Alberto Costa MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Jun 2025 · Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme · Hansard source

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  May I begin by welcoming the Government’s motion to put the assurance board on a proper footing, and to introduce a clear policy framework under which the ICGS will operate? As some colleagues have said, the ICGS is an extremely important parliamentary workplace scheme, covering all members of the parliamentary community—more than 10,000 people. Unusually for a body set up only six years ago—by a former Leader of the House, Andrea Leadsom—it has undergone a number of reviews, which have highlighted concerns about the operation of the scheme and made recommendations to this House. The most recent was the Kernaghan review, from which today’s Government motion has its genesis. The motion will set up in permanent form an assurance board to oversee the workings of the ICGS. I welcome the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) on to that new assurance board on a permanent footing. Why are we here today? The ICGS has experienced a number of concerning process issues since it was set up, particularly in respect of the quality of its investigations and the excessive time delays in the processing of those investigations. If complainants and respondents are to trust the ICGS, it is of paramount importance for the assurance board to ensure that the issues encountered with the investigatory process are resolved, and that complainants and respondents are subject to a process with a credible and, importantly, timely outcome. As I am sure all Members agree, it is not acceptable to complainants and respondents that, in what is an internal workplace process, they must sometimes wait for years for an outcome on, for instance, bullying. The Committee on Standards is specifically prohibited from involvement in individual ICGS cases. Preserving the independence of those investigations is vital to the success of the investigations, and to the confidence of those who seek the aid of the ICGS and those who are investigated under the scheme. However, the ICGS is part of a wider standards landscape within the House, and the Committee on Standards has a useful voice in highlighting how the scheme is operating and in commenting on policy. In the standards landscape report produced shortly before the last general election, our predecessors—some of whom remain members of the Committee, particularly the lay members—noted that the Committee had not had time to consider fully the recommendations of the Kernaghan review. In paragraph 175 of that report, the previous Standards Committee recommended to the House that the new Committee, which I now chair, should continue to consider the analysis and recommendations contained in the review. As Chair of the Committee, I can inform the House that the Committee has since had discussions about the work of the ICGS with its outgoing director, Thea Walton—I thank her for the work that she has done—and that it is due to discuss that work further next week. Owing to the pressure of other work—notably the complex inquiry that we have undertaken at the request of the Modernisation Committee and the Leader of the House into outside interests and employment—we have not had time to consider fully all Mr Kernaghan’s recommendations and their implementation, but we will continue to make that a focus of our work during the current Parliament. Members may have noted that the proposed new assurance board would contain a member of the House of Lords Conduct Committee, but not a Member of the Standards Committee in the Commons. Dame Laura Cox, in her 2018 report on the bullying and harassment of Commons staff, recommended that processes to determine such complaints should be entirely independent of Members of Parliament, and that is the course that the House adopted. The House of Lords is responsible for its own processes, and its Committee retains a greater role than this House’s Committee in these matters. Let me emphasise that it is absolutely proper for MPs not to be involved in determining complaints, but there may be scope for involvement in the policy framework surrounding complaints. I have not sought to amend the motion today—as I have said, I welcome it—but given that involvement in policy does not equate to interference in complaints, and nor should it, it may be worth revisiting in future whether, since the Lords Committee will be represented, this House’s Committee on Standards ought to be represented as well. It might also be worth revisiting whether a valuable member voice—and by “member” I mean not just a Member of Parliament but a lay member of the Committee—beyond the House of Commons Commission might also be useful. I do not expect the Leader of the House to respond to that suggestion today, because it is proper for the Committee on Standards to consider this matter fully, as recommended and as approved by the House. Once it has had the opportunity to do so, it may well revert with further recommendations on how today’s motion might be enhanced as we go forward together, on a cross-party basis, seeking to ensure that we have the best parliamentary workplace scheme, with the appropriate parliamentary stakeholders included in this welcome assurance board. Let me end by acknowledging what some other Members have said about trade unions. Only a few hours ago, Unite’s parliamentary staff branch emailed all MPs about this very point. I think that the point that I have made about the Committee on Standards sits well with the parliamentary staff branch’s own views on ensuring that all relevant parliamentary stakeholders are included in this welcome assurance board.

• 23 Apr 2025 · Hair and Beauty Sector: Government Policy · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Only a few weeks ago, I visited Sue Davis’s hair salon in Blaby in my constituency, and she introduced me to two of the young people my hon. Friend has in mind, Tegan and Poppy. Does she agree that the measures the Government have brought in not only damage the hair salon industry, but risk reducing the number of apprenticeships, making it possible that there will be no future Tegans and Poppys going into the hairdressing business in the first place?

• 25 Jul 2024 · Code of Conduct and Modernisation Committee · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I welcome you to your new position. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on an excellent and very detailed maiden speech. No doubt he will represent his constituents very successfully. I am the only Member in the Chamber today who served on both the Standards Committee and the Privileges Committee in the 2019 Parliament; all of the other MPs, bar one, are no longer in the Chamber. The amount of work that we had to deal with in the last Parliament was substantial, onerous and unprecedented. As such, I welcome the comments that the Leader of the House has made and broadly support the motions that she has brought before the House. However, I would like to make a couple of points that I hope she will take in the spirit of assistance in which they are intended. In the time allocated to me, I will briefly turn first to the motion on curbing some elements of second jobs as they relate to parliamentary advice. The Leader of the House may not be aware of the background to that proposal and where it first came from. In November 2021 the Standards Committee published a report—the fourth of the Session—and annex 7 of that report contained comments made by the then Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. The Committee—myself and my colleagues —thoroughly looked at the matter on a cross-party basis and concluded that we probably wanted to recommend the banning of paid parliamentary advice or consultancy. We looked at the wording in the House of Lords, because that is the wording that the then commissioner first looked at. That wording is broadly identical to the wording that we currently have, so in our May 2022 report we came forward with the proposal that the banning of paid parliamentary advice should align with the House of Lords code. My question to the Leader of the House is this: is it her intention to ensure that the code in the other place is amended, so that we do not have an oddity where, for instance, a Labour peer could carry on with the activities that she proposes to ban, but an MP in this House would be unable to do so? That was not the objective of the Standards Committee when we first made our proposal, so it would be very helpful if, in her summing up, she could confirm that the appropriate mirrored changes will be made in the House of Lords. I will now turn briefly to the other, much more substantial motion. I am sorry that there is a time limit, because I had many things to say about this motion, but given that I have a very short period of time in which to speak, I will restrict my comments. As the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) touched on, we as a House should remember that the Standards Committee is unlike any other Select Committee of the House of Commons, because half of its members are lay members—people who are not Members of Parliament. The total membership of 14 means that, if we take out the Chair from voting, the lay members have a substantive jurisdiction on that Committee. Many of those lay members will undoubtedly be watching this debate. I cannot believe that it is the Government’s intention to create a Committee that will be looking at standards—even at a strategic level—that excludes lay members. When the Leader of the House was on the Opposition Benches, she was a strong believer in having lay members on the Committee, so will she look again carefully at her proposal, not only taking into account the balance of political parties but, importantly, ensuring that this new Committee has lay member representation, at least when it is discussing standards issues? My proposal is that the seven current lay members of the Standards Committee could elect one from among their number to sit on that Committee. The other points I wanted to make were made by the shadow Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), and I do not propose to rehearse them again. Suffice it to say that the Leader of the House said that the Chair of the Standards Committee, the Chair of the Administration Committee and so on would be guested on to the Committee, but if the Committee is to be an effective body that can deliver change, as she hopes, we must ensure that these people are not simply guested but that experience and knowledge is somehow brought in, perhaps with ex officio members instead of full voting members. I suggest she looks again at that proposal, and perhaps makes some welcome comments at the end. To conclude, the proposal is a welcome one, but I urge the Leader of the House to look carefully at bringing lay members on to the Committee.

• 18 Jul 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Double child rapist and murderer Colin Pitchfork was due to have his parole hearing last week in public, following my successful application to the chair of the Parole Board, who agreed to have it in public. The parole hearing has been rescheduled to an unknown date, and only last week the chair of the Parole Board said in public, without writing to me, that she had cancelled her decision to have a public parole hearing for Mr Pitchfork. I welcome the Leader of the House to her place. Could we have an urgent statement on this matter or, better still, an urgent meeting with the Minister to discuss why the Parole Board is acting in this way?