise the concerns of the Asian community in an appropriate way. I am also grateful to my constituents in Leicester, East for their tremendous support. I shall strive to repay that support with my continued devotion to them.
The House will shortly be debating the appointment of a new commissioner. I wish the new commissioner well, and I hope that we will have a new era in which the rules of natural justice and fairness are applied firmly. As Michael Beloff, in his opinion quoting Lord Atkin, said:
Convenience and justice are often not on speaking terms.I am very sorry that I have detained the House today and the Committee on these matters. I apologise again most sincerely to the Committee and the House. Plaudits from one's colleagues are always gratefully received. I assure hon. Members that criticisms from them are taken most seriously indeed.Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to speak. In accordance with precedent, I shall now withdraw.
§ Sir George Young (North-West Hampshire)I am sorry that the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) felt unable to make a personal statement in the usual way. That means that I will need to say a little more than I had hoped. I am very disappointed that, for the second time in less than four months, I have to support a motion to suspend a fellow Member from the service of the House.
The report is my Committee's second major report and, like the last one, it brings to a conclusion an inquiry that was started in the previous Parliament. I am glad to say that the Committee is now up to date with its work. I believe that both the reports give further proof that the system of parliamentary self-regulation is working successfully.
I am grateful to my colleagues on the Committee for the hard work that they have put into the report over the past two months. We are all grateful to the commissioner for her work in investigating these complaints since last March—indeed, for her distinguished service to the House since her appointment three years ago.
I need spend very little time on the complaints originally made against the hon. Gentleman. Of the 11 allegations, we upheld only three, two of which we did not regard as serious. We are having this debate today not because of the original complaints but because of the way in which the hon. Member responded to them. We were 215 deeply dissatisfied with the way in which, he dealt with the commissioner. The commissioner described his approach to the inquiry as one of
obfuscation, prevarication, evasiveness and delay".The commissioner has a job to do which the House has given her. All Members have a duty to co-operate with her inquiries. We found that the hon. Gentleman failed to do so. He did not answer her questions fully, directly, clearly and promptly. We were dismayed that it took him five months to provide the commissioner with information about his property interests, which must have been readily available to him. All the relevant correspondence is published in our report, so hon. Members can read it if they wish.The hon. Gentleman was criticised by the Standards and Privileges Committee in the last Parliament for failing to co-operate with the earlier inquiry into complaints against him. That makes his lack of co-operation with the latest inquiry all the more serious. We found that the hon. Gentleman had failed in his duty of accountability under the code of conduct.
The more serious charge against the hon. Gentleman is that he wrongfully interfered with the House's investigation process. According to his oral evidence to us, his mother received a telephone call on 4 October last year and the words "Eggington" and "Filkin" were used. Miss Eggington is one of the complainants in this case. He informed the police that Miss Eggington had made a harassing telephone call to his mother, linked her with another witness in the case and gave the police her address. Then he told the commissioner that Miss Eggington had made the call, had claimed to be a police officer and had put questions to his mother, claiming to be acting on the commissioner's behalf.
Those allegations went way beyond what the hon. Gentleman and his mother told us they knew. Moreover, the hon. Gentleman made it clear to the commissioner that he expected her to follow up the matter. He asked the commissioner what action she proposed to take over his allegations against Miss Eggington. Miss Eggington has strongly denied these allegations, and the Committee accepts her evidence. We do not believe that she made any telephone call to Mrs. Vaz.
The police are now satisfied that no calls were received on the day in question which could be attributable to Miss Eggington or the other witness. The police officer in charge of the case said:
We have found nothing that would lend weight to the allegations originally made bythe hon. Gentleman. The police officer continued:Indeed, I am satisfied that no malicious calls were made.The police would not make such categorical statements unless they were absolutely sure that they were well founded.The Committee is also satisfied that the hon. Gentleman's allegations are false, yet on the basis of his false allegations, both Miss Eggington and the other witness that the hon. Gentleman identified were put through the ordeal of being interviewed by the police. The commissioner was also led to investigate his accusation against Miss Eggington.
216 We concluded that the hon. Gentleman recklessly made a damaging allegation against Miss Eggington to the commissioner, which was not true and which could have intimidated Miss Eggington or undermined her credibility. The hon. Gentleman also set the commissioner on a false line of inquiry, then accused her of interfering in a criminal investigation and threatened to report her to the Speaker. The hon. Gentleman failed in his public duty under the code of conduct and committed a contempt of the House.
The hon. Gentleman has made matters worse by his subsequent behaviour, which in my view has been aimed at undermining the entire investigative process. He was, perhaps, unwise to hold a press conference last Friday in which he sought to play down the severity of the Committee's report—he is quoted as saying:
I am pleased that the Committee has found me innocent of many allegations"—by focusing on the areas where complaints were not upheld and minimising the importance of those that were upheld. I believe that he was also unwise to criticise the punishment as "disproportionate" and the report as "misled".
§ Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow)Before we leave the question of unwisdom, should not the House have some explanation as to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) on the matter of leaks from the Committee? To some of us, that seems very unwise.
§ Sir George YoungI take the leaks seriously, as the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) says. I have launched a leak inquiry. I hope that he will discover who leaked those documents as the leaking of them is damaging to the investigative process and the integrity of the Select Committees.
Returning to the matter of the punishment, we reflected carefully on the appropriate punishment. We did as Sir Gordon Downey proposed and had a tariff before us of all previous punishments. We were anxious to be consistent and to be fair to the hon. Gentleman and others who came before us. We unanimously agreed on the punishment, which hon. Members are now considering. It is for the House, not the hon. Gentleman, to decide whether it is disproportionate.
The report was not rushed out, as the hon. Gentleman asserted on Friday. The commissioner's report was completed on 13 December, two months before her term of office ended. It would have been submitted earlier if the hon. Gentleman had co-operated. I vigorously reject the claim that our report was rushed out to meet a deadline. We sat for many hours in January and February to complete it. We wanted to do that sooner rather than later because we believed that it was in the interests of the House and, indeed, the hon. Gentleman to conclude our inquiry. However, nothing was rushed about our proceedings and, as Chairman, I resent that implication. No voice went unheard, no argument was stifled. We deliberated responsibly and fairly, as hon. Members would expect.
The hon. Gentleman said, "Natural justice should prevail." Our findings against him show that he was perhaps ill advised to make a plea for natural justice. His strategy appears to have been to throw mud at the 217 commissioner in the hope that some might stick to the Committee. He asserted earlier that he had co-operated; he did not. He did much to obstruct our inquiry. He challenged the right of two members of the Committee to serve on it because they had signed an early-day motion. On the eve of our final meeting, he made representations that we should ditch the commissioner's report and start again.
We know that the hon. Gentleman has little time for the commissioner. The House is not debating her report, but that of the Select Committee. We read the commissioner's report and the annexes, we interviewed the hon. Gentleman and read all the documents that he presented to us. We then asked ourselves whether his behaviour fulfilled the code of conduct that the House has set.
In two similar debates, I said that the House is a forgiving place if an hon. Member admits that he has made a mistake. Even at this stage, the hon. Gentleman appears unable to acknowledge that he has done anything wrong. He has failed to apologise to Miss Eggington for what happened.
Our conclusion that the hon. Gentleman committed serious breaches of the code of conduct and contempt of the House was reached unanimously. We also unanimously concluded that he should be suspended for one month. I believe that we have been fair to the hon. Gentleman and to the House. I ask the House to endorse the Committee's report.
§ Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall)I want to make a small but important point, which I hope will be helpful. I have not read the whole report; I suspect that few hon. Members have. However, I read the summary with great care and anxiety. Paragraph 50 states:
In his response to the investigation of the complaints against him since February 2000 Mr. Vaz failed in his duty of accountability under the Code of Conduct by refusing to submit himself to the scrutiny appropriate to his office as a Member.The date is important because at that time, and for a long time afterwards, the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) was a Minister of the Crown.We have to ask whether the relationship between the code of conduct that applies to ordinary Members properly interrelates with the ministerial code that the Prime Minister issued in July 2001. Several aspects clearly need reviewing in the light of the case. I appreciate that that is not the Committee's responsibility, but the Leader of the House is responsible for representing the House's views to his colleagues in the Government.
The first paragraph of the ministerial code states:
Ministers of the Crown are expected to behave according to the highest standards of constitutional and personal conduct in performance of their duties.It is not clear whether that refers to their duties as Ministers or as Members of the House, from which they derive their authority as Ministers under our constitution. The statement is not supplemented or explained by paragraph iv on page 2, which states:Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament and the public, refusing to provide information only when disclosure would not be in the public interest which should be decided in accordance with the relevant statutes and the Government's Code of Practice on Access to Government Information".218 It would seem that that does not apply to an individual Minister's personal interests, or to information that he should be obliged to give to the Committee set up by the House to enforce our rules of conduct.Even the seven principles of public life, which are set out as an annexe to the ministerial code, do not provide the clarity to which we are entitled. They mention a number of qualities, including selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability and openness. Openness seems to be the most applicable to this case, and to the report from the Committee. The part of the code dealing with openness reads as follows:
Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and actions that they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider public interest clearly demands.Again, it is by no means clear whether that applies in this case, or whether it applies only to a Member who happens to hold ministerial office at a particular time.All that I ask is that the Leader of the House gives us an undertaking that there should be a review of the interrelationship between our code of conduct and the ministerial code. They cannot be completely separated. Ministers have authority only under the House and under our parliamentary democracy. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to give us an undertaking that this issue will be reviewed as a matter of urgency.
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§ Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney, North and Stoke Newington)I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) has fully accepted the findings of the Committee on Standards and Privileges. I think that the whole House accepts the Chairman's statement that the report was drawn up with all due consideration and no undue haste, and that it was unanimous. Clearly, however, findings of this kind will cast a long shadow over the reputation of any Member of the House.
I hope that the House will forgive me if I say a few brief words about the report and the punishment that it advises. I have known my hon. Friend—and his mother, a redoubtable woman who, in another era, would have been an MP of a peculiarly frightening type—for more than 25 years. This is a serious report and its findings are serious, but it is also the case that my hon. Friend has always been a conscientious and hard-working Member for all the people of his constituency, and he remains a very popular Member to this day.
Much has been made of my hon. Friend's relationship with the Asian community. Some of the allegations—both in the report and in the press—turn on that relationship. I remind the House, however, that when my hon. Friend entered the House in 1987, he was the only Member of Asian descent in this House or the upper House. For years after that, he dealt with casework from the Asian community across the midlands, and raised issues of policy in relation to the Asian community across the country. I hope that the findings of the report will not detract from the diligence with which he has pursued those issues and helped those many thousands of people.
I first entered the House in 1987, along with my hon. Friend, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), and the then Member for Tottenham. It is hard to look back now and remember the euphoria with 219 which we all came into the House. We were all relatively young, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East was the youngest—the baby, if you like—of that particular gang. At that time, I do not think that we would ever have contemplated this type of report being produced about any of us, and it gives me great sadness to take part in this debate today.
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§ Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby)This is indeed a sad occasion, as the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) has just said. My view, for what it is worth, is that I would rather that there were no Register of Members' Interests or Committee on Standards and Privileges. I take what I recall to have been Enoch Powell's view on the Committee when it was set up, which is that we are trusted by our constituents to come here, and that we should be honourable people who can be trusted. About four years ago, a Labour Member informed me that he had been told that the rottweilers were after me because I had registered my disapproval of an action by the Prime Minister. We all dislike witch hunts; they do not add to the esteem of the House, and neither does this sort of occasion. I would rather that this did not happen, but, sadly, we do not live in an ideal world.
The hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) is a neighbour of mine in Leicestershire. That is why I am speaking in the debate, and why I submitted two complaints to the Standards and Privileges Committee, both of which were upheld. The hon. Gentleman and I have always had perfectly cordial relations, and I should hate to think that anyone believed there was a vendetta against him on my part or on the part of other Conservative Members. That is not the case. Indeed, it has been alleged that to make the complaints is in some way racist. That is not the case either. I made the complaints because in Leicestershire, as in all constituencies, allegations will be passed to a Member of Parliament if someone does not like what is going on in a neighbouring constituency and cannot obtain satisfaction from his or her own MP.
As I have said, both my complaints were upheld, although the Committee described them as not serious. I take issue with that slightly. My first complaint was that the hon. Gentleman had not registered a £3,000 donation from the Caparo company, or from Lord Paul, in 1993. That had been in The Sunday Telegraph some time last year, which is why I raised it. I hasten to add that I do not criticise Lord Paul in any way; but the explanation given for why the donation had not been registered was unacceptable.
The hon. Gentleman said:
I was not aware that a Register was published in 1994. I was telephoned while I was at a European Council meeting in Stockholm. Access to Registers on a Friday night in Stockholm is not good.I have always understood irony to be the lowest form of wit, and I must say that I concur in this instance.The Committee said:
We do not regard Mr. Vaz's initial failure to register as particularly serious, but he should have admitted his shortcoming frankly.220 I will not take issue with the Committee, except to say that in my time as an MP no one has given me a £3,000 cheque for my association. People deal directly with the association. I am surprised that this should happen. Certainly, when large sums have come to the association, if not via me, they have been declared. I suspect that every Member on both sides of the House would say the same.My other complaint concerned a law centre. Mr. Price-Jones, the former town clerk of Leicester city council, says:
Mr. Vaz remained on the payroll of Leicester Advice and Information Services until at least the end of September 1987.That was at least four months after the 1987 general election. It is not easy to forget that one is being paid for four months. It was suggested by the hon. Gentleman that he was taking a holiday. I do not know of many organisations that would give people such a holiday. It is not a very big issue; the reason I raised these issues—
§ David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire)I believe that my hon. Friend said not that he had taken a holiday, but that he had been paid for accrued holiday that he had earned in the time leading up to the general election. That is rather different, is it not?
§ Mr. RobathanHe did say that, but I do not think that he was employed long enough to be given such a holiday. The hon. Gentleman, of course, takes an interest in the issue because he too is a Leicestershire Member.
I will not drag out my quotations from the Committee's report, but Mrs. Filkin considered the argument spurious, and did not accept it at all. That is the point.
The hon. Member for Leicester, East said that he had been cleared of various complaints. In fact, hon. Members should read the report. It says that inquiries were incomplete on several issues. That is different from complaints not being upheld or indeed being cleared. [Interruption.] It is in the report. I am sure that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), who is a member of the Select Committee, will read it.
This is part of a pattern since 1987. The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington said that the hon. Member for Leicester, East was the baby of the group that was elected in 1987. He should perhaps have received better advice from his party Whips and party organisation. I do not believe him to be an evil person in any way. He could have been helped rather better here, but the problem is that it is part of a Labour party pattern.
I come now to the Labour party national executive committee inquiry and the Adjournment debate of 25 April 1995, to which Elizabeth Filkin referred, on local government in Leicestershire. In that debate, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Gamier) said:
I have seen two detailed confidential reports to Labour's national executive committee. They were apparently sent to every member of that committee…under cover of a letter signed by 16 senior Leicester Labour politicians. They included…three former lord mayors of Leicester… the Labour party shows no signs of taking any action".—[Official Report, 25 April 1995; Vol. 258, c. 762.]The charges of interference in the affairs of Leicester city council—
§ Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon)On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I point out that that forms no 221 part at all of the Select Committee's report? I cannot understand why the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) is going on about those things, which are not in any way, shape or form part of the report.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord)The hon. Gentleman must leave these matters to the occupant of the Chair but I understand the point that he makes and I say to the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) that we are discussing the report and he should direct his remarks to that.
§ Mr. RobathanThank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I most certainly will. The point is that that matter was referred to by Elizabeth Filkin and by the hon. Member for Watford (Ms Ward), who is in her place, in evidence to Elizabeth Filkin in the report last year.
I should like to take up the district auditor's report, which deals with the same matter that was raised in that Adjournment debate. It said:
Housing bosses were wrong to reinstate an evicted tenant after an MP intervened and this cost Leicester city council some £1,800"—[Interruption.] Instead of laughing, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase) should understand that this is part of a pattern.Elizabeth Filkin, in her report, dealing with the evidence of the hon. Member for Watford, to whom I spoke before she came into the Chamber, states:
They arranged a further day's hearing, but came to no immediate conclusions and made no report. Ms Ward told me she was surprised when, the next day, the Party's regional secretary issued a press release announcing that the inquiry was complete and that the membership's concerns were being dealt with…Ms Ward expressed her concern to the regional secretary about this purported summary of the inquiry's conclusions.That was a big issue. "Dispatches" made a programme on it. "Newsnight" did a story on it. For the Labour party to pretend that it did not know what was going on in the Leicester, East constituency Labour party is bizarre, because the NEC carried out an inquiry into it.
§ Mr. Deputy SpeakerOrder. The hon. Gentleman is again straying rather wide of the report. He should direct his remarks specifically to the report before the House.
§ Mr. RobathanVery well, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hear what you say and I shall not in any way transgress, except to say that I would like the NEC report to be published because it is relevant to what Mrs. Filkin was saying. [Interruption.] Since I am being so barracked, I will not go any further, but I hope—
§ Mr. Kevin McNamara (Hull, North)Has the hon. Gentleman actually read the report, in which Ms Filkin says in fact that she paid no attention to the Labour party inquiry?
§ Mr. RobathanI have indeed read the report. Mrs. Filkin paid no attention to that because it was not within her remit, but as the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) said, it is within the remit of the Leader of the House. When he was Foreign Secretary, he said about the hon. Member for Leicester, East:
I have seen nothing in any of the stories that have been produced about Mr. Vaz that are not innuendo and guilt by association as to where he is supposed to have broken the ministerial code of behaving properly as a minister.222 Perhaps the Leader of the House will address that issue. He must have known about the NEC report, and perhaps he will publish it.
§ Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst)These are always melancholy occasions for the House and it gives no one any pleasure to deal with them. However, we must deal with them, as they are the key element in the self-regulatory mechanism that the House has set up to deal with such matters.
I want to thank the Chairman of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), and all the members of the Committee for performing a difficult and melancholy task assiduously for a long period. I must also thank the commissioner for the way in which she has dealt with the matter, lengthy and complex though it has been.
I want to add my words to those of the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler). It is now time that the Government looked at the connection that should exist between our code of conduct, with which we are dealing, and the code that covers ministerial conduct. I do not want to press the point, but I hope that this occasion will give added impetus to the increasingly obvious necessity for that matter to be considered.
I hope that the House will support, with sadness, the recommendations made by the Committee in the hope that such support will represent yet another move towards right hon. and hon. Members understanding our obligations so that, in a sense, we can render the work of the Committee redundant.
§ The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Robin Cook)I add to the remarks of the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) by expressing the Government's thanks to the Chairman and all members of the Standards and Privileges Committee. We also appreciate the diligence with which the commissioner has pursued this case. The work that she put into it is fully recorded in the 150 pages of text that the House is considering.
No Member with a balanced opinion can come to such a debate without a sense of regret about the matter before us. Nor should we come to it without a recognition of the necessity of acting on such a report. That is why the Government have acted quickly to bring it before the House at the earliest opportunity. That is right, and, according to tradition, we shall accept the Committee's recommendations and we expect that the House will do the same.
I listened with care to the comments of the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler), which, were echoed by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. I shall reflect on those points. They would both expect me to consider their remarks calmly and with the text in front of me. Whatever might be the narrow interpretation of the text, there can be no question of the Government not taking fully into account and acting on such a report, which resulted in a Member being suspended from the House. That suspension plainly has a severe implication for whether such a Member, if he were a Minister, could continue as a Minister, whatever the text might say. We can consider whether there should be an explicit read-across between the two texts.
223 With those few words and as the House will soon be ready to come to a decision, I commend the report. We shall certainly accept all its recommendations, and reflect on what it may mean for the future in terms of the ministerial code.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§
Resolved,
That this House—