It is judgment day for natural justice
TODAY a former minister fights for his political life.The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has recommended Owen Paterson be suspended from the House of Commons for 30 days, which could lead to his losing his seat altogether. His crime was alleged lobbying of ministers when paid by companies with an interest in the issues.
There are greater issues at stake here than the survival of one politician: the preservation of parliamentary standards and natural justice itself.
I write with feeling having resigned from the Standards and Privileges Committee in 1997 over what I described at the time as a denial of natural justice. It seems not much has changed.
The event which sparked my resignation was the investigation of Neil Hamilton and the infamous “brown envelopes” affair when he was accused of taking cash for questions.
I said I had no idea whether he was innocent or guilty because the procedures were too flawed for me to reach a conclusion: he was not allowed to crossexamine witnesses and, farcically, he addressed the committee for hours but we were not allowed to ask him a single question!
OWEN Paterson is now also protesting about the absence of questioning of witnesses and the absence of any appellate body (something I also raised in 1997). There is in his case the additional complaint that he was required to practise complete confidentiality which he says put such strain on his wife, who could not confide in any third party, that she committed suicide. Yet in society at large if a person is accused of malfeasance, the fact is public.
The public is not sympathetic towards MPs who are accused of wrongdoing but that does not mean such MPs should be denied the ordinary processes of justice including the right for witnesses to be questioned and to have a means of appeal.
I did not get on particularly well with either Mr Hamilton or Mr Paterson, who boasted that more people were hunting after its abolition, but I know what impartial justice looks like and this ain’t it.