Meeting of the Parliament 22 April 2015
I, too, thank the members of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee for their work in producing the draft bill and the work that they are committed to doing to make the register of interests more transparent and the standards regime more robust.
I also thank Gil Paterson for his comments about Tom McCabe. He was instrumental in ensuring that the rules of Parliament served us well for many years.
As my colleagues Patricia Ferguson and John Pentland have said, the Labour Party fully supports the aims of having more transparency and the highest possible standards. People deserve and need to have faith and trust in those who are elected to serve them. We therefore need a system of members’ interests that is fully transparent and which expects the highest standards of its members.
Labour is fully committed to transparency and openness. That is why, for example, my colleague Neil Findlay proposed that there should be a lobbying bill. As well as members’ interests, there needs to be proper scrutiny of lobbying that applies to members and Government ministers. Following Mr Findlay’s proposals, the Government said that it would legislate in that area and I hope that we will see some movement on the issue in the near future.
I welcome the fact that, in producing the draft bill, the committee has engaged in lengthy discussions with the independent Electoral Commission. I hope and anticipate that that will continue. Simplifying the reporting process appears to be sensible. Not having dual reporting will hopefully allow increased transparency as members will have registered their interests in one place. Such measures should be helpful to members and, crucially, to those people who scrutinise us. I also support lowering the threshold for registering gifts. I understand that the GRECO group recommended that and I note that there are proposals in the House of Commons to lower the existing threshold.