All-party Parliamentary Groups

I call the Minister, Mr Johnny Mercer. [Interruption.]

I beg to move,

That this House approves the Eighth Report of the Committee on Standards, Session 2022-23, HC 228, on All-Party Parliamentary Groups: final proposals and, with effect from 16 October, the Rules for All-Party Parliamentary Groups contained in the Annex of that Report, subject to any transitional arrangements agreed by the Committee on Standards.

I think I heard the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) shout “Really?” from a sedentary position, at the thought that I am here for this debate, but he must understand that I have had a deep and long interest in all-party parliamentary groups.

APPGs play a valuable role in our parliamentary system. They bring together parliamentarians and external experts to further cross-party consideration of important issues. It is paramount that any new rules do not deter APPGs, particularly those that are self-funded, from meeting, because these forums aid the development of public policy on matters that otherwise may not be considered by Parliament. Rather, the new rules should seek to increase transparency, limit undue influence and secure the parliamentary estate, while allowing APPGs to perform their vital functions.

The Government are grateful to the Standards Committee for reviewing the rules governing these groups to ensure that they remain fit for purpose. It is right that we give existing APPGs an opportunity to comply with the new system, so I am grateful to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for outlining the need for transitional arrangements to implement the rules.

APPGs are able to play an important role in Parliament by virtue of their informal status, but I believe these groups should be held to high standards and operate in keeping with the broader principles shared across the Houses, which are that Parliament should be transparent, protected from undue influence, and boast a reputation that is cherished at home and envied abroad. The reforms being proposed represent an important step towards this objective, and as per the Government’s response in June, we welcome the Committee’s consideration of whether the rules on foreign contributions could be strengthened at a later stage. I look forward to this debate, and I commend the motion to the House.

I call the shadow Leader of the House.

I rise to support the motion. I must confess that I was a little taken aback at the brevity of the Minister’s speech, but the points he made were absolutely right. We are here to support the Standards Committee’s work. I thank the Leader of the House for bringing forward this important motion, and I join the Minister in his full thanks to the Standards Committee and of course its Clerks, who we can see have put in a lot of work.

This work follows on from previous investigations, such as the report published in 2013. I of course agree with the Minister that this motion will help to safeguard Parliament from various things that could be improper, such as improper lobbying and hostile state actors, and that is why I support it. The Standards Committee is right to have conducted the inquiry now, because the current rules for APPGs were last agreed by this House almost 10 years ago.

APPGs have a long history, and they have made a significant contribution to the life of Parliament. I understand from the 2013 report that the first, created in 1939, was the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. It was established to help with the war effort and focused on the big scientific issues of the day over many years; of course, it still thrives. It is a great example of the longer-term focus that APPGs can have, compared with the shorter-term thinking of many Governments.

Another example of the value of APPGs is the APPG on autism, with which I had the pleasure of being involved for many years while on the Back Benches. I pay tribute to its former chair, dear Dame Cheryl Gillan, whom we all loved and miss very much. It is still one of the biggest and most active groups in Parliament, and much of that was down to Dame Cheryl, with her dedication and her warm and welcoming style, which drew in Members from all political parties.

That is what APPGs at their best can do. They effectively bring together and organise supporters of a particular issue or country from across both Houses and all parties. They provide space for longer-term policy development and a strong voice to Back Benchers, and they therefore have a rightful place in our Parliament.

I think I have to declare an interest because—I have totted them up—I am the chair of nine APPGs at the moment.

Ten.

All right, the figure may be 10 if I have missed one out, but, in hurriedly putting some notes together, I could remember nine.

I chair the APPG for children, which is a substantial group. Over many years, it has produced some reports that have led to changes in the law, and I do not think that anybody is going to challenge the legitimacy of that. I chair the 1001 critical days group, or the APPG on conception to age two—first 1001 days. That was the genesis of the Government’s “best start” policy, brought in by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), which has played an important part in early years provision. I chair the APPG on archaeology, which briefs parliamentarians on changes to the law regarding the influence of archaeology on the environment, agricultural matters and cultural matters, and it is very active.

I chair the British Museum APPG, which met only yesterday. It has an important job, given that it was this House that established the British Museum back in the 18th century. When there are serious challenges ahead—the future of collections such as the Elgin marbles, for example—this House must have a voice. I chair the APPG for Armenia, which I took on reluctantly from my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) because he was a Minister again. I was told there would be very little going on, and within a few weeks Azerbaijan invaded Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia became a very hot topic. I have virtually weekly conversations with the ambassador and others on this subject, so it is an active group.

I chair the reformed Wilton Park group, an important foreign affairs melting pot financed by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I chair the all-party group on mindfulness, which has done so much good for the mentality, mental health and camaraderie of Members in this House since its formation about 10 years ago, with the strapline of “disagreeing better”; that is very relevant, and it is one of the more active groups. I chair the all-party group on Tibet, which has been absolutely essential to the whole issue of China’s abuse of human rights not just in Tibet but in Xinjiang and beyond.

May I, through my hon. Friend, invite the Minister before he winds up to read pages 55 to 74 of the “Guide to Rules” and see how long that is going to take and how sensible it is?

All right then, I will, but my concern is that there has been very little profile for this report and study. I notice that only one Member of Parliament submitted written evidence and only one gave formal evidence to the Committee, and I cannot see that there were any submissions or calls to give evidence face to face from any chairs of all-party groups, let alone multiple chairs of all-party groups.

But the Chairman of the Standards Committee is probably about to correct me.

Yes, I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to the second round. We had a first report, for which quite a lot of people submitted evidence—both members of the public and Members of Parliament—and we also did a survey of all Members, which a large number responded to. We had other submissions as well, and various Committee Chairs appeared before us.

I am referring to the second report because we are discussing the second report. Because there was quite a gap between this study being initiated and this final report being issued, with final recommendations with imminent implications, many people thought this would not happen and might be kicked into the long grass. We all have to take responsibility if we have not noticed things, but the fact that very few people took part in the second report suggests there was a large degree of ignorance that it was taking place.

I agree that there is a problem: there are too many all-party groups—over 800—and I came to that conclusion some years ago when I was invited to the inaugural meeting of the all-party group on meetings. That was not a joke; it did get established—although I do not know whether it is still going or whether it has just had one big meeting right from the start. There are a number of all-party group subjects that clearly stretch credibility, and the fear is that too many of them are in danger of being hijacked by lobbying groups, commercial trade bodies and other interests to give them a platform in Parliament that they otherwise would not be able to get. I absolutely understand that that is a problem and something needs to be done about it. That demonstrates the case for making it harder to set up APPGs in the first place and having stricter rules for the way they operate and their transparency. Everything in the report on transparency, including financial transparency and having a much better check on financial contributions or freebies to certain Members, is essential. I have no issue with any of that and will certainly support it.

On the issuing of passes, none of the groups I am involved in have, to the best of my knowledge, issued passes to any outside bodies, which I think absolutely goes beyond the pale. I agree, too, with having an annual income and expenditure statement and an annual report. Those are all sensible recommendations, and there might be a compendium of all the activities that go on through all-party groups, which would be a good selling point in highlighting why the all-party groups are an important part of this House and the work they do.

The hon. Gentleman betrays something I have worried about for some time when he refers to quasi-Select Committees, because APPGs do not have the authority of the whole House. It is a really important distinction that they are not constituted like Select Committees or any other Committee of the House. We have striven very hard to make that important distinction, which is why a specific rubric has to be put on any APPG publication saying it is not from a formal Committee of the House.