Dame Angela Eagle
MP for Wallasey · Labour · United Kingdom
“The Kremlin increasingly relies on proxy organisations to pursue its objectives, seeking to undermine our security while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. The so-called GRU Volunteer Corps is a clear example of that approach. It is not an independent force or a loose collection of volunteers.”
“This Government have introduced support for the Jewish communities who have been threatened and directly targeted by IRGC proxies. Just a couple of days ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced an extra £250 million for policing to ensure that we can support and protect our Jewish communities.”
“I will move on to the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right. The IMCR has publicly claimed seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities and to Persian-language media, including the antisemitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March.”
“We expect platforms to act responsibly and not to provide space for state threat-linked activity, propaganda or recruitment. We will be keeping a close eye on that, as well as liaising with social media companies to tell them about how this law impacts them.”
“The IRGC Quds Force and the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, together with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, form the Iranian intelligence apparatus. As a key component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, the IRGC is answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader.”
“It provides a targeted and proportionate means of disrupting those involved in foreign power threat activity based on the recommendations of Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of state threat legislation. To answer the hon.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,924 lines we hold for Dame Angela Eagle, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 66 of 119.
“So confident is he about the Government’s stunning record that he said: “it'll be much more effective if it doesn’t mention the Conservative Party” or the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, the Tory party chair, after years of denial and threatening to sue one of his own constituents, has finally admitted that he did, after all, have a second job while serving as a Member of Parliament. He created a brand-new alternative to “economical with the truth” when he apologised for “over-firmly” denying the facts. After five years, there we have it: the Liberal Democrats misadvise themselves, and the Tories over-firmly deny.”
“Extreme and dangerous cuts, the deepest for 50 years, which the independent Office for Budget Responsibility has described as a “rollercoaster”. It is no wonder that the Chancellor mentioned Agincourt more than he mentioned the NHS. It has been calculated overnight that he spent £80 million on bad jokes in his Budget speech. I can give you this promise, Mr Speaker: my jokes will always be cheaper than that. It is no surprise that this week one Tory MP has been caught desperately trying to hide his true identity. He has come up with a cunning disguise, and has taken on a whole new persona. I am not talking about Michael Green. This week, the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) contacted constituents, begging them to endorse him to their families and friends.”
“Yesterday, we heard a Budget that people will not believe from a Government whom they do not trust. No amount of rhetoric can mask the Chancellor’s failure. He told us that the deficit was the most important thing, and promised to eliminate it by the end of this Parliament. He has failed. He claimed that we were “all in this together”, but he has given us tax cuts for millionaires and a bedroom tax for the most vulnerable. We have had tax breaks for hedge funds from a party that is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the tax avoiders, and, for the first time since the 1920s, working people are worse off at the end of a Parliament than they were at the beginning. What did the Chancellor offer when he told us to choose the future?”
“I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for the final days of this Parliament, and, of course, for his extremely gracious and entirely typical thanks and tributes not only to me, but to all Members. I am sure that next week, during the “valedictory addresses”, we shall have an opportunity to repeat some of the graciousness. I must say, however, that despite the heroic efforts of the Leader of the House since he took the reins, this is a Parliament that will be remembered for being so devoid of business in its second half that “zombie Government” has entered the political lexicon, and so badly managed that it has lost two MPs to UKIP, seven Cabinet Ministers, and no fewer than 103 votes in the House of Lords. No wonder the Tory Chief Whip cannot even organise his way out of a toilet.”
“We therefore welcome today’s motion, which clarifies that all previous resolutions on Members’ conduct should be read in a way that is compatible with the guide and the code. We also welcome the sensible proposal to revert to the 2009 wording on Members’ private lives, which I hope will assuage concerns across the House that were raised when this matter was last debated in 2012. I welcome both reports as a positive step in the right direction, while believing that we can, and should, go further. On second jobs, proper regulation of lobbyists, and the Government’s majority on the Standards Committee, I look forward to a Labour Government working across the House for further reform in just a few weeks’ time.”
“We will also review whether lobbyists should be allowed to provide the secretariats for all-party parliamentary groups, and continue to support the ban on parliamentary passes for any APPG staff. The report also recommends updating the basis of the rules. As the former Clerk of the House, Lord Lisvane, made clear in his evidence to the Committee, “there is a certain amount of doubt about what actually constitutes the ‘rules’ of the House”. As well as the code and the guide, a number of other resolutions of the House also provide guidance on MPs’ conduct. As the report says, “defining the rules of the House through a series of Resolutions of varying antiquity, which need to be regularly amended, is unsatisfactory”.”
“Despite the Prime Minister promising before the last election that he would shine the “light of transparency” on lobbying, the register the Government are set to introduce would cover just 1% of ministerial meetings organised by lobbyists, and would not have caught any of the lobbying scandals that have hit this Government. The lobbying Act prevents charities and civil society from campaigning—rules that are already having a chilling effect on debate in the run-up to the general election. If Labour wins the election we will introduce tough new limits on lobbying and an effective register of all professional lobbyists, backed up by a code of conduct and enforced with sanctions.”
“Those are welcome and sensible simplifications. Labour Members want to go much further and have a system in which registering a paid directorship or consultancy is no longer possible, in which second jobs are far more regulated than is currently the case. The report also suggests changes to the rules on lobbying—an area that clearly needs change following the scandals of this Parliament. The proposed changes to the guide go some way towards tightening the rules, but the system of regulation the Government have put in place is fundamentally inadequate.”
“As the Committee notes, if we do not agree to the new guide, Members who are elected in May will be bound by rules that are “not always clear”, that are “out of date” and that do “not respond to the recommendations of a Treaty organisation of which the United Kingdom is a member.” It is clearly welcome that we are able to have this debate today. I hope we will pass the motions on the Order Paper to bring ourselves into line with the international treaties we have signed. The first thing these changes will do is to reform how Members’ interests are registered. The proposed guide harmonises the rules on registration and reduces the number of registration categories, with just one, rather than the current three, for outside employment. The report also recommends a lower threshold for the registration of interests.”
“Turning to the second motion, on the code of conduct and the guide to the rules, the new guide recommends simplifying the process of registering interests, tightening the rules around lobbying, and clarifying the relationship between the code, the guide and resolutions of the House. All of those recommendations have to be welcome. As the Committee’s report notes, the guide to the rules was first published in 1996. Over time, as I hinted earlier, it has seen many piecemeal additions and revisions—or evolution, if you like, Mr Deputy Speaker. The new guide is intended not only to be a comprehensive revision of the rules, which is certainly long overdue, but to ensure that we meet our obligations as a member of the group of states against corruption, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley said.”
“We welcome the Committee’s recognition that, “The electorate have the right to choose their representative” and that “any standards system must not constrain that right” in a democracy. That is an important part of the summary of the report. As the Leader of the House pointed out, we now have recall, which might also impact on this area in some circumstances. The report makes the welcome suggestion of a clear description of the role of an MP in increasing public understanding of the work we do. The Committee even made an heroic attempt to describe the role on page 24 of the report. It is an interesting attempt, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley and his Committee were extremely brave to set it out. We will see what kind of dialogue ensues in subsequent Parliaments as a result of their writing down that description.”
“I welcome the Committee’s proposal to increase the number of lay members so that there is an equal number of MPs and lay members on the Committee. I also welcome the decision to make it clear in future reports whether the lay members agree with the Members of Parliament who serve on the Committee. The use of lay members on House Committees is a relatively new innovation. In my experience of serving on Committees that include lay members—I have not served on the Standards Committee, but I have served on the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—the innovation has worked well to date and has helped the House immeasurably. The changes in the motion will ensure that our standards system is in line with the regulatory systems of many other professional bodies, while respecting the House’s unique position.”
“In my experience, Members tend to remember the rules as they were when they first came into the House and do not always manage to follow the myriad changes that occur as their time in the House lengthens. Many people have been caught out inadvertently by the evolution of the rules, which they have not noticed, because Members tend to respond to the rules that were in place when they first came into this place. In my evidence, I said that we needed to remove the Government’s majority on the Standards Committee. I note that that is not proposed in the motion, but I hope that we can return to it. It is vital not only that the Committee act fairly—that goes without saying—but that it be seen to act fairly. We must avoid any perception among the public or others that Government Whips can affect the outcome of an inquiry.”
“Friend the Member for Rother Valley to be able to look at how to simplify some of the structures. We have the Electoral Commission and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, both of which are independent, but there are also—quite rightly—the rules of the House of Commons, which the Standards Committee has looked at. The first motion is on the report from the lay members of the Standards Committee. It suggests some sensible changes to improve public trust in the standards system. As I said in my evidence to the Committee’s inquiry, we need a system that is predictable, simple and transparent. It is helpful if the system is intelligible to members of the public as well as to colleagues, many of whom will have seen the rules change multiple times over their years in the House.”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron) and his fellow members of the Standards Committee, including the lay members, on the two reports the House is considering today. I thank them for those reports, which each represent an important step forward and provide welcome clarity on the standards system and the guide to the rules. I concur with the Leader of the House that it is important to agree the changes in advance of the new Parliament, in which the new Members will need clarity. We are all content that we have just managed to get in under the wire in doing so. The situation is complex: we have many structures of rules that Members are expected to follow, and they have become more complex and divergent over time. It was therefore important for my right hon.”
“Mr Speaker, may I associate myself with your remarks about the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry)? Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?”
“His latest ploy to escape the scrutiny of the TV debates was to say that radio hosts can grill him “as hot as they like”. Mr Speaker, I prefer a long slow burn. There are just eight weeks to go until the general election and the only person from Chipping Norton who has come out fighting has just been suspended by the BBC.”
“They have been embroiled in a cash-for-access scandal, but the country is mainly just in shock that anyone wants to donate any money to them at all. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) has apparently been sending leaflets out in his constituency that spell the word “failure” incorrectly. I would have thought that every single Liberal Democrat would know how to spell that word. Lord Ashdown, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats and the man in charge of their campaign, declared on the radio this morning that he was going to be very busy during the general election campaign and that he doubted he would get to do any campaigning. This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Things are looking bad for the Prime Minister, too.”
“Is it not also the case that Tory plans would mean that we would have the smallest police force since records began and the smallest Army since Cromwell? There are only nine more days of this Parliament and I can see that the Leader of the House is eagerly counting them down. He has led his party, he has toured the world, he has become best mates with Angelina Jolie. However, in a rather disappointing end to his glittering career it seems that Conservative party headquarters has got him doing its e-mails. This week, in a message to Tory Members, he warned of the dangers of entering government on the coat tails of a small party that does not keep its promises. He should know quite enough about that already. It has not been a good week for the Liberal Democrats either.”
“The Prime Minister is an expert at evading scrutiny and the Chancellor yet again excused himself from Treasury questions this week, but I am sure that, as an honourable man, the Leader of the House will be willing to answer some simple questions. To meet their target, is it not the case that a Tory Government would have to cut spending on day-to-day public services by significantly more than they will admit? Is it not the case that to meet their target they will have to either raise VAT or cut the NHS? Is it not right that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) was speaking for growing numbers in the Conservative party when he said that he did not agree with protecting the NHS budget?”
“Is not the Prime Minister’s refusal to defend his record in the TV debates symptomatic of this Government? Instead of trying to win the argument, they just run away from it. Next week, we will have the charade of the Chancellor’s pre-election Budget, which will reportedly contain large chunks of the Tory manifesto. Perhaps the Leader of the House can tell us whether both parties of Government have signed up to it? It is clear that the real omnishambles is this Chancellor’s record. He has broken every promise and missed every target he has ever set himself on the economy. For the first time in nearly 100 years working people are worse off at the end of a Parliament than they were at the beginning. Not only would Tory plans cut public spending back to pre-war levels, the reality would be extreme and dangerous cuts of up to £70 billion.”
“On the European arrest warrant, on the Agricultural Wages Board and now on plain packaging of cigarettes, instead of trying to win the argument, they just try to avoid having it altogether. Last week, the Leader of the House rejected my request for a debate on plain packaging on the Floor of the House, and this week we can see why. A majority of Tory MPs failed to vote in favour of this common-sense measure to protect public health, including eight Ministers, three members of the Cabinet and even the Tory deputy Chief Whip. This morning, an analysis by The Independent has revealed that one in four MPs who voted against have declared links to the tobacco industry. Does it not say everything about today’s Tory party that a majority of its MPs is more interested in the rights of global tobacco companies than the health of Britain’s children?”
“I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for the remainder of the Parliament. In the blizzard of last-minute statutory instruments that have appeared on the Order Paper, the Registration of Consultant Lobbyists Regulations 2015 were laid on 26 February. Despite the Prime Minister’s pre-election pledge to shine the light of transparency on lobbying, it is expected that the new register will cover just 1% of ministerial meetings organised by lobbyists and would not have stopped any of the lobbying scandals that have hit the Government. We are committed to an effective register of all professional lobbyists, backed by a code of conduct and sanctions, so we will pray against these regulations. Will the Leader guarantee us time for a debate on them? The Government have a clear track record of avoiding scrutiny.”
“According to one Back Bencher, “He either wins or he goes.” Once again showing his strategic prowess, the man he has chosen to assist him in this mission to avoid a leadership battle is the ever-absent Tory Chief Whip. Apparently they are going to form a protective ring around their leader and claim that he won a moral victory even if the Conservatives lose. Is this why the Chief Whip is never here, Mr Speaker? He is too busy forming a protective ring around the Prime Minister to bother to come to this Chamber. Having just listed some of their broken promises, I feel I should offer some comfort to the Conservatives. If there is one target that I am confident the Tories will not miss, it is the one on the Prime Minister’s back.”
“It is not surprising that the Lib Dem right hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) has decided that he needs to take matters into his own hands. On Tuesday he held an Adjournment debate on the plight of endangered species, and he has written about it on Politics Home. He laments: “The facts are stark. … numbers have fallen … the poachers are highly organised. … we are in a race against time.” Before long, the Liberal Democrats will be going the way of the woolly mammoth. I have learned this week that the Conservative party is busy preparing for a Labour victory in May. The Chancellor has apparently hatched a long-term cunning plan to curb the regicidal instincts of the Conservative party—good luck with that—and keep the Prime Minister on as leader after 7 May even if it loses.”
“I think they can help enliven our democracy.”, what he really meant was, “I will only debate with people when I’m not scared I might lose.” In his pre-2010 election contract with the British people, the Prime Minister wrote: “If we don’t deliver our side of the bargain, vote us out in five years’ time.” Mr Speaker, there are only nine weeks to go. The Liberal Democrats are no better. This week we have learned what their red line in any future coalition talks would be. Having campaigned to scrap all tuition fees during the last election, only to vote to triple them after the election, they now plan to veto Labour’s plan to cut fees by a third and increase grants for poor students. I wonder whether we could have that in writing, because then we will know for sure that they will do the exact opposite.”
“I greatly enjoyed the Leader of the House’s speech at the Press Gallery lunch last week, decoding what he called civil service-ese and revealing that when civil servants say, “We are scaling up our response,” they actually mean, “We never expected this to happen.” So I have been doing my own decoding of the Prime Minister’s pre-election promises. When he said: “We have absolutely no plans to raise VAT”, what he really meant was, “ I will raise VAT when the election is safely over.” When he said, “We will not balance the books on the backs of the poor”, what he really meant was, “We will not balance the books at all.” When he said in 2009: “I have always believed in live television debates.”
“Is it because he knows that his party is split right down the middle on this important public health measure but he does not want the public to notice? Yesterday the Prime Minister repeatedly refused to acknowledge his complete failure to keep his “no ifs, no buts” promise on net migration, which is not in the tens of thousands that he promised but nearly 300,000 this year alone. In a desperate attempt at a diversionary tactic, he treated us to a selective list of things that he thinks he got right, while continuing to refuse to make himself available for scrutiny on any of them in a head-to-head TV debate with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition.”
“Will the Leader of the House confirm that following their humiliating climbdown in the Lords the Government will support these proposals in the Commons and finally protect the public from this exploitation? There are strong and powerful arguments in favour of plain packaging for cigarettes, but this Government have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting them. First, they were for a vote on plain packaging, then when they took tobacco lobbyist Lynton Crosby in to the heart of Downing street they were suddenly against it. Now after five years of inaction, in the dying days of this Parliament, they are for it again. I note that the plain packaging regulations will finally be taken in Committee on 9 March, but why did the Leader not schedule a debate on the Floor of the House?”
“I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business. On Sunday, we will celebrate international women’s day. We have our pink bus, which is generating fantastic enthusiasm wherever it goes in the country, and half our candidates in target seats are women. Will the Leader of the House tell us what the Conservative party is doing to involve women properly in politics? On Monday, we will consider Lords amendments to the Consumer Rights Bill, including proposals for a crackdown on ticket touting. Despite widespread evidence of touts fleecing the public and calls for action from across the leisure industry, the Government have spent more than a year opposing the measures and the Culture Secretary described ticket touts admiringly as “classic entrepreneurs”.”
“Asked at the weekend why he was leaving Parliament, he replied, “I’ve been Foreign Secretary and I’m determined not to be Prime Minister.” If I may say so, that goes some way to explaining his time as Leader of the Opposition.”
“Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) appears to have left his for another planet entirely. He has been formulating the new Conservative health policy and not content with wasting £3 billion on a top-down reorganisation of the NHS, he told a journal this week that the way to take the huge pressure off doctors is astrology. He claimed that it is a useful diagnostic tool, enabling us to see strengths and weaknesses via the birth chart. It is unclear whether he thinks that the Chancellor would have met his deficit reduction targets if only he had not broken that mirror. One person losing his constituency by choice is the Leader of the House.”
“Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) knocked on the door of a local resident claiming that he was their MP, but was greeted by the wife of my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr Love), who pointed out that he was in fact canvassing in the wrong constituency. I do not know about second jobs, but perhaps they should pay a bit more attention to their first ones. It is of course possible that they both just had a mind blank, like the leader of the Green party, who was involved in an eco-friendly car crash at the LBC studios on Tuesday. I gather that following her interview the Green party has joined the Conservative party in campaigning to be excluded from the leaders’ debates. Although some Government members do not seem to know quite where their constituencies are, the hon.”
“The Government voted against banning paid directorships and consultancies, so I want to ask the Leader of the House whether his party is ready to contemplate any form of change. I have been reading an interview this morning with the Prime Minister in woman&home magazine. In it, he praised his wife and said that behind every great man there is a great woman. Surely he meant that behind every great man there is a very surprised woman. I am getting a bit worried, Mr Speaker. During questions yesterday, the Prime Minister boasted of how successfully he combines his job as Prime Minister with being the Member of Parliament for West Oxfordshire. That must be easy, because the constituency of West Oxfordshire does not even exist. Last week, the hon.”
“Instead of net migration’s being reduced, it is now higher than it was at the start of this Parliament and illegal immigration and exploitation are getting worse. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement from the Home Secretary on the huge failure in her Department? Figures released this week show that the number of people on zero-hours contracts has soared, but in this place we have had the sorry sight of the Conservative party defending the right of its MPs to earn millions of pounds on the side. Our motion yesterday was a sensible solution to the widening gap between the rules we have in this place and the standards the public expect of us. In a democracy, when we are out of step with public opinion we must change.”
“10 headed paper filled with Tory propaganda, Government announcements conveniently located in marginal seats, the Prime Minister and Chancellor travelling the country on public money on their “long-term economic scam tour” and the unexplained 22% rise in the Government’s external communications bill just as the election is approaching? Will the Leader of the House also arrange for an urgent statement from the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General on these disturbing developments? Today, we have had the last set of quarterly migration figures before the election and it is clear that the Prime Minister’s pledge to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands is now in tatters.”
“After she had passed an e-mail from a concerned constituent to the Prime Minister, her constituent received a party-political reply from No. 10 featuring propaganda about the Conservative Party manifesto. Will the Leader of the House tell us whether party-political letters are being prepared at public expense and civil service neutrality is being undermined, or whether correspondence intended for the Prime Minister is being passed directly to the Conservative party? Will he tell us why this seems to be a developing theme with this Government, with millions of letters to small businesses on No.”
“I thank the Leader of the House. Monday and Tuesday are estimates days, and we shall have a chance to scrutinise Government waste, but the form of the debates will allow us only to scratch the surface of those overspends. Does the Leader of the House agree that rather than three days being allocated for debate, the estimates process needs to be made much more rigorous? Will he support our plans for a yearly session of budget questions to each Department, so that Secretaries of State can be held to account directly for their spending decisions? Yesterday my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) described what seemed to be a worrying case of the blatant misuse of public resources for party-political purposes.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker, in the light of your ruling. The manuscript amendment was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) in response to something that the Prime Minister said, in Prime Minister’s questions, that he wanted to happen. If the Leader of the House were to withdraw or not move his amendment to the motion, would it then be possible under Standing Order No. 31 for the manuscript amendment tabled by my hon. Friend to be moved?”
“I beg to move, That this House believes that, as part of a wider regulatory framework for hon. Members’ second jobs, from the start of the next Parliament no hon. Members should be permitted to hold paid directorships or consultancies. I wonder whether the Leader of the House could indicate—he could even shout over the Dispatch Box—before I begin my speech whether, in the light of the attempts by the new chair of the parliamentary Labour party to give the Prime Minister what he said he wanted at Prime Minister’s questions today, it is his intention not to move his amendment to today’s motion.”
“I want to make it clear that we are actually trying to facilitate what the Prime Minister said he wanted during Prime Minister’s questions. We are not making up our policy as we go along; we are trying to include all views in it. It is in that spirit that I want to open the debate and move the motion in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, which proposes that this House bans MPs from holding paid directorships or consultancies.”
“Let me finish my first sentence. If our manuscript amendment is accepted, the motion would also ban paid trade union officials. The public deserve to be safe in the knowledge that every Member of Parliament works and acts in the interests of their local constituents, and not in the interests of anyone paying them.”
“Those events are being dealt with by the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and that investigatory process must take its course, although that I note that the court of public opinion has already pretty firmly made up its mind. If the rules were clear and easy to follow, rather than riddled with grey areas and open to endless convenient interpretation, perhaps we would not find ourselves repeatedly having to deal with newspaper headlines such as the ones we have witnessed once more this week. It is undeniably true that these headlines bring this place into disrepute, as far as voters are concerned. Theirs is the opinion, I believe, that we must take the most seriously. They are, after all, the people we have been sent here to represent.”
“Let me make a little bit of progress and then I will give way. I note that, unusually, the Government have tabled an amendment that simply restates the status quo and would completely obliterate the Opposition motion. I intend to deal with all that, but first I want to take a few minutes to deal with the circumstances in which the House of Commons finds itself, and argue that the time has come to make a decisive break with the status quo on Members’ remunerated interests. I believe the current situation has become untenable. I do not intend to talk about the detail of what was revealed in the “Dispatches” programme on Monday. I think we should concentrate in this debate on developing a solution to this recurring problem.”
“I am rather sorry I gave way to the hon. Gentleman. What we are trying to do with this debate is take a cool, hard look at the situation that faces the House in relation to its rules on outside interests, and the experience we have all had of them in this Parliament and over time. This is not about partisan views about who is a good or bad MP in their constituency. That is for the voters to decide, and they will decide that in their own way on 7 May. As a Parliament and a legislature, we all have a duty to ensure that the rules by which we operate are kept up to date and are fit for purpose. One of the arguments I am trying to make today is that we are not now in that situation, and we have to take radical action to ensure that we bring ourselves back in line with the levels of conduct that our constituents expect of all of us.”
“I am going to carry on and make some progress with my arguments. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will do me the courtesy of listening to them as I try to set them out.”
“The right hon. Gentleman has picked on the wrong person. I have to spend a lot of time in this building as shadow Leader of the House, and I do not see him here very often on Thursdays.”
“My hon. Friend is right. There are many ways of keeping in touch that do not involve the exchange of large amounts of money. An extremely bad and unfair impression of the motives of all Members of this House has now been formed, and it is being reinforced by this latest occurrence. Let me be clear: being a Member of Parliament is an extremely demanding and tough job, and it is done with integrity and dedication by the vast majority of colleagues in all parties. Unfortunately, however, the perception is growing that some MPs are in it only for what they can get, rather than for what they can give, and that is not an impression that we can allow to fester any longer. “You’re all in it for yourselves”—how many times have we heard that said?”
“I will come on to the details of the motion later. It is a little more flexible than the hon. Gentleman might assume. I shall explain the consultation process that we are going through, which it would benefit the whole House to consider.”
“Their expectations of their MP have changed dramatically, even over the years I have been in this place, and they have certainly changed dramatically in the last 40 years. Our workloads have increased exponentially. It is time that our rules were changed to acknowledge the very different context in which we must now all do our jobs.”