Opposition Day: Strengthening Standards in Public Life

Proposed by Thangam Debbonaire

I beg to move, That this House: (1) endorses the 2018 recommendation from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that Members should be banned from any paid work to provide services as a Parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant; (2) instructs the Committee on Standards to draw up proposals… I beg to move, That this House: (1) endorses the 2018 recommendation from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that Members should be banned from any paid work to provide services as a Parliamentary strategist, adviser or consultant; (2) instructs the Committee on Standards to draw up proposals to implement this and to report by 31 January 2022; and (3) orders that on the expiry of fifteen sitting days from the date on which the Committee makes its report to the House, if no debate has been held on a substantive motion relating to recommendations in that report, the Speaker shall give precedence to a substantive motion on the recommendations in that report tabled thereafter by any Member. At the risk of repeating myself—unfortunately, it seems I must—standards in public life are fundamental to our democracy. I have reminded the Leader of the House several times over the past few weeks what those standards are, and I will do so again, just to make sure that he and his colleagues have taken them in. They are, of course, the Nolan principles of public life, and there are seven of them: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. We should all aspire to them and cherish them, as I said yesterday. I urge all hon. Members on both sides of the House to consider those principles when they make their decision on which Division Lobby to walk through later this afternoon, because those values must underpin all that we do in this House and on behalf of our constituents outside this House. It is our constituents and the country that we serve, not private interests. We are not paid MPs for hire. Over the past two weeks, I am afraid to say—it gives me no pleasure—that we have seen some of the very worst of some on the Government Benches. That has included refusing to deal with one of their own MPs found guilty of sexual harassment and then trying to change the rules on standards to protect one of their mates who had broken the rules. That leaves the reputation of Parliament and our precious democracy in danger of disrepute. The Prime Minister had to publicly decree last week that the UK is not a “corrupt country”.

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