POLITICAL COMMENTARY

Nothing to declare

AUBERON WAUGH

The recent report of the Select Committee on Members' Interests (Declaration) is the product of a passing whim of the Prime Minister's which dates from last March and arose from allegations which were made about the conduct of Mr Gordon Bagier, Labour MP for Sunderland South, in con- nection with the firm of Maurice Fraser, public relations advisers to the Greek government. However, Mr Bagier was not asked to give evidence to the committee, nor did he choose to submit a memoran- dum. One can read the report from cover to cover without finding any mention of his name. Nor arc the names of any other MPS given about whom allegations of impro- priety have occasionally been made.

In fact, it would be easy to dismiss the whole report as a gigantic whitewashing operation, the product of that rather odious bonhomie between the benches which appears whenever House of Commons affairs are being discussed. The composition of this Select Committee was curious: of nine members, all except one (Mr Lubbock) were Privy Councillors: all except two (Mr Darling and Mr Willis) were from the public schools; and all except possibly these same two were in receipt of substantial incomes apart from their parliamentary salaries.

It is true that Mr Strauss, chairman of the committee, no longer brokes metal person- ally, having presumably distributed his hold- ing in A. Strauss and Company among his two sons and one daughter. 1 believe that Mr James Ramsden no longer brews; Sir Derek Walker-Smith, as a highly successful barrister, was already subject to restrictions on his parliamentary activity from which members of other professions—most particu- larly those in public relations—did not apparently suffer. Sir John Vaughan-Morgan still gets up to something or other in his Morgan Crucible, and Sir Eric Fletcher has a finger in several pies—law, television, cinemas, even the jewellery trade. I seem to think. Mr Eric Lubbock is kind enough to advertise his directorships on a list freely available from the Liberal whip's office. None of which is intended to suggest that any of these worthy gentlemen has ever been guilty of the slightest impropriety, or would be influenced in any way by the slightest desire to conceal. As a group, however, the committee might easily have been more aware of the difficulties inherent in the idea of a Members' Register of Interests than they would be excited by its possible enter- tainment value.

So they abandoned the idea of a Register of Members' Interests comprised of Mem- bers' tax returns, by seven votes to one (Mr Eric Lubbock), and proposed instead two resolutions which would replace all earlier practices and comprise a new Code of Con- duct. Before examining the two new resolu- tions, it might be as well to glance back at the three formulae they replace.

The first comes from a resolution of 2 May 1695: 'That the offer of 'money, or other advantage, to any Member of Parlia- ment for the promoting of any matter what- soever, depending on or to be transacted in Parliament, is a high crime and misdemean- our and tends to the subversion of the Eng- lish constitution.'

The second is a ruling of Mr Speaker Abbot on 17 July 1811: `No member who has a direct pecuniary interest in a question shall be allowed to vote on it.'

The third comes from Erskine May: 'The acceptance by any Member of Parliament of a bribe to influence him in his conduct as such Member, or of any fee, compensa- tion or reward in connection with the pro- motion of or opposition to any bill, resolu- tion, matter or thing submitted or intended to be submitted to the House or any Com- mittee thereof, is a breach of privilege.'

Between the three of them, these should wrap up any activity on behalf of public relations firms. If they have not done so, and if Members have judged that they apply only to lawyers and not to public relations con- sultants, that 'direct pecuniary interest' means money paid in cash rather than as an improved dividend, or that Erskine May was drunk when he wrote this last passage (he might well have been, to judge from the English)—all this is a reflection upon Mem- bers' behaviour, rather than upon the mean- ing of words which are supposed to guide them.

Let us see how the present system works in practice. On 9 December last, Mr John Cordle rose to address the House of Com- mons for the fourth time on the subject of war between Nigeria and Biafra. Mr Cordle, the Conservative Member for Bournemouth East and Christchurch, is a most upright, churchgoing sort of Member, and might easily serve as a model. He is also extra- ordinarily knowledgeable on this subject. As he put it, modestly, in the debate of 12 June 1968: 'My small knowledge of Nigeria is not based on the handouts of public relations firms or a reading of the intellectual week- lies. I returned from Nigeria only last Satur- day morning; it was my second visit to that country this year. Last year I was there four times and the year before, three times.'

He might also have mentioned, if modesty had not prevented him from doing so, that far from relying on the handouts of public relations firms, he actually used to work for one of them—Christiansen Deman, specialis- ing in West African affairs—and that even now he issues letters to the press from the address of Galitzine, Chant, Russell and Partners, public relations advisers to the present military regime in Lagos.

But then, Mr David Steel had to spoil the happy atmosphere by suggesting that Mr Cordle had neglected to mention that he had business interests in Lagos 'which are bound to make him something less than an impartial observer of the scene.' Mr Cordle treated this suggestion with the contempt it deserved by remaining seated. At later de-

bates, he proved beyond any question of doubt that he had no vested interest in the matter by exercising his right to vote with the Labour party in favour of a continuation of the arms supply.

Then, on 9 December 1969, a curious thing happened. Mr Cordle had been telling us all yet again how he had been going to Nigeria three or four times a year for the last eight years when he was gently inter- rupted by Mrs Winifred Ewing, who asked whether, in that case, he had an interest which he ought to declare to the House. With quiet dignity, Mr Cordle replied that he did have such an interest.

So, after two and a half years of hearing Mr Cordle's expert advice on this subject and watching him vote on it, we learned that he actually did have an interest after all. How modest can a churchgoing Member be? And how many other Members are being similarly modest on subjects which concern Mrs Winifred Ewing, your political corres- pondent and Mr David Steel less?

The new Code, if adopted, would seem to establish a much stricter practice than for- merly. The first resolution emphasises the duty of declaring 'any relevant pecuniary interest or benefit of whatever nature, whether direct or indirect' of past, present or future, even in private conversation with fellow Members. The second actually for- bids the advocacy of any matter in con- sideration of a payment of any sort.

In other words, even shareholders will have to describe any benefit accruing to them by virtue of owning their shares, and a Member who approaches another Member in the tea-room and asks him to sign an Early Day motion will be required to give the information that he was once bought a glass of beer, or given a free trip to Cuba. And if he doesn't, he will theoretically be in breach of parliamentary privilege—if the House chooses to take its new Code any more seriously than its old one.

Which, of course, it won't—at any rate after a time and after the present minor scandal of public relations advisers has been sorted out. Once again, the House has been able to avoid any suggestion of reforming it- self. In any case, the greatest corruption of Members—and the greatest source of the contempt in which politicians are increas- ingly held—is not to be found outside the House but inside it: in the Prime Minister's terrifying powers of patronage, not only in government jobs but also in jobs for the boys outside government, in the nationalised industries and in those extraordinary outside bodies like the Independent Television Authority or the Horse Race Betting Levy Board.

It was not a bribe or a retainer from some public relations firm which persuaded Mr Ben Whitaker to vote for Mr Callaghan's gerrymander order, or Dr John Dunwoody to vote for the continuation of arms to Nigeria. It was the fact that they had both been taken into the Government. It is not bribery which persuades Members to troop through the lobbies day after day in support of policies which they believe most pro- foundly to be wrong. This corruption is something which is inseparable from our parliamentary system as it has at present evolved, and until the House makes some gesture towards respecting the political integrity of its own Members there can be no reason for any of us to become excited that it now makes a half-hearted gesture of dis- approval against the handful who use the system to their own advantage in less con- ventional ways.