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

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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. The ideas presented are sensible and could make a major difference to restoring faith in how our political system works.

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. But what readers will primarily want to know is how Sir Chris would sort out Parliament. His proposals include a ban on MPs having second jobs (with certain public-spirited exceptions, such as ‘NHS nurse’); extending the scope of the Lobbying Act; creating a new system for suspending MPs; slashing the number of peers to 180 (there are currently almost 800); and introducing cameras in the division lobbies (to discourage strong-arm tactics by whips).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. This list does not include one unnamed Tory MP who has been banned from the Commons while under investigation by the police, and three recent MPs convicted of serious crimes. Chris Bryant has great expectations. Actually, he doesn’t. His engaging, thoughtful, powerful and funny book is just arguing for what are every day, run-of-the-mill, par-for-the-course, ordinary expectations. And his easy, warm, inclusive, engaging and honest writing style mirrors the man. 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.

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. Bryant is never partisan, citing good and bad examples of MPs’ behaviour from across the House, and stressing the importance of collegiate working. This is particularly clear in committees, where so much of Parliament’s work is done – something that was more apparent than usual this year in the report of the privileges committee, where Conservative MPs hold a majority of seats, into the behaviour of Boris Johnson. The committee also proposes adding to theSeven Principles of Public Life, referred to as the “Nolan principles”, with an an eighth principle of “respect”, asking MPs to abide by the Parliamentary Behaviour Code and “demonstrate anti-discriminatory attitudes and behaviours through the promotion of anti-racism, inclusion and diversity”. Lying has been normalised by successive Tory prime ministers, including the current incumbent Rishi Sunak.

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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). Whoever does form the next government, they should take more than a few lessons from this book, for the sake of Parliament itself and us all. It wasn’t just the church’s homophobia that was a problem. He felt the advice he was handing out to parishioners was at odds with his lifestyle. “I was a young gay man who feared commitment but was advising people on marriage and how to parent.” Did you feel a hypocrite? “No, I felt inadequate. I thought, I’ve come from a broken family, and I’ve only just worked out I’m gay, and I’m telling you how to live life.” Fact Articles predominantly based on historical research, official reports, court documents and open source intelligence.

But there is something rotten in the state of Westminster. Bryant believes we live in dangerous times (he uses the word 19 times) and things deteriorated execrably under Boris Johnson. Indeed we are processing more shit than even Parliament’s pneumatic sewage ejector (which so impresses Bryant) could ever hope to cope with – let alone sort. For example he cites the questionable links between party donors, cronies and lobbyists to honours, public appointments and PPE contracts.

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Politics is a human construct, and politicians are human. All of us are flawed in some way. Bryant utterly gets that. But surely as a starter for 10, the one thing we want from our politicians is integrity? He argues that this alone should stump up MPs “good enough”? Who wouldn’t vote for that? 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.

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A powerful examination of parliamentary conduct and the eroding of standards, Chris Bryant’s book begins on 3 November 2021 – a day I will always remember 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.