Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament – and How to Do It

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Bryant left the church in 1991. Had you lost your faith? “No, it made me lose attendance. I’ve still got exactly the same faith I always had.” In the space of a few years, he did many different jobs – election agent for Labour MP Frank Dobson, author, insurance salesman, London manager of the charity Common Purpose. By now he had come to realise that his liberal conservatism was a better fit with New Labour. In 1997, he was the unsuccessful Labour candidate for Wycombe, then was hired by the BBC in a lobbying role as head of European affairs. Bryant is fond of quoting from popular songs to describe his life. This time he opts for I’m Still Here from the musical Follies. “In the words of Stephen Sondheim, ‘You career from career to career.’”

What is missing is an examination of when standards started to fall as much as Bryant argues they have. He does talk briefly about the last Labour government, but is clearly mostly wound up by Boris Johnson’s cavalier approach to the truth. But there were shifts in political culture before then, including Blair’s spin culture and, yes, that government’s handling of the Iraq war, which did lay the ground for what we see today. Perhaps it is because of partisan blindness. Perhaps it’s just that the whole thing was rather long ago: there are teenagers who have gone through puberty without any knowledge of life under a Labour government. Perhaps he will correct me on missing his examination of his own party’s role in the decay of standards – before apologising for sounding too pompous. In 1801 — obviously it’s a very long time ago — parliament had a rule and nobody should absent themselves and from parliament without permission and people used to ask for permission and sometimes they weren’t granted it Bryant quotes Boris Johnson saying “I genuinely believe that the UK is not remotely a corrupt country and I genuinely think that our institutions are not corrupt”. He says that he’s not convinced by Johnson’s protestation, and it’s hard not to agree. So how would we characterise our current iteration, asks Bryant? A ‘Parliament of Shenanigans’ perhaps, or the ‘Pinocchio Parliament’? The essential idea is thus: if Dorries refuses to return to parliament “we could table a motion, which says that ‘the right honourable member for Mid-Beds must appear and in the House [by a certain time] And if she were to fail to do, so she would stand in contempt to the House”. Bryant explains Dorries could then be referred to the committee of privileges “or, more likely, you could just say we’re suspending you from parliament”.

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I have my eye much more firmly on the House of Lords than I used to”, Bryant tells me. It is true. Code of Conduct calls for the end of jobs for life in the legislature, cutting the number of Lords to 180 and elections to the chamber of about a third of them at each election on a proportional regional system.

Democracy in Danger The newspaper’s extensive reporting and analysis of the various threats to democracy from populism, oligarchy, dark money and online disinformation. Interestingly, the committee does not make any recommendations seeking to curtailthe amount of time MPs spend on second jobs, as the inquiry was set up mainly to focus on the types of outside interests members have, not how they operate them. Why do you think you haven’t achieved high office? Are you too difficult? He swallows a huge piece of trout with surprising elegance and tells me the political commentator Iain Dale regularly asks him the same question, then answers on his behalf. “His version is I’m a bloody pain.” Has he got a point? “Maybe. A bit.” In what way? “Well, I work really hard.” That doesn’t make you a pain, I say. “No, what I mean is I constantly churn stuff out. Some of my ideas fall on stony ground and some aren’t great ideas.” I think what he means is he has too many of his own ideas and isn’t a yes man. Boris Johnson facing a 90-day suspension for lying to the Commons; Johnson’s immediate departure from politics; the row over the cronyism of his final honours list; the resignation of a Tory MP, David Warburton, after he admitted taking cocaine; fresh allegations of sexual harassment against an ex-Tory (now independent) MP, Julian Knight; the eight-week suspension of yet another Tory MP, Chris Pincher, over allegations of groping... The MP for Rhondda has been chair of the standards and privileges committee since 2020. And he notes that, since the general election of 2019 and at the time of writing, 22 MPs have either been suspended by the House, resigned their seats or left the chamber before being suspended for a day or more – “the worst record of any parliament in our history, by a long chalk”.His suggestions seem perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, I’m not sure they live up to his claim that they’re “vital for the reinvigoration and survival of parliament and representative democracy”. They aren’t earth-shatteringly radical, and some sound like fiddling at the edges. If you were to tell voters, for example, that Sir Chris is anxious to raise the quorum for the Annual General Meeting of an All-Party Parliamentary Group from five to eight, their first response would likely be “What?”, and their second, once the idea had been explained, a shrug. The book is both damning and, in terms of what could be achieved, optimistic. Not for nothing, Bryant would like to see a ‘Fixed Parliament’ – in this instance, nothing to do with parliamentary cycles and the mechanism for calling elections, but “mended”; though he suspects we’ll have to wait for a new one before there’s any chance of that happening.

Jasmine Horsey, senior commissioning editor for non-fiction, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from James Gill at United Agents in an "exclusive" submission. The book will be published in August 2023. As chair of the Commons’ Committee of Standards and Privileges, Chris Bryant carries authority. And he has assembled his evidence with care and intellectual precision. To the second part of my question: can Bryant exorcise Westminster of the spectre of Nadine Dorries? That may be more likely, given his position as the high profile standards committee chair and as a man whose knowledge of anti-sleaze procedures of yore is perhaps unrivalled in Westminster. But as Bryant himself intimates: “my guess is that long before we got to that point, she would decide the game is up”. It was the worst of times – a majority government doing whatever it wanted. Which is Bryant’s fundamental point. The cheese and wine of privilege. But it was also the best of times: “conflated” decisions were reversed, and standards suddenly became front and centre. Having spent years as Chair of the Committees on Standards and Privileges, Chris Bryant has had a front-row seat for the battle over standards in parliament. Cronyism, nepotism, conflicts of interest, misconduct and lying: politicians are engaging in these activities more frequently and more publicly than ever before. The result? The work of honest and accountable MPs is tarnished. Public trust is worn thin. And when nearly two thirds of voters think that MPs are out for themselves, democracy is in trouble.

The extraordinary turmoil we have seen in British politics in the last few years has set records. We have had the fastest turnover of ministers in our history and more MPs suspended from the House than ever. Rules have been flouted repeatedly, sometimes in plain sight. The government seems unable to escape the brush of sleaze. And just when we think it's all going to calm down a bit, another scandal breaks.

Culture History, music, cooking, travel, books, theatre, film – but also with an eye on the ‘culture wars’, nationalism and identity.Each Paterson accusation (“kangaroo court”, “witch-hunt”) was subsequently trundled out by John Bercow and Boris Johnson in defence of themselves. Entitlement on show. It is understood the Commissioner wanted to be able to investigate social media posts, as she has been receiving increasing complaints from the public about what MPs say online, which currently sits outside her remit. Second Jobs Fact Articles predominantly based on historical research, official reports, court documents and open source intelligence. It tends not to count against them. The most notorious case involves Home Secretary Suella Braverman, reappointed by Rishi Sunak less than a week after leaving the Government. The cross-party standards committee, led by senior Labour MP Chris Bryant, is proposing an outright ban on MPs providing “paid parliamentary advice, consultancy or strategy services”.