Who would save Westminster if not Chris Bryant? The newly-knighted standards committee chair is on a crusade to clean up politics, seizing on sleaze and railing against those who chose to defend it.
Now the keeper of parliament’s rulebook has penned an account of his own — one which weaves together his personnel critique of the Westminster system and past reports of the committee he chairs. Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament – and How to Do It, Sir Chris tells me, provides a much-needed “independently-minded insiders view” and a “kind of backstage pass” to commons chicanery.
Although perhaps Bryant — who has served as the Labour MP for Rhondda in Wales for the last 22 years — undersells the force of his book. Code of Conduct is not just a way to unpick parliament’s uncertain present, but to peer through its past, pursuing, despairingly, sleaze’s historical stickiness.
Probity case studies from the past 500 years of constitutional history buttress Bryant’s essential point that Westminster is overdue a major overhaul: from the 1695 cash-for-question scandal, which implicated eleven MPs including the Speaker, to its more famous 1994 sequel. Bryant was “backstage” for neither of these scandals, but the learned standards committee chair — who makes the arcane appear so effortlessly intelligible — writes clearly on both.
Still, Bryant’s account is at its most authoritative when it comes to sleaze’s more modern manifestations. This is most clear in Sir Chris’s gripping exposition of the recent Owen Paterson affair — a scandal Bryant essentially prosecuted as standards committee chair. “It all goes back to that Owen Paterson moment”, he explains, as he tells me why probity has emerged so prominently in the public eye: “250 MPs”, he adds, “led by Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, walked through the division lobbies twice. And to basically tear out the rulebook to protect their mate”.
It is perhaps little surprise that from “Patersongate” at least eleven different books on Westminster’s forsaking of standards have flowed. In this sense, Bryant is arguably late to the game. But so relevant is his subject matter that the pace of events continues to test Code Of Conduct’s bearings. For example, the number of MPs that have been suspended from the commons, resigned their seats or left the chamber before being suspended in this parliament has ticked up from 22 to 23 since Bryant wrote his most recent draft. (Of course, the fact supports Sir Chris’ central point that this is the “worst parliament” in British history).
More promisingly, however, Bryant tells me with some satisfaction how the recommendations he spearheaded on All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) are now in force. (Thanks to the graft of the standards committee these sometimes-shadowy groupings need a quorum of eight MPs for their formation, not five as previously).
It is because of small steps such as this that Bryant stresses he retains his instinctual whiggish optimism in spite of it all. What is more, his successful bid to increase the requirement needed to found the cross-party groups — while pertinent to a self-admitted “rules freak” — sits far from the summit of his reformist ambitions.
“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.
Interestingly, the senior MP’s plan goes some way further than the current proposals of the Labour party, as codified in Gordon Brown’s “Report of the Commission on the UK’s Future”. But Sir Chris nonetheless speaks glowingly of Keir Starmer’s own reformist zeal.
“I suppose you’ll be sending a copy of this Keir Starmer?”, I ask. “Already have done”, Bryant responds. Though he adds he is yet to receive any feedback from the holidaying Labour leader.
“I am very confident that Keir likes doing Parliament properly”, Bryant continues. “He’s a lawyer, he likes doing things properly, … he believes in the rule of law. … There will be people who say, ‘come on, they got away with it, we could get away with it’, but I think he will not succumb to that”.
He does, however, appear to issue a veiled warning to his leader on Lords reform. Commenting on reported plans to “pack the House of Lords” with dozens of peers after the next election in order to secure the easier passage of Labour bills, including constitutional reform, Bryant urges his party to resist “the temptation”. “That would be a madness”, he adds.
It seems the question of whether Starmer will answer Bryant’s clarion calls for a constitutional overhaul is still outstanding.
Later, I ask whether a Starmer-fronted supermajority would be good for standards in Westminster; it comes after one recent poll showed Labour could have as many as 460 seats after the next election. It prompts Bryant’s longest pause of the interview. I sense he may be torn between his instincts as parliamentary policeman and party politician.
“I get to a different point from all of that”, he responds. “The key thing is, it looks like this will be a planned election. … Most political parties will have had plenty of time to check all their candidates before they become candidates in a general election”.
Bryant pivots to the Conservatives, who in 2019 had their parliamentary majority boosted from historically unlikely, former “Red Wall” constituencies. “A government chief whip said to me of this parliament that there are some people in there who should never have been selected as council candidates, let alone risen into parliament”, he says, underlining the need for a rigorous party vetting during selection proceedings.
At about the halfway point in the interview, the conversation turns to the “lingering member for Mid Bedfordshire” (a stinging moniker for which we have to thank Bryant’s fellow select committee chair William Wragg MP). So I dangle Dorries, asking the standards committee chair to explain the arcane procedure by which he has said he could ensure her removal. Bryant bites:
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
Sir Chris confirms he’s chewed the matter over with the Clerks of the House, even hinting that the plan has aroused interest from both the government and opposition chief whips.
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”.
So can we expect, when parliament rises on 4 September, a motion clamouring for Dorries’ return to the commons scene? “I’ll certainly be ready with one”, Bryant pledges portentously.
I turn to another topic. In Code of Conduct, Bryant takes it upon himself to declare some categorical truths.“Humans have caused climate change”, is one example, “Vaccines save lives”, is another, “Joe Biden won. Trump lost. Brexit has harmed our economy”, et cetera. I ask Sir Chris to expand on this last point, and its implications for trust in politics today.
“Oh look, I’m a shocking remoaner. I was a remainer, I remain a remainer, I will remain a remainer until my dying day”. But he adds: “I don’t particularly want to really litigate the referendum. I never want to have another referendum in my life”.
It is a point of divergence between Bryant and Keir Starmer, who has pledged repeatedly to “make Brexit work” as Labour leader. But it is not an unbridgeable divide, as the senior MP goes on to suggest.
If Labour wins the next election, parliamentary rules dictate Bryant will have to stand down as chair of the standards committee. I ask the former foreign office minister whether he fancies a return to government. “If Keir has a role for me, then I’ll be happy to play my part”, he confirms.
So will Sir Chris save politics? The obvious answer is no, not by himself — and it would hardly be fair to expect one book to eradicate sleaze entirely on its own. Indeed, throughout our conversation, Bryant heralds his standards committee colleagues, singling out at one point Conservative MP Andy Carter’s “extraordinary maturity, resilience [and] decency”. Alberto Costa is another Conservative committee colleague in line for praise. Standards is not a one-man show, nor his singular passion, Bryant is at pains to insist.
Nor does Bryant claim to be the anti-sleaze standard-bearer some imagine him to be. “I acknowledge that I myself am partly good and partly bad”, he says. It is a sentiment that is repeated refreshingly in Code of Conduct — much, I suspect, to the surprise of Sir Chris’ critics, who regularly lampoon the Labour MP for his supposed spotlight-searching politics.
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”.
What is clear: Chris Bryant’s battle to make the “lingering member” linger no longer continues in earnest.
Code of Conduct by Chris Bryant is published by Bloomsbury on 17 August at £14.99.
