Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.”
“I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government.”
“I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it.”
“The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon.”
“The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries.”
“I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon.”
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“We also concluded that any proposals “would need to be properly debated by Parliament and a consensus reached” but that there are “serious problems with using the existing boundaries for a further election in 2022” or 2021. Our sole recommendation was therefore that “the House of Commons should be given an early opportunity to debate the options for reform and to decide whether or not to continue the current boundary review. In doing so the House would need to consider the potential risks of legislating, and establish if consensus can be reached in time for legislation to be passed before the summer. The Government should consider if the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill— the Bill presented by the hon.”
“We are not here to debate constituency boundaries, even though you have allowed a certain amount of latitude, Mr Speaker, but I should draw the House’s attention to a report published by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in February entitled “Parliamentary Boundary Reviews: What Next?” The report stated that the Government cannot be confident that the House of Commons will support the implementation of the present boundary recommendations in the autumn, concluding that “if it moved quickly, it would be possible for the Government to introduce new legislation to allow for a new boundary review and for it to be implemented prior to a 2022 election”— or a 2021 election.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I say to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) that I hope that he and his colleagues from Scotland will continue to avail themselves of the opportunity to propose private Members’ Bills in this House for a great many centuries to come. This debate is confined to the narrow question of money resolutions for private Members’ Bill.”
“I just want some consensual, grown-up discussion, and I do not see much of a future in continuing the scrappy discussion that we have had so far. The Select Committee’s report has received a formal response from the Government, and we will be considering it soon. I am advised that I cannot refer to it, but I say, “Don’t hold your breath.” I think it leaves the Government with room for manoeuvre to be flexible and adaptive to the present situation, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will take that message back to the Cabinet.”
“Friend the Leader of the House to say that we should not commit to spending more money on a new boundary review until we have decided on the old one. I am simply saying what my Select Committee recommended, which is that we bring forward the decision. The shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), is nodding, but her party has many opportunities to put something on the Order Paper that would make that decision. She has sat on this report since February, so why have the Opposition not done something more proactive if they feel so strongly about this? [ Interruption. ] The hon. Lady is now looking aghast, but there are Opposition days on which a resolution could be tabled to give the House the opportunity to decide on the matter.”
“I have made that point already. There would be no democratic disaster; we would not be going back to 1832 and rotten boroughs, for goodness’ sake. The boundaries would just be rather old. The electoral data in our constituencies would be up to date, but the data used to draw the boundaries would be out of date. Government Members have argued that traditional boundary reviews have been carried out with rather unequal constituencies, and there is a consensus, as represented by the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill, that constituencies should be more equal—that point has been conceded. I hope that there is a consensus, but the danger is that we are losing the opportunity for this House to make serious choices while we wait for the boundary review. It would be entirely legitimate for my right hon.”
“Will the Minister assure the House that the legislation he brings forward will wait until the Moore-Bick inquiry has reported?”
“My right hon. Friend is obviously coming under a lot of pressure to ban combustible materials on high-rise buildings, but this excellent report does not do that because it would give a false assurance that that one shot would somehow make everything okay, when it would not. Combustible materials are used in all kinds of buildings and all kinds of capacities, but they do not necessarily mean that those buildings are dangerous. This report represents the importing of an aviation safety culture into the buildings industry, which is probably long overdue. I look forward to a recommendation, perhaps in the Moore-Bick inquiry, that there should be independent incident investigations to ensure that lessons from incidents such as the Lakanal House fire are learned much more comprehensively than they have been in the past.”
“As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said, this is just a matter of law. The new regulation is either a correct implementation of European Union law, or it is not. Which is it?”
“I am most grateful. In the final analysis, the Minister’s legal advisers are there to advise; they do not instruct him. I advise him to get alternative legal advice from outside his Department, because Government legal advice tends to be a little over-cautious, which is why we finish up gold-plating these things. It is tempting just to blame the European Union.”
“As my right hon. Friend knows, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has taken a close interest in this matter. Is he aware that we will be travelling to Edinburgh on Sunday, for hearings on Monday on the matter? I invite him to feel less disappointment and more hope, because the SNP Government have always insisted that their interests are aligned with those of the Welsh Government. Can we give the Scottish Government time to reflect on the fact that the Welsh Government now support the UK Government’s position, and that they might wish to do so in future?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that there is something of a correction going on throughout the sector, as it adjusts to the effects of the Carillion collapse and to the perhaps over-tight margins that some contracts have imposed on providers? I draw his attention to the fact that the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee is doing an inquiry into the lessons to be learned from the collapse of Carillion. Personally, I take confidence from the fact that the investors have decided to trust Capita with £700 million more of their capital to secure the long-term future of the company.”
“It is merely the expression of the opinion of a particular Prime Minister at a particular time—it was not even drafted by this Prime Minister—and it is vague. The basis of the relationship between Government and Parliament is that Parliament controls laws and the supply of money to the Executive. Parliament is required to give its confidence to the Government in office for them to continue in office. It scrutinises Government decisions and holds Ministers accountable. However, I say to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition that accountability is not the same thing as control. This Parliament does not control the Executive. We do not run the country. We hold the Government accountable. Parliament should not seek to directly control the decisions of Ministers.”
“We are effectively now confronted by two great powers who are intent on subverting the international legal order. The problem in Syria is just a symptom of the superpower conflict that is already taking place, and which is simply not reflected in the 2015 strategic defence and security review or the 2015 national security review. I think we need to attend to those matters with some urgency. I wish to concentrate on the more immediate question about the relationship between Government and Parliament. It is a complete misconception that there is an established constitutional convention that Parliament votes on the question of foreign deployments. This is a relatively new fashion. The Cabinet manual says that, but the Cabinet manual has no constitutional status whatever. It has no legal force.”
“I rise as Chair of the Parliamentary Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which covers both the question of strategic thinking in government and the question of the relationship between the Government and Parliament. My predecessor Committee produced three reports on strategic thinking in government and I challenge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, who is in his place, on this. The Government have listened to the arguments and developed their capacity for strategic thinking, but the published literature of government is way behind the curve in dealing with the situations we now face. That underlines how we have to a large extent been asleep and complacent about the security we enjoy in this world.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will endeavour to be as swift as I possibly can. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) has, I think, just punched a hole in his own argument. He responded to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), a former Attorney General, by assuring us that in any debate about some putative military action nobody would ask the Government to reveal specifics. I am sorry, but that is what this place does: we ask about specifics. He expects to debate forthcoming military action when the Government would be reluctant to reveal targets, the objectives of the operation and the nature of the deployment. That is ridiculous. I will come back to that point in a minute.”
“In particular, on the basis of a proposal from the Better Government Initiative, we recommended that it would be a good idea if the Cabinet Secretary had some mechanism to call out a Prime Minister who was deliberately bypassing proper procedures in Government. The Government have so far rejected that recommendation, but I hope they will continue to consider how we can be reassured that the proper procedures are being followed in Government. However, my right hon. Friend’s commitment to her sense of accountability and proper procedure seems to be absolutely unchallengeable—”
“Friend the Prime Minister received her seals of office from Her Majesty, she did not just take on the right to decide when, where and how our armed forces should be deployed. She took on the obligation, intrinsic to her office, to exercise her judgment, on proper advice and in consultation with her Cabinet, on military deployments of this nature and then to bring those decisions to this House when she has made them. The Chilcot report has been raised. My Committee has considered it, and we made recommendations on how Government procedures might be improved to make sure that legal advice is not concealed from the Cabinet and that proper procedures are followed in Government.”
“It is ironic that the decision to go to war in Iraq is continually held up as an example of how these decisions should be made, when in fact the determination of the then Prime Minister to bring the decision to Parliament actually blurred the whole debate. It made the debate about a whole lot of factors that were irrelevant to the question of whether it was a sensible decision to go to war in Iraq. It also seems ironic to hold that up as an example of how decisions should be made when so many Members of that House regret taking that decision. It is easier to hold the Government accountable if we say, “You the Government make the decision and we will judge you on your performance after the event.” When my right hon.”
“I repeat these words: “I propose that we aim for a trade agreement covering all sectors and with zero tariffs on goods. Like other free trade agreements, it should address services.” Those are the words used by President Tusk in introducing the guidelines, which seem to accept the principle that there should be a comprehensive free trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the EU.”
“It was about leaving a bloc that is not only in relative economic decline but increasingly in a state of economic and political crisis.”
“We deliberately left the Vote Leave website up—Members can take a look if they like. Vote Leave did not argue for isolation, intolerance or economic protectionism. Those may be the views of a vociferous minority, but the Ashcroft polling that was undertaken at the time of the referendum found that for nearly half of leave voters, the biggest single reason for wanting to vote leave was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. Lest we forget, that is the first context. The debate was about taking back control—about democratic self-government and our country’s right to make its own laws, to decide its own taxation and spending and to choose how it engages with other countries on matters such as trade, foreign affairs and defence.”
“Let us make no bones about this: the Labour party has now adopted a position in favour of some kind of weaselly half-Brexit, which is not what the British people voted for. The Prime Minister said that she does not recognise any distinction between hard or soft Brexit; there is leaving the European Union or somehow staying in, which seems to be the position the Labour party has now adopted. Let me set out two contexts. First, many who supported remain seem to believe that people who voted leave in the referendum were voting to turn their back on the world. They claim that the UK’s decision was driven by isolationist and xenophobic undercurrents and see the leave vote as representing intolerance, prejudice and a call for protectionism. Vote Leave did not campaign for that.”
“I shall proceed as quickly as possible. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) rather marred his speech by playing the man and not the ball. It is much better if we deal with the arguments, instead of imputing motives or sentiments that were at that very moment being disowned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). That was rather unfortunate. I wish to point out that the agenda is not being set by a small group of MPs; it is being set by the British people—more than 52% of the electorate. Those who argue against leaving the customs union or for staying in the single market are arguing against the right of the British people to take control of their own affairs.”
“EU negotiators have to take account of 28 states’ interests, which can be very different from our own, and to reflect the protectionist priorities of producer interests, such as the Italian shoe industry, French agriculture and the German chemicals manufacturers.”
“With the UK accounting for 7% of world service exports and the USA 15%, they would together account for over a fifth of the global total—a market of huge significance. Outside the EU, the UK will also be better placed to develop trading opportunities with countries in Asia and Africa, where the most rapid growth is expected to occur in the future. When concluding free trade agreements, we can set our own negotiating priorities that best match our economic interests. The EU has historically represented the UK’s interests poorly not just because it is incredibly slow, but because, inevitably, the EU cannot prioritise UK trading interests such as access for services, which is, of course, of prime importance to our economy.”
“Outside the EU and the customs union, the UK will be able to develop new trading relationships with many of these countries, but not under his party’s policy. Some of these opportunities, including the possibility of joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the strong prospects of a comprehensive free trade agreement with the US, including financial services, more than match the potential of our existing relationships with the EU. The 11 TPP countries have a population of almost 500 million people and represent more than $10 trillion in economic output, which is 13.5% of the global total. The Commonwealth has a population of 2.3 billion people. A comprehensive trade deal with the US, which includes services, would give UK firms better access to its population of more than 320 million and to the world’s largest single economy.”
“UK exports to Commonwealth countries have increased from 8.8% of our exports, worth £21.5 billion, in 1999 to 8.9%, worth £48.5 billion, in 2016. The Commonwealth is a fast-growing market, reflecting much of our language, values and administrative and constitutional heritage, and therefore has great potential for the UK. The EU is still the UK’s largest trading partner if taken as a bloc, but if we consider individual countries, the UK’s largest trading partner is the United States of America. It seems to have passed the hon. Member for Sheffield Central by that, while the UK has had a trade deficit with the EU every year since 1999—worth £82 billion in 2016—we achieved a £39 billion trade surplus with non-EU countries in 2016.”
“That is not a matter for gloating or complacency, but it shows that inward investment is not dependent on membership of the EU. What about the longer-term prospects for trade and economic growth? In recent years, UK trade has shown a well-established trend, as the proportion of UK exports sent to the EU has been declining. It peaked at 54% of UK exports in 2006. By 2016, that had fallen to 43%. That decline in the importance of our EU trade has set in despite the UK being in the EU, in a customs union and in the single market. Conversely, over the same period, the non-EU share of UK exports has increased. For example, China’s share of UK exports grew from 1.6% in 2006, worth a mere £5.4 billion, to 3.3%, worth £16.8 billion, in 2016. Trade has also grown significantly with the Commonwealth.”
“In fact, the year of the referendum, 2016, turned out to be another record year for inward investment. We have seen Wells Fargo committing to a new £300 million London headquarters and Nissan announcing its new Qashqai and X-Trail models to be built in Sunderland, making Sunderland a super plant of 600,000 vehicles a year. In December 2017, GlaxoSmithKline revealed its plans to invest £40 million in the UK’s life sciences sector. At the beginning of this month, Siemens committed to building a £200 million train manufacturing plant in the UK if it wins orders for new rolling stock, and, just last week, Toyota announced that it will build the next generation of its Auris hatchback at its Burnaston plant in Derbyshire, including a £240 million upgrade of the plant.”
“It also ignored the long-term future of global trade and economic growth. Between 2016 and 2017, UK GDP increased by 1.7%, and economic growth continues to surpass expectations. Tax receipts are higher than expected, and the UK is running a current budget surplus for the first time since the year leading up to July 2002—long before the crash, and two years earlier than anticipated just last year. UK unemployment has continued to fall from 8.5% in late 2011 to 4.4% in late 2017, and the unemployment rate was recently at its lowest point since 1975. Although some businesses are moving parts of their operations to other EU countries, the number of jobs being moved is significantly lower than expected. Foreign direct investment has continued to grow and, since the referendum vote, there has been a string of major inward investment decisions.”
“In fact, Martin Schulz, the former President of the European Parliament, wants a full united states of Europe by 2025. The formation of the euro, which was always a political project, transformed the EU, making full integration an imperative to try to prevent the eurozone from breaking up. In the end, the euro will fail anyway, because there is no political consent for the scale of fiscal transfers necessary to compensate for the huge internal trade imbalances. The second context is economic. Shortly before the referendum, the Treasury forecast that a leave vote would inflict an economic shock on the UK, leading to reduced trade and foreign direct investment, recession, and the loss of 500,000 jobs. I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Sheffield Central, but the Treasury’s analysis has proved to be manifestly wrong.”
“I was going to make that point later in my speech, but shall no longer do so, for the sake of brevity. The EU undermines democracy, prosperity and international co-operation. It is plagued by high unemployment, high debts, an ageing population that is much too dependent on state welfare, a dysfunctional euro, unaccountable political institutions and a democratic crisis. It puts up barriers to the combination of world-class universities, technological innovation and venture capital that is fundamental to the technological innovation on which the future of our economy depends. Since the referendum, we have seen the landmark statements to which the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), referred.”
“I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. We are on exactly the same page, and we can both support the Prime Minister’s negotiating objectives on that basis. Returning to the UK the power to negotiate and sign trade deals will not only speed up trade negotiation for the UK, but enable the Government to negotiate in the UK national interest. The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) asked which countries we were talking about. The Department for International Trade is pursuing opportunities in countries around the world, and Australia and Brazil, to name just two, have already expressed an interest in concluding free trade agreements with the UK.”
“Member for Sheffield Central himself pointed out, Germany exports to the rest of the world from within the EU, but with many countries, it does not even have a trade agreement, let alone a customs union agreement. Let us get all this in proportion. It is far more significant that the UK’s departure from the EU will give us greater flexibility, more responsibility, more accountability and more control over how we manage our economy as we regain: the ability to set our own tariff schedules; the ability to set our own regulatory standards and decide how they should be applied; the unencumbered freedom to set VAT rates; the freedom to relax restrictions placed on UK public procurement; and policy flexibility over things like fishing and farming.”
“We also import much of what we consume, and trade allows consumers to access a wider variety of goods, at competitive prices, but the volume of trade is only marginally affected by agreements between countries. Neither the EU nor the UK has a trade agreement with the US, but the US is nevertheless our largest trading partner. When discussing trade, we must remember that trade agreements are only one factor upon which our economic future depends. How we educate our people, how we regulate our economy, the flexibility of our labour market, and investment in infrastructure, science and technology are far more important to our prosperity than trade agreements. Domestic Government policies have a much bigger impact on economic performance than whether the UK is inside or outside a customs union with the EU. As the hon.”
“There is no reason for the EU to prevent UK firms from setting up in the EU as we will continue to allow EU firms to set up here. We should agree on an appropriate labour mobility framework and on the recognition of qualifications to provide for the mobility of skilled labour. The Prime Minister also called for the UK and EU economies to remain closely linked in areas including energy, transport, digital, law, and science and innovation. That is perfectly achievable if there is good will on both sides. The UK is committed to remaining a close friend and neighbour of the EU, and the Prime Minister has made that perfectly clear with a comprehensive economic partnership. Trade is, of course, of great importance to the economy. In the UK, about 28% of what we produce is sold abroad, and this business activity supports millions of jobs.”
“There should also be mutual recognition of products and standards, which is no more than the kind of standard agreement that the UK has with many other countries with which it does not have a free trade agreement—incidentally, I think that that is what is meant by a customs arrangement. It means goods need approval in only one country to meet the required regulatory standards in other countries in normal circumstances. Although we recognise that certain aspects of trade in services are intrinsically linked to the single market, we should note that services trade has nothing whatsoever to do with being in or out of a customs union, because tariffs are not charged on services. The Prime Minister is right to insist that barriers should be introduced only where absolutely necessary.”
“I think the hon. Gentleman is somewhat playing with words, because nobody will say what kind of deal they will give us until we are actually in the negotiations and making progress. He is asking a question to which he well knows the answer for his own political reasons. In relation to our trade with the EU, the Prime Minister in her recent speech called for trade at the UK-EU border to be as frictionless as possible. The EU has agreed, as I mentioned earlier, that tariffs and quotas should be avoided and, in the draft negotiating guidelines published earlier this month, it also agreed to the principle of an EU-UK trade deal. Perhaps that is the answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question.”
“Outside the EU, instead of pretending that we can insulate ourselves from a rapidly changing world and from the effects of technological and societal change, with a failing model of regulation and centralised power—without all that—we will have the freedom and flexibility to respond, adapt, survive and prosper.”
“We gain the opportunity to focus on those matters in trade negotiations, alongside investment in science and tech, educating our people, and ensuring flexible labour markets and a competitive tax regime. So much of the debate about leaving the EU lacks this perspective. Even so, our future opportunities outside the EU are important. Even the European Commission expects 90% of global economic growth over the next 10 to 15 years to be generated outside Europe. The UK can flourish outside the EU, perhaps not with a Corbyn Government—that might be a bit of a problem—but certainly with a sensible Conservative Government. The only question is whether we all work hard to embrace these opportunities or continue trying to hide from them.”
“In fact, the EU is Switzerland’s main trading partner, and it is not even a member. Other small trading countries include Singapore, whose exports are actually far bigger, at 172% of GDP, and Hong Kong, whose exports are 187%, because it imports and exports such large volumes. But neither is part of a customs union or of any kind of single market; they just get on with it. Control over our own laws offers far greater opportunities to develop our economy and export than the removal of customs checks when trading with other countries. The cost of customs processes is low and declining in comparison with other costs, such as anti-competitive regulation, behind-the-border barriers to trade and the reduction of tariff barriers. South Korea had substantial tariff barriers before the free trade agreement.”
“I am not discounting the value of free trade agreements. I am asking that we dispose of some prevalent misconceptions that our prosperity depends only on free trade agreements and being part of the customs union. It is actually relatively at the margins of the overall prosperity of our economy. It is not necessary to be a very large country or part of a large trade bloc in order to be prosperous. Many very small states export a far higher proportion of their GDP across customs frontiers. For example, Switzerland’s exports are worth 66% of its GDP, and South Korea’s are worth 42%—far higher than the UK’s. Neither of these countries are in any kind of customs union, so they achieve this across traditional customs frontiers and their people have very high living standards.”
“I am glad that the hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to add his rather more socialist point. The problem with the regulatory regime in the European Union is that the whole system is not geared towards our interests and our economy, not least because Germany enjoys a very artificially depressed currency. The Germans have by far the biggest trade surplus as a consequence, and their currency never appreciates because they are in the euro. That has cemented in a completely unfair disadvantage, institutionalised by the European Union.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement and congratulate her on a calm speech that has been widely welcomed. It was based on both the principles she has consistently set out towards leaving the European Union and the realistic compromises this nation will have to make to achieve a comprehensive trade agreement. Do we not now owe it to her to get behind her and her negotiations, instead of undermining her all the time, as the Opposition are doing?”
“I am encouraged that everybody seems to want to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland. The only people who seem to be threatening such a border are those who are trying to leverage their political advantage in domestic politics in the Republic of Ireland or trying somehow to blackmail the whole of the United Kingdom into substantially reversing the substance of the referendum result. Far more constituencies voted leave than remain, and it would be as politically unsustainable for issues around Northern Ireland to leverage the whole of the United Kingdom back into some kind of customs unions as it would be to erect any wholly unnecessary infrastructure at the border in Northern Ireland.”
“The working group is right to promote a system of training to support the new code—there might be problems with persuading some colleagues that they should be subject to the training, as I will come to; it is easy to put such a thing in a document, but there might be practicalities when it comes to persuading colleagues to participate—but what about extending that to training about what the seven principles of public life actually mean in the lives of all public figures in this place?”
“The risk now is that the new behaviour code will again be mainly concerned with rules and regulations and new enforcement procedures, but if that is just patched on to the present system, which has manifestly failed on at least one of its main objectives—to promote public confidence in the standards we observe in Parliament—we should not be surprised if problems continue to arise.”
“PACAC set out the fundamental ambiguity about whether our Commons code of conduct was intended to function as a set of principles governing the whole of Members’ behaviour, which would naturally extend, to a degree, into the private sphere of MPs’ conduct, or simply as a set of regulations, mostly about financial disclosures, relating only to an MP’s public role. The 2015 code states that it does not seek to regulate what Members do in their private and personal lives, yet it is clear from the recent controversies that it is not always possible to keep the two as separate as many of us would like.”
“Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), the spokesman for the Opposition, for drawing attention to it, too. Some of the reasons for our failures are practical and procedural, and the working group has made great strides to address these. However, it is also clear that there is confusion among MPs and others about what behaviour should be subject to public scrutiny and what should be regarded as entirely private. As we argued in our submission to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards’ review of the House of Commons code of conduct last year, this confusion is not resolved by our current Commons code—far from it.”