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Contents
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Summary
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Mr Ian Lavery MP: Resolution letter
Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Paul Scully MP, 15 March 2017
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Written evidence received by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
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1. Letter from Mr Paul Scully MP to the Commissioner, 11 March 2016
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2. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 16 March 2016
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3. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 17 March 2016
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4. Letter from Paul Scully MP to the Commissioner, 18 March 2016
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5. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 24 March 2016
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6. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 7 April 2016
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7. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 11 April 2016
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8. Letter from the Commissioner to the Registrar of Members’ Financial
Interests, 14 April 2016
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9. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 14 April 2016
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10. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 27 April 2016
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11. Letter from the Registrar to the Commissioner, 28 April 2016
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12. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 10 May 2016
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13. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 7 July 2016
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14. Statement from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 7 July 2016
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15. Letter from Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 27 July 2016
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16. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 12 August 2016
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17. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 25 August 2016
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18. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 7 September 2016
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19. Letter from the Commissioner to the Secretary, NUM (Northumberland
Area), 3 October 2016
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20. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 3 October 2016
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21. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 13 October 2016
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22. Letter from the Secretary, National Union of Mineworkers (Northumberland
Area) to the Commissioner, 28 October 2016
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23. Letter from the Commissioner to the Registrar, 9 November 2016
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24. Letter from the Registrar to the Commissioner, 18 November 2016
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25. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 21 November 2016 48
26. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 5 December 2016
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27. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 14 December 2017
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28. Letter from the Commissioner to the Secretary, National Union of
Mineworkers (Northumberland Area), 12 January 2017
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29. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 12 January 2017
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30. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 26 January 2017
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31. Letter from the Secretary NUM (Northumberland Area) to the Commissioner,
26 January 2017
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32. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 30 January 2017
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34. Meeting between the Commissioner and Mr Ian Lavery MP,
7 February 2017
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34. Email from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 9 February 2017
34 Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 27 February 2017
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Oral evidence taken by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
Interview with Mr Ian Lavery, Thursday 30 June 2016
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Summary
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My inquiry concerned the registration of Mr Lavery's financial interests when he
was first elected in May 2010. The allegations I had received concerned the
registration of his redundancy payments from his former employment by the NUM
(Northumberland Area) and of the terms of a mortgage on his property. Mr Lavery
and the Secretary of the NUM (Northumberland Area) co-operated with my inquiry
but in spite of this it took almost 12 months to complete because of the difficulty in
verifying some of the facts where contemporaneous evidence was not easily
available.
During the course of my inquiry, I identified three further aspects of his financial
arrangements which might have given rise to registrable benefits and I investigated
those matters as well before concluding my work.
I do not uphold either of the two allegations made by the referring Member. I have,
however, found two instances where Mr Lavery has acted in breach of paragraph 13
of the Code of Conduct.
The Registrar told me that she would have advised Mr Lavery to register his
redundancy payments, which were paid to him in instalments, with the last payment
being made in May 2013. Mr Lavery had not sought her advice and had not been
under an obligation to do so. The advice the Registrar would have offered, if asked,
was sound advice. However, I concluded that the Guide to the Rules on the conduct
of Members had not been sufficiently explicit on this point during the 2010
Parliament for it to be reasonable to treat an omission to register as a breach of the
rules. (The rule has since been clarified.) I did not, therefore, uphold this allegation.
I found that Mr Lavery's mortgage had terminated some three years before he
became a Member and the question of a registrable benefit did not arise in that
context. I also did not uphold this allegation.
In the course of my inquiries into Mr Lavery's financial arrangements, I considered
whether he should have registered in the Register of Members' Financial Interests
the fact that the NUM (Northumberland Area) had held a 15% share in his property
until May 2013. Given that Mr Lavery had not paid rent to the NUM in respect of his
occupation of their share of his property and that no part of his property was
designated for the union's use, I found it was a registrable benefit under the
Miscellaneous Category. I therefore found that Mr Lavery had breached paragraph
13 of the Code of Conduct by not registering that relationship between May 2010
and May 2013.
I found that Mr Lavery should have declared a relevant interest when tabling a
written Question in March 2013 about the future of the deep-mine industry in the
UK. I considered that the NUM's interest in his property at that time might
reasonably be considered by others to influence his words or actions as a Member
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and that not to make a declaration was, therefore, a breach of paragraph 13 of the
Code of Conduct.
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I established that the "loan account" referred to expenditure incurred while Mr
Lavery was an employee of NUM (Northumberland Area). There had been a dispute
between Mr Lavery and his former employer about whether payments made on that
account were attributable to his employment or to personal expenses. The disputed
sum was written off by the NUM when they finalised Mr Lavery's redundancy
payments. I saw no evidence which would suggest I would be justified in exploring
further any concern that this represented a loan at preferential rates which might
have been registrable under the House's rules. I did not uphold a breach of the rules.
Mr Lavery has acknowledged his two breaches of the rules and of the Code of
Conduct, and he has agreed to make an apology to the House for them. Subject to
him doing so, I consider that to be an appropriate outcome and have concluded my
inquiry under the rectification procedure, as provided for in Standing Order No 150.
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Mr Ian Lavery MP: Resolution letter
Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Paul Scully MP, 15 March 2017
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I have now completed my inquiries into your complaint about Mr Ian Lavery MP. In
essence, the complaint I have investigated is that contrary to the rules of the House,
during the 2010 Parliament Mr Lavery did not register in the Register of Members'
Financial the redundancy payments he received after 7 May 2010 from his former
employer (NUM (Northumberland Area) and that he also did not register details of
the mortgage on his property.
As you can see, I have corresponded at length with Mr Lavery and the current
Secretary of the NUM (Northumberland Area) about these matters (both of whom
have co-operated with my enquiries).
I have not upheld either of the allegations you made. I have concluded that during
the relevant period the rules were not sufficiently explicit about the registration of
redundancy payments that it would be fair to find a Member in breach of the rules
for such an omission. While the Registrar would have advised doing so if asked, it
would be unfair to find Mr Lavery in breach of the rule in these circumstances. (The
rules have since been amended and this point is now made explicitly.)
I found that Mr Lavery's mortgage arrangement with the NUM Provident and
Benevolent Fund (Northumberland Area) came to an end three years before he
became a Member and so the question of registration did not arise. (You will see
from the evidence pack that the Land Register was not updated to reflect the
termination of the mortgage until after my inquiry began.)
However, in the course of making enquiries about these matters, I found that
Mr Lavery had failed to register an ongoing relationship with the NUM, in the form
of their continued ownership of a 15% share in his property until May 2013. I
considered this to be a breach of paragraph 13 of the Code. I also found that
Mr Lavery should have declared this relationship when tabling a written Question
on 13 March 2013. The failure to do that was also a breach of the Code. I considered
a third additional matter, which I did not uphold as a breach of the Code.
You can see the more detailed explanations for each of these decisions in my letters
to Mr Lavery of 9 November 2016, 12 and 30 January and 27 February 2017.1
Mr Lavery has acknowledged these two breaches of the rules and agreed to make an
apology to the House by way of a point of order. This rectification action is sufficient
to bring the matter to a close. I will report the matter briefly to the Committee on
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WE23, WE29, WE32 & WE34
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Standards. In due course, this letter and the relevant evidence (a copy of which I
enclose) will be made available on my parliamentary web-pages.
I am copying this letter to Mr Lavery.
15 March 2017
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Written evidence received by the
Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
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Letter from Mr Paul Scully MP to the Commissioner, 11 March 2016
I am writing today with regard to the actions of Ian Lavery MP, who I believe may
have made an inaccurate declaration to Parliamentary authorities about income
received in addition to his Parliamentary salary.
Mr Lavery was General Secretary for the National Union of Mineworkers of the
Northumberland Area from 1992 to 2010. The annual returns for the National Union
of Mineworkers Northumberland Area show the following expenditure:
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2010 – General Secretary redundancy of £30,600
2011 – Past General Secretary redundancy of £30,000
2012 – Past General Secretary redundancy of £1,398
2013 – Past General Secretary redundancy costs of £85,426
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These General Secretary redundancy payments started at the same time Ian Lavery
MP resigned as General Secretary, and having been General Secretary since 1992
there is no other possible beneficiary. It is therefore almost certain that Mr Lavery
received redundancy payments from the National Union of Mineworkers of the
Northumberland Area after becoming an MP in 2010. However, according to the
Register of Members’ Financial Interests these payments have never been
registered.
I have included for your reference copies of the National Union of Mineworkers
Northumberland Area annual returns (AR21 Forms) and the Register of Members’
Financial Interests.2
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I believe that Ian Lavery MP’s actions could constitute a breach of the House of
Commons Code of Conduct.
The General Principles of the Parliamentary Code of Conduct states that Members
are expected to display:
Accountability
2
Enclosures not included as relevant information included in the body of Mr Scully's letter
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Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions to the public
and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office.
I also refer you to Category 11 of the Rules of Conduct published on the 22nd June
2009 and republished on the 27th March 2012:
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11. Miscellaneous: Any relevant interest, not falling within one of the
above categories, which nevertheless falls within the definition of the
main purpose of the Register which is “to provide information of any
financial interest or other material benefit which a Member received
which might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her
actions, speeches, or votes in Parliament, or actions taken in his or her
capacity as a Member of Parliament,” or which the Member considers
might be thought by others to influence his or her actions in a similar
manner, even though the Member receives no financial benefit.
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I would be grateful if you could reply as soon as possible confirming what steps you
intend to take.
11 March 2016
2.
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Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 16 March 2016
Thank you for meeting me yesterday to discuss my concerns over allegations made
in the Sunday Times earlier this month. I appreciated the time you took from your
busy schedule and valued your view on the matter.
However, to set the record straight and to avoid any further confusion, I have
decided to formally refer myself to you in respect of the claims made about me in
relation to redundancy pay from the National Union of Mineworkers. As you are
aware this relates to my previous employment before entering Parliament.
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I am very keen to clarify any areas of concern and will make myself available for
further discussions should you feel necessary. I am also happy to share any
documents you require to facilitate the process.
I look forward to hearing from you in due course.
16 March 2016
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3.
Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 17 March 2016
I would welcome your help with a complaint which I have received from Mr Paul
Scully MP in respect of the registration of your financial interests. A copy of Mr
Scully’s letter is enclosed.
My Inquiry
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I have decided to begin an inquiry into whether the rules of the House required you
to register, in the Register of Members’ Financial interests, payments made by the
National Union of Mineworkers in respect of ‘redundancy’ to the General Secretary
in 2010 (£30,600), and to the ‘Past General Secretary’ in 2011 (£30,000), 21012
(£1,398), and 2013 (£85,426).
I will also, in the course of my inquiry consider whether the rules of the House
required the declaration of any such financial interests during parliamentary or
other proceedings.
The Code of Conduct3
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Paragraph 13 of the 2009 House of Commons Code of Conduct (amended in 2012)
said
Members shall fulfil conscientiously the requirements of the House in
respect of registration of interests in the Register of Members’
Financial Interests. They shall always be open and frank in drawing
attention to any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its
Committees, and in any communication with Ministers, Members,
public officials or public office holders.
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This paragraph is repeated in the 2015 Code of Conduct.
The Guide to the Rules relating to the conduct of Members
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Registration
There were 12 categories under which registrations were required under the Guide
to the Rules relating to the conduct of Members accompanying the 2009 Code.
Category 2 registrations related to “Remunerated employment, office, profession,
etc. Employment, office, trade, profession or vocation (apart from membership of the
House or ministerial office) which is remunerated or in which the Member has any
financial interest ….”
Paragraph 24 of the Guide to the Rules said:
All employment outside the House and any sources of remuneration
which do not fall clearly within any other category should be registered
here. Members should be registered here ….
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Category 11 was the category for Miscellaneous: Any relevant interest, not falling
within one of the above categories, which nevertheless falls within the main purpose
of the Register which is “to provide information of any financial interest or other
3
HC 1885 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmcode/1885/188501.htm
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material benefit which a Member receives which might reasonably be thought by
others to influence his or her actions, speeches, or votes in Parliament, or actions taken
in his or her capacity as a Member of Parliament, or which the Member considers might
be thought by others to influence his or her actions in a similar manner, even though
the Member receives no financial benefit.”
Paragraph 63 of the Guide to the Rules said:
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The main purpose of this category [category 11] is to enable Members
to enter in the Register any interests which they consider relevant to
the Register’s purpose, but which do not obviously fall within any of the
other categories.
Declaration
Paragraph 72 of the Guide to the Rules said
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In 1974 the House replaced a long standing convention with a rule that
any relevant financial interest or benefit of whatever nature, whether
direct or indirect, should be declared in debate, or other proceeding.
The same rule places a duty on Members to disclose to Ministers, or
servants of the Crown, all relevant interests. The term ‘servants of the
Crown’ should be interpreted as applying to the staff of executive
agencies as well as to staff employed in government departments.
Paragraph 73 explains that
The rule relating to declaration of interest is broader in scope than the
rules relating to the registration of interests in three important
respects. As well as current interest, Members are required to declare
both relevant past interests and relevant interests which they may be
expecting to have. In practice only interests held in the recent past, i.e.
those current within the previous twelve months, need normally be
considered for declaration ….”
Paragraph 74 defines the test of relevance:
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…. The basic test of relevance should be the same for declaration as it
is for registration of an interest; namely, that a financial interest
should be declared if it might reasonably be thought by others to
influence the speech, representation or communication in question….
Next steps
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I would welcome your response to this allegation, taking account of the
requirements of the then Code of Conduct and, in particular, this summary of the
most relevant rules.
In particular, it would be helpful to know:
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
Whether the payments described in the accounts (appended to Mr Scully’s
letter) as redundancy payments for the (Past) General Secretary were
paid to you and, if they were, the dates on which each/any payment was
made;

Whether the payments are correctly described as “redundancy”
payments;

If you considered the matter and decided that the House’s rules would not
require the registration of these payments in the Register of Members’
Financial Interests, what led you to that conclusion
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If you considered making a declaration of a relevant financial interest
when you tabled an oral Question about the deep-mine coal industry for
answer on 14 March 2013, what led you to that conclusion;

If you considered making a declaration of a relevant financial interest
when you spoke in the debates on 28 October 2014 (about Coalfield
Communities); and on 29 January 2015(Open-cast coal sites
(Restoration)), what led you to those conclusions;

Whether there are any other occasions on which the rules would have
required you to make a declaration of such interests; and

Whether you sought advice from the House authorities on any occasion
about whether registration and/or declaration of such interests might be
necessary and, if so, what advice you received.
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Any other points you may wish to make to help me with this inquiry would be most
welcome.
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I enclose a copy of the Commissioner’s Information Note, which sets out the
procedure I follow. I am writing to the complainant to let him know that I have
accepted his allegation for inquiry. I will shortly update my parliamentary web
pages to show the fact that I am conducting an inquiry into an allegation against you
in relation to the registration and declaration of financial interests. My office will not
comment further on any aspect of the inquiry. (They will, however, confirm that I
have begun an inquiry if asked before this information is posted on my webpages
and they will answer factual questions about the processes I follow and the
standards system more generally.)
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As you will be aware, my inquiries are conducted in private. This letter and any
subsequent correspondence between us has parliamentary privilege until such time
as a final report is published.
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As a matter of courtesy, I should say now that I may make enquiries of the Registrar
and/or other of the House Authorities in due course. If I do so, I will share that
correspondence with you. While I do not, at this stage, know whether it will be
necessary to interview you about this matter, it would be open to you to be
accompanied at any such interview. I am, of course, very happy to meet with you at
any stage if you would find that helpful.
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Thank you for visiting my office on Tuesday 15th March 2016 to discuss this matter
and for your letter of self-referral which I received today. I appreciate your help and
co-operation and would welcome your comments on the allegation, together with
any evidence you feel may assist my investigation, by close of business on 31 March
2016.
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17 March 2016
4.
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Letter from Paul Scully MP to the Commissioner, 18 March 2016
Following my letter to you dated 11th March regarding the actions of Ian Lavery MP,
I am making a further complaint about Mr Lavery’s declarations in the Register of
Members’ Interests.4 I believe Ian Lavery MP may have made an inaccurate
declaration to Parliamentary authorities about a loan received in addition to his
Parliamentary salary.
The Land Registry, Durham Office, demonstrates Ian Lavery MP received a loan from
the National Union of Mineworkers Northumberland Area Provident & Benevolent
Fund to purchase his property on [address redacted].5 As of 24th February 2016,
the National Union of Mineworkers Northumberland Area Provident & Benevolent
Fund is still listed as the lender for this property.
However, according to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests this interest has
never been [registered]. I therefore believe that Ian Lavery MP’s actions could
constitute a breach of the House of Commons Code of Conduct.
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The General Principles of the Parliamentary Code of Conduct states that Members
are expected to display:
Accountability
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5
http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentarycommissioner-for-standards/registers-of-interests/register-of-members-financial-interests/
Copy of Land Register entry provided but not reproduced here to protect Mr Lavery's home address
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Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions
to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is
appropriate to their office.
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I also refer you to Category 1 of Chapter 1 of the Code on Conduct published on 18
March 2015:
"Members must register, subject to the paragraphs below, individual
payments of more than £100 which they receive for any employment
outside the House. They must also register individual payments of £100
or less once they have received a total of over £300 in payments of
whatever size from the same source in a calendar year.
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REQUIREMENTS FOR REGISRATION
7. Under this category Members must register:
Any of the following received as a director or employee or earned in
any other capacity:
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a) Salaries, fees and payments in kind: gifts received in recognition of services
performed;
b) Taxable expenses, allowances and benefits such as company cars;
c)
Redundancy and ex gratia payments;
d) Income as a member of Lloyd’s; and
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e)
Payments for opinion surveys (unless they fall below the registration
threshold)."
A tax guide published by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs amended in January
2016 states: where an employee is provided with living accommodation by his or
her employer (or by another person where the provision is by reason of the
employment) the employee is liable to tax on the value of the accommodation
provided. This also applies where, by reason of an individual’s employment,
accommodation is provided for members of his or her family or household (HMRC,
Expenses and benefits: a tax guide, January 2016).6
As a former employee of the National Union of Mineworkers Northumberland Area
(General Secretary from 1992–2010), the fact that the NUM are still listed as the
6
Not reproduced as HMRC Guide is not relevant to my inquiry
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lender for Ian Lavery MP’s property raises questions about whether the loan
constitutes a taxable benefit and should therefore be declared in the Register.
I also refer you to Category 3 of Chapter 1 of the Code of Conduct published on
18 March 2015:
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"Threshold for Registration
22. Members must register, subject to the paragraphs below, any gifts,
benefits or hospitality with a value of over £300 which they receive
from a UK source. They must also register multiple benefits from the
same source if these have a value of more than £300 in a calendar
year."
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REQUIREMENTS FOR REGISTRATION
3. Under this category Members must register:
Any benefits which relate in any way to their membership of the House
or political activities, if provided by a UK source either free or at
concessionary rates, including:
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a) event or travel tickets;
b) hospitality in the UK, including receptions, meals and accommodation;
c)
gifts such as clothing or jewellery;
d) club subscriptions and memberships;
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e)
loans or credit arrangements;
f)
discount cards.
As Shadow Minister for Trade Unions and Civil Society, it is essential that Ian Lavery
MP declares financial interests that could have any bearing on his role. I believe that
the undeclared loan from a trade union branch detailed above, combined with
undeclared redundancy payments from 2010–2013 from the same trade union
branch (see evidence in previous letter dated 11th March 2016), constitutes a
financial interest that could reasonably be thought to influence Ian Lavery’s actions
as a Member of Parliament and as Shadow Minister for Trade Unions.
The main purpose of the Register is ‘to provide information of any financial interest
or other material benefit which a Member receives which might reasonably be thought
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by others to influence his or her actions, speeches, or votes in Parliament, or actions
taken in his or her capacity as a Member of Parliament.’
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As someone who has spoken on trade union issues frequently since entering
Parliament and who is now spokesperson on trade unions for Her Majesty’s Loyal
Opposition, it is crucial that Ian Lavery MP is open and transparent on all his
financial dealings with these groups. As I have detailed above, I believe that he has
failed to do so. I therefore believe that there are sufficient grounds to investigate Ian
Lavery MP.
I have included for your reference copies of the Land Registry, Durham Office;
HMRC’s guide to table expenses and benefits; and Ian Lavery MP’s entry in the
Register of Members’ Financial Interest (as at 7th March 2016).
I would appreciate a reply as soon as possible confirming what steps you intend to
take.
18 March 2016
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5.
Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 24 March 2016
We spoke briefly on the telephone last week about whether it would be helpful for
you to send me a copy of your employment contract with the NUM when you
respond to my letter of 17 March. You mentioned then an article that had appeared
in the Sunday Times concerning your mortgage arrangement with the NUM. Since
we spoke, I have received a formal allegation from Mr Scully concerning this matter.
As I am already investigating the registration of your financial interests, I have
decided to include this allegation in the scope of the existing inquiry and I am writing
to Mr Scully today to inform him of this.
I enclose a copy of Mr Scully’s letter for information. It would be helpful if you would
provide the following information (supported by evidence where possible):

when the mortgage arrangement with the NUM began;

if that mortgage was still in place on your election to the House in 2010,
whether the mortgage was on preferential terms;

if the mortgage was not in place on your election or has been terminated
since May 2010, it would be helpful to know when it came to an end; and

if the mortgage has been terminated, your comments on the enclosure to
Mr Scully’s letter which appears to show the NUM as a lender with an
interest in your property as of 24 February 2016.
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I would be grateful for your responses to the above questions and to receive any
other comments you wish to make about this allegation as soon as possible and no
later than 11 April 2016.
24 March 2016
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6.
Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 7 April 2016
In response to your letter dated 24 March 2016 in respect of my financial interests
and in particular a mortgage with the National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland Area) Provident and Benevolent Fund. In line with the previous
correspondence I have set out answers to your questions in Annex A. I hope this
account will assist your investigations and will provide further clarity on this matter.
Furthermore I have included a letter from one of the trustees clarifying the position.
However, once again I must at this point put on record my serious concern at the
allegations that have been made, which I have no doubt are part of a coordinated
political attack, designed to undermine my integrity and cast doubt on my character.
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I take my role as a Member of Parliament extremely seriously and at all times have
sought to abide by the standards and principles expected of anyone who enters this
House. I understand that public confidence is of the utmost importance and have
sought to put this at the heart of everything that I do.
I am immensely proud that my constituents placed their trust in me at two general
elections and believe it is my duty to represent them to the best of my abilities. In
doing so I feel it is extremely important to behave with probity and integrity at all
times.
As I have made clear in previous communication s with you, I am keen to fully
cooperate with your investigations and am happy to provide further information or
documentation if you feel it may assist with your inquiry. Please do not hesitate to
contact me at any point.
7 April 2016
Annex A
1. When the mortgage arrangement with the NUM began
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I confirm that the purchase of my property ([address redacted]) involved a
mortgage arrangement with the National Union of Mineworkers (Northumberland
Area) Provident and Benevolent Fund which began on 28th October 1994.
2. If that mortgage was still in place on your election to the House in 2010, whether the
mortgage was on preferential terms
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The mortgage was not in place on my election to Parliament in May 2010.
3. If the mortgage was not in place on your election or has been terminated since May
2010, it would be helpful to know when it came to an end
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The mortgage was settled in late 2007 with the last payment made on 12 November
2007.7
4. If the mortgage has been terminated, your comments on the enclosure to Mr Scully’s
letter which appears to show the NUM as a lender with an interest in your property as
of 24 February 2016
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As per the previous answer, the mortgage was settled in late 2007 and this charge
should have been removed at that point. The fact that the charge had not been
removed came to my attention last year when [reason redacted].8
At this point I contacted the trustees of the National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland Area) Provident and Benevolent Fund to request they take the
necessary steps to rectify the Land Registry’s record which should have been
updated in 2007 when the final settlement occurred. This was an administrative
error and the process to resolve this matter was well underway before these
accusations were levelled.
7 April 2016
7.
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Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 11 April 2016
In response to your letter dated 17th March 2016 in respect of my financial interests
and in particular payments made by my former employer the National Union of
Mineworker. I have set out answers to your questions in Annex A. I hope this account
will assist your investigations and will provide further clarity on this matter.
Furthermore I enclose a copy of a letter from the Secretary of the NUM
(Northumberland Area) explaining the position.
However, I must at this point put on record my serious concern at the allegations
that have been made, which I have no doubt are part of a coordinated political attack,
designed to undermine my integrity and cast doubt on my charact.er
30
I take my role as a Member of Parliament extremely seriously and at all times have
sought to abide by the standards and principles expected of anyone who enters this
house. I understand that public confidence is one the utmost importance and have
sought to put this at the heart of everything that I do.
7
Mr Lavery provided a signed letter from a trustee of the NUM Provident and Benevolent Fund. This is
not reproduced here. (See WE13- Enclosure 1 with Mr Lavery's letter of 7 July to the Commissioner)
8
WE13, enclosure 4
RECTIFICATION
18
I am immensely proud that my constituents placed their trust in me at two general
elections and believe it is my duty to represent them to the best of my abilities. In
doing so I feel it is extremely important to beave with probity and integrity at all
times.
5
As I have made clear in previous communications with you, I am keen to fully
cooperate with your investigations and am happy to provide further information or
documentation if you feel it may assist with your inquiry. Please do not hesitate to
contact me at any point.
11 April 2016
10
Annex A
1. Whether the payments described in the accounts (appended to Mr Scully's letter) as
redundancy payments for the (Past) General Secretary were paid to you and, if they
were, the dates on which each/any payment was made
15
20
I can confirm that payments set out in the table below were received as part of my
redundancy package from my former employer the National Union of Mineworkers:
Amount (3)
Date received
10,600
25/05/10
30,000
03/11/10
20,000
13/07/11
1,398
11/11/12
27.889.93*
12/06/13
*This was the final redundancy instalment which was a net payment. I understand that at this
point the Union's auditors accounted for the part of the redundancy which included a
redemption of an investment the Union had of 15% in my property settled on my departure, as
well as Tax and NI.
2. Whether the payments are correctly described as “redundancy” payments
25
30
There is no doubt that the payments mentioned above are payments associated with
my redundancy package. My contract of employment had a specific clause relating
to a payment of redundancy on termination of my contract. The post of General
Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (Northumberland Area) was made
redundant following my employment.
For the sake of clarity, following the termination of my contract the NUM
(Northumberland Area) then employed an administrative secretary, on a
completely different contract of employment, which was for a fixed term [further
detail redacted].
RECTIFICATION
5
19
The payment of redundancy was calculated by the Union's accountants prior to the
termination of my contract based on the aforementioned clause. The reason this was
not paid in one lump sum was simply as a result of the Union having its investments
frozen by an asset management company and their being unable to do so. This
caused the NUM Northumberland Area a significant cash flow problem which
resulted in my agreement to accept the payments in staggered tranches.
The redundancy payments are paid by law for a period of time before redundancy
is accepted. My contract was severed prior to my becoming a Member of Parliament
which should have resulted in a single payment at that time.
10
The fact this was a payment reflecting redundancy specifically meant there was no
more work to be carried on.
3. If you considered the matter and decided that the House’s rules would not require
the registration of these payments in the Register of Members' Financial Interests,
what led you to that conclusion
15
As I have previously explained I take my duties as a Member of Parliament extremely
seriously and have always sought to be diligent with respect to House rules. On my
election to parliament “The Code of Conduct and Guide to Rules (23 June 2009)”
were in place and these along with those that replaced it have formed the basis of
any registrations that I have subsequently made.
20
Having read the code of conduct with specific reference to the categories of
registerable interest and was of the firm opinion that a redundancy payment(s)
covering a period prior to my election would not need to be declared.
25
I feel it is important at this point, for the avoidance of any doubt, to explain that since
entering the House I have had no other form of employment or membership of any
bodies which provide any form of remuneration.
30
The redundancy package that I received during the last Parliament was part of a
contract of employment terminated prior to my election. As I have previously
explained the only reason this was not paid immediately was due to the cash flow
issues experienced by my previous employer and the agreement on my part to
accept their payment plan.
35
As the General Secretary prior to my termination I was responsible for the
preparation of the AR21 document on behalf of the National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland Area). It would be absurd to believe that I was unaware that any
payments would not be recorded on future AR21's and be available in the public
domain.
If I had any doubt that there could be potentially any necessity to register these
payments in the declaration of financial interests then I would definitely have sought
guidance from the registrar.
RECTIFICATION
20
In the Definition of the Register’s Purpose it states:
5
The main purpose of the Register of Member’' Financial Interests is “to
provide information of any financial interest or other material benefit
which a Member receives which might reasonably be thought by others
to influence his or her actions, speeches or votes in Parliament, or
actions taken in his or her capacity as a Member of Parliament.”
With this in mind it remains my firm belief that the redundancy package I received,
for a period of employment which was terminated prior to my entry into Parliament
cannot be reasonably considered by anyone as influencing my subsequent actions.
10
4. If you considered making a declaration of a relevant financial interest when you
tabled an oral Question about the deep-mine coal industry for answer on 14th March
2013, what led you to that conclusion
I can confirm that I did not consider declaring any financial interest when the
question you refer to was tabled.
15
20
25
My contract with the National Union of Mineworkers was terminated prior to my
election in 2010 and other than the lasting mark the coal industry and representing
miners has left on me has had no influence on my duties within the House.
Any reasonable person would see that as a Member of Parliament representing an
area with a significant history of deep coal mining with constituents still working in
the industry elsewhere in the country, this was an issue that I would be expected to
raise. Furthermore as a member of the Energy and Climate Change Select
Committee, where my duties were specifically to scrutinise government policy and
as Secretary of the Miners Group of Labour MP’s I would be expected to raise
questions of this nature.
5. If you considered making a declaration of a relevant financial interest when you
spoke in debates on 28 October 2014 (about Coalfield Communities): and on 29
January 2015 (Open-cast coal sites (Restoration)), what led you to those conclusions
Again I can confirm that I did not consider declaring any financial interest when I
spoke in the debates to which you refer.
30
35
My contract with the National Union of Mineworkers was terminated prior to my
election in 2010 and other than the lasting mark the coal industry and representing
miners has left on me has had no influence on my duties within the house.
With regards to the debate dated 28th October 2014 as the Member of Parliament
for a Constituency which was heavily dependent on the Coal Industry and as
Secretary of the APPG Coalfield Communities it would be wrong of me not to have
contributed.
RECTIFICATION
21
My Constituency is made up of several former mining communities which have
suffered through both the demise of, and illness associated with, the industry.
5
10
With regards to the debate dated 29th January 2015 my Constituency has one
current site being opencast mined and residents to the south are close to another in
adjoining constituencies. The debate was specifically relating to restoration of sites
and given the Potland Burn site in my own constituency was potentially at risk from
not being brought back into use it again would have been inappropriate not to have
contributed to this debate.
My constituents expect me to raise issues of importance to them and any reasonable
person would not assert that there were other reasons for doing so.
6. Whether there are any other occasions on which the rules would have required you
to make a declaration of such interests:
15
20
The very reason for my election was built on my experience and track record in the
Coal Industry and in Energy it would be rather bizarre if I was unable to speak in the
house on these matters. I have previously explained that I take my role in
representing my constituents extremely seriously and am determined to raise
issues that the community I proudly represent expects me to. I have absolutely no
pecuniary interest in raising these or any other issues.
There have been many occasions as a Member of the House where I have raised
issues relating to Coal and the Coalfields particularly as a member of the Energy and
Climate Change Select Committee, where my duty is to scrutinise government policy
on all aspects of Energy.
I take my responsibilities very seriously and as such do not in any way accept that I
have breached any of the House Rules in raising these important issues.
25
30
35
7. Whether you sought advice from the House authorities on any occasion about
whether registration and/or declaration of such interests might be necessary and. if
so, what advice you received
Fortunately enough, I have never been in a position where I have believed that I
required any advice from the House Authorities. This is in no way meant to sound
arrogant, I simply believe that I have carried out my duties at all times with due
diligence honesty and fairness.
I have noted that in the rewritten 2015 code of conduct that the issue of redundancy
is specifically mentioned in category 1 employment and earnings rule 7c.
Redundancy and Ex Gratia payments and can I assure you that had this rule been
present when I was elected that I would have automatically sought the advice of the
house authorities.
RECTIFICATION
22
I say this as I remain unclear as to whether payment of redundancy from a period
prior to being elected would have to be declared or whether this simply refers to
redundancy which occurs during the course of being an MP.
5
Enclosure with Mr Lavery's letter of 11 April 2016: Letter from Secretary, NUM
(Northumberland Area)
I have been contacted by Mr Ian Lavery MP seeking information from me in order to
assist with your current inquiry.
10
It is my understanding that a key component of this relates to payments made by
the National Union of Mineworkers (Northumberland Area) to Mr Lavery during the
last Parliament. For the avoidance of any doubt, I can categorically state that the
redundancy payments paid to Mr Lavery were in line with his contract with the NUM
(Northumberland Area.)
I hope this is helpful with your investigation and if I can be of any further assistance
please do not hesitate to get I touch.
15
8. Letter from the Commissioner to the Registrar of Members’ Financial
Interests, 14 April 2016
I would like to ask for your advice on a matter concerning Mr Ian Lavery MP and the
registration of his financial interests.
20
25
30
The allegation I am investigating is, in essence, that contrary to the rules of the
House, Mr Lavery did not register a financial interest arising from redundancy
payments recorded in the accounts of the National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland) in respect of the (Past) General Secretary in 2010, 2011, 2012
and 2013. I am also making enquiries of Mr Lavery concerning his mortgage
arrangement with the NUM.
I enclose a copy of the correspondence I have exchanged with Mr Lavery about these
matters. As you will see, Mr Lavery has provided information and supporting
evidence regarding both the circumstances of his redundancy payments and his
mortgage arrangements. I am seeking some further evidence from Mr Lavery about
his mortgage but I would be grateful for your advice in the meantime, based on the
information now enclosed. (I will write to you again, if relevant new facts emerge.)
It would be helpful to know:

35
Whether, since May 2010, Mr Lavery or his staff have received advice from
you/your team about the registration of redundancy payments from his
former employer, the National Union of Mineworkers and, if so, details of
the advice that was given;
RECTIFICATION

If you have not already given Mr Lavery advice, the advice you would have
given, based on the enclosed correspondence;

The circumstances under which you would have advised a Member to
register as a financial interest a mortgage provided by an
employer/former employer;

Whether, if Mr Lavery had sought your advice, you would have advised
declaration of a financial interest when he tabled an oral Question on 14
March 2013 and/or when he spoke in the debates cited on 28 October
2014 and 29 January 2015.
5
10
23
Any other comments you may wish to make would be most welcome. It would be
very helpful to have your response to this letter within the next two weeks.
Thank you for your assistance.
14 April 2016
9.
Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 14 April 2016
15
Thank you for your letters of 7 April 2016. The information and supporting evidence
you have provided are helpful. When I first wrote to you I said that I might seek
advice from the House authorities. I have today written to the Registrar of Members’
Financial Interests to seek her advice and a copy of my letter to her is enclosed. I will
share her response with you in due course.
20
In the meantime, I have some further questions about your mortgage arrangements.
My questions arise from information in your letter about your redundancy pay. In
that you explain that the final payment (received in June 2013) was a net payment
after the redemption of a 15% investment the Union had in your property. It would
be helpful if you could say more about this arrangement. In particular:
25
30

Was the Union’s 15% share in your property part of the original mortgage
arrangement?

What, if any, terms were attached to the Union’s interest in the property?

Did any such terms alter, and if so how, on the termination of your
mortgage?

When did the Union formally relinquish that 15% share in your property?
Any supporting evidence you can provide on these points, and other information
you consider relevant, would be helpful.
RECTIFICATION
5
24
In support of the information you have provided about the termination of your
mortgage, you have provided a letter from one of the Trustees of the National Union
of Mineworkers (Northumberland Area) Provident and Benevolent Fund. While I
have no reason to doubt the authenticity of this letter, it would be helpful if you could
seek some further evidence either in the form of original documentation or letters
from the Union/Provident and Benevolent Fund’s accountant on headed notepaper.
I would be grateful for your responses to the above questions and to receive any
other comments you wish to make about this allegation as soon as possible and no
later than 28 April 2016.
10
14 April 2016
10. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 27 April 2016
I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 14th April 2016 in response to
information that I have provided in two separate letters with respect to your current
preliminary enquiries into my financial interests.
15
20
25
In line with my previous correspondence, I have set out answers to your questions
with reference to a 15% investment in my property by the National Union of
Mineworkers (Northumberland Area), in Annex A. I hope this account will assist
your investigations and will provide further clarity on this matter.
I would be happy to send a copy of the National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland Area) Provident and Benevolent 2007 accounts subject to
confidentiality.
As I have made clear in previous communications with you, I am keen to fully
cooperate with your investigations and am happy to provide further information or
documentation if you feel it may assist with your inquiry. Please do not hesitate to
contact me at any point.
27 April 2016
Annex A
1. Was the Union’s 15% share in your property part of the original Mortgage
arrangement?
30
For the sake of clarity I can confirm .that the National Union of Mineworkers’
(Northumberland Area) investment in 15% of my property was entirely separate to
the mortgage arrangement with the National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland Area) Provident and Benevolent Fund.
RECTIFICATION
25
My mortgage was agreed in 1994 by the trustees of the NUM (NA) P&B Fund whilst
the 15% invested in my property was made by the National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland Area) Executive in 2005. These were entirely separate
arrangements with entirely separate bodies.
5
2. What, if any, terms were attached to the Union’s interest in the property?
To be clear this was an investment held by the National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland Area) with no beneficial interest on my behalf. No specific terms
were attached to the Union's 15% interest in the property.
10
The Union made this investment at a time when property prices remained strong
and on the assumption that they would benefit from an uplift in value. The 15%
interest in [my property] was one part of the Union’s wider investment portfolio.
3. Did any such terms alter, and if so how, on the termination of your mortgage?
15
The mortgage with the NUM (NA) P&B fund was settled in late 2007 and as
previously advised was wholly unconnected to the Union's investment in my
property.
4. When did the Union formally relinquish that 15% share in your property?
When the position of General Secretary was made redundant, I was replaced by an
administrative secretary with the remit of winding down the organisation. This
process included the divestment of the Unions wider assets.
20
As part of this divestment, the Union valued [the property] at £190,000 and
presented a redemption figure of £28,500 to end their interest in the property. This
figure formed part of the total package that I received on being made redundant.
The Union formally accounted for the relinquishing of the share in 2013 when they
included the final settlement of the redundancy in their accounts and the AR21.
25
11. Letter from the Registrar to the Commissioner, 28 April 2016
Thank you for your letter of 14 April. You asked about the registration and
declaration of interests by Mr Ian Lavery MP. I have answered your questions in the
order in which you asked them.
30
1. Whether, since May 2010, Mr Lavery or his staff have received advice from you/your
team about the registration of redundancy payments from his former employer, the
National Union of Mineworkers and, if so, details of the advice that was given.
RECTIFICATION
26
I have not advised Mr Lavery about the registration of redundancy payments from
the National Union of Mineworkers and from a search of our files I do not believe
anyone else in the registry team has done so either.
5
2. If you have not already given Mr Lavery advice, the advice you would have given,
based on the enclosed correspondence.
As Mr Lavery says, the 2010 rules were silent on whether Members had to register
ex gratia and redundancy payments. The 2015 Guide to the Rules has made this
clear.
10
15
20
25
I have therefore had to consider what advice we would have given in 2010. My
advice is based upon the 2009 Guide to the Rules (HC 735), and also the Resolution
of 30 April 2009, which required Members to register the details of individual
payments received for employment. I attach extracts from both documents.
I believe that in 2010 we would have advised a Member to register a redundancy
payment which related to work completed before he was elected. This is because
neither the Resolution nor the Guide contained any provision which would exempt
Members from registering payments relating to employment which had ended
before their Election. And there was no provision exempting Members from
registering redundancy payments.
I have found on our files a record of correspondence in 2010 with another Member
who entered the House in 2010 and who had received a redundancy payment in
respect of a job which he had left before that year’s General Election. We advised
him to register this. In 2011 we advised a further Member to register an ex gratia
payment received when his employment ended in October 2010. And the published
registers for 2010 show that a number of new Members had registered payments
for work completed before their election.
But it is fair to say that the 2010 registration form did not make clear that Members
had to register payments for work completed before they were elected, or
redundancy payments. So it is possible that Mr Lavery was unaware of the
requirements.
30
I attach a photocopy of the relevant pages from Mr Lavery’s initial registration form.
(b) The circumstances under which you would have advised a Member to register as a
financial interest a mortgage provided by an employer/former employer;
The purpose of the Register was set out in the 2009 Guide to the Rules as follows:
35
“to give public notification on a continuous basis of those financial
interests held by Members which might be thought to influence their
parliamentary conduct or actions.”
RECTIFICATION
5
10
27
A mortgage provided by a former employer suggests a continuing financial
relationship. Assuming that this was not a commercial arrangement available on the
open market, in my view it would have met the condition for registration. That is
because other people might reasonably consider the mortgage to influence the
Member. Of course, that is not to say that it did in fact influence him. That would be
an altogether more serious matter.
I would need further information about the terms of the mortgage before I could
advise on the most appropriate heading for this register item. I note however that
Mr Lavery tells you that the mortgage was redeemed in 2007. On that basis he would
not have needed to register it when he entered the House in 2010.
Whether, if Mr Lavery had sought your advice, you would have advised declaration of
a financial interest when he tabled an oral Question on 14 March 2013 and/or when
he spoke in the debates cited on 28 October 2014 and 29 January 2015.
15
20
25
30
35
40
I would have advised Mr Lavery to declare a financial interest when he tabled the
Question on the deep-mine coal industry which was answered on 14 March 2013.
That is because the 2009 Guide to the Rules stated:
74. It is the responsibility of the Member, having regard to the rules
of the House, to judge whether a financial interest is sufficiently
relevant to a particular debate, proceeding, meeting or other activity
to require a declaration. The basic test of relevance should be the
same for declaration as it is for registration of an interest; namely,
that a financial interest should be declared if it might reasonably be
thought by others to influence the speech, representation or
communication in question. [my italics] A declaration should be brief
but should make specific reference to the nature of the Member’s
interest.
According to Mr Lavery’s letter of 11 April 2016, the NUM made redundancy
payments to him in November 2012 and in June 2013. Under the 2009 Guide to the
Rules, in March 2013 the 2012 payment was sufficiently recent to require him to
consider declaring it. In my view others might reasonably have considered it to
influence Mr Lavery when he tabled the question which was answered on 14 March
2013 about the deep-mine coal industry. I would therefore have advised him to
declare it. If at that stage Mr Lavery had a firm expectation of a future payment, I
would have advised declaring that too. I am aware of Mr Lavery’s background as a
former miner and his strong constituency interest in mining and in mining
communities. But the requirements in the Guide to the Rules are clear, and that is
the basis of my advice. One of the purposes of declaration is to protect both Members
and the House against accusations of secret motives. Openness about financial
interests is important to this.
On the basis of the information provided, I would not have advised Mr Lavery to
declare an interest in the debates of 28 October 2014 or 29 January 2015. That is
because the 2009 Guide to the Rules stated “In practice only interests held in the
RECTIFICATION
28
recent past, ie those current within the previous twelve months, need normally be
considered for declaration.” By his own account Mr Lavery’s mortgage had ended in
2007 and he received his last redundancy payment from the NUM in June 2013.
Those interests had ended too long ago to require declaration.
5
Please let me know if you need anything further.
28 April 2016
Enclosure with Registrar's letter of 28 April 2016: Text of registration form
used by Mr Lavery in May 2010
General Election May 2010
10
15
20
25
Register of Members’ Financial Interests
The main purpose of the Register of Members' Financial Interests is to provide
information of any financial interest or other material benefit which a
Member receives which might reasonably be thought by others to influence
his or her actions, speeches or votes in Parliament, or actions taken in his or
her capacity as a Member of Parliament. Registration of such interests is required
under the Resolutions of the House of 22 May 1974, 28 June 1993, 6 November l995,
24 July 1996, 14 May 2002, 9 February 2009 and 30 April 2009. For details of the
information which is required to be registered, please refer first to the explanatory
notes in each section of the form. Further, more detailed, guidance can be found in
the Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members (available from the Vote
Office and online). Copies of that document, and personal advice, can be obtained
from the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, House of
Commons (Ext. 3277 or 0311). For advice about the permissibility of donations,
please contact the Electoral Commission (020 7271 0616).
If there is not enough space in any section of this form for the information required,
additional sheets may be attached to it; but each such sheet should carry the
Member's signature.
Subsequent changes or additions to your entry must be notified to the Registrar
within four weeks of any change occurring.
30
Name (Block capitals, please):
IAN LAVERY
Constituency:
WANSBECK
IMPORTANT NOTES
1. Test for Registration
RECTIFICATION
29
The test for registration is not whether actions in Parliament will be influenced by
the interest, nor whether the interest provider intended to exercise influence, but
whether others might reasonably think that this might be the case.
2. Agreements for the provision of services
5
10
15
20
25
In accordance with the Resolutions of the House of 6 November 1995 and 14 May
2002, the following rules must be observed when submitting entries under
Categories 1, 2 and 3 of the Register.
Any Member entering into an agreement with an outside body which involves the
provision of services in the capacity of a Member of Parliament (otherwise than for
media work) must, in addition to making the appropriate entry in the Register, put
such agreement into writing and deposit a copy of the agreement for the provision
of services with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards who will make it
available for public inspection.
The written agreement should indicate the nature of the services to be provided,
should make it clear that Members are not required to take part in activities which
fall within the definition of lobbying for reward or consideration (see paragraphs 89
to 101 of the Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members) and must specify
the fees or benefits the Member is to receive in bands of up to £5,000; £5,001 to
£10,000; and thereafter in bands of £5,000.
A Member undertaking media work (e.g. journalism, broadcasting, speaking
engagements, media appearances, training) which is related to parliamentary affairs
need not deposit a copy of an agreement with the Parliamentary Commissioner for
Standards but must specify the fees or benefits received, in bands as above.
For guidance on the application of the rule regarding agreements for the provision
of services, see paragraphs 66 – 71 of the Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct
of Members.
Category 1
(Directorships)
1. DIRECTORSHIPS
30
See paragraphs 19 to 23 of the Guide to the Rules
Do you have, or expect to have, any remunerated directorships in any public
or private company?
Yes:
No: √
RECTIFICATION
30
Please tick the appropriate box. If yes, please list the names and addresses of the
companies in the details space below, briefly stating the nature of the business of
the company in each case.
Notes:
5
(i) Remuneration received in respect of work done in a Member's parliamentary
capacity should be indicated in bands of up to £5,000; £5,001 to £10,000; and
thereafter in bands of £5,000.
(ii) You should include directorships which are individually unremunerated but where
remuneration is paid through another company in the same group.
10
(iii) In this Category and in other categories, "remunerated" should be read as
including taxable expenses, allowances or other benefits.
Details
Name and address of company:
Nature of business:
15
Please list in respect of each payment:
The amount:
The nature of the work carried on in return for that payment:
The number of hours worked during the period to which that payment relates:
20
Name and address of person making the payment if different from above (you do
not need to disclose these if doing so would infringe legal or established professional
privilege):
Category 2
(Remunerated employment, office, profession etc)
2. REMUNERATED EMPLOYMENT, OFFICE, PROFESSION, ETC.
25
See paragraphs 24 to 26 of the Guide to the Rules.
RECTIFICATION
31
Do you have, or expect to have, any employment, office, trade, profession or
vocation (apart from membership of the House or ministerial office) for which
you are remunerated or in which you have any financial interest?
Yes:
5
No: √
Please tick the appropriate box. If yes, please set out the details below.
Notes:
(i) Remuneration received in respect of work done in a Member's parliamentary
capacity should be indicated in bands of up to £5,000; £5,001 to £10,000; and
thereafter in bands of £5,000.
10
(ii) Membership of Lloyd's should be registered under this Category. If you register
membership of Lloyd's you should also disclose the categories of insurance business
which you are underwriting.
Details
Please list in respect of each payment:
15
Name and address of source of remunerated employment:
Nature of the business:
The amount:
The nature of the work carried out in return for that payment:
The number of hours worked during the period to which the payment relates:
20
The name and address of the payer (you do not need to disclose these where doing
so would infringe legal or established professional privilege):
Note: Newly elected Members should register only payments received since 6 May
2010. Members who sat in the last Parliament are advised also to register payments
received during the Dissolution.
25
12. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 10 May 2016
Thank you for your letters of 27 April 2016. The information you provided is helpful.
Having considered it carefully I have some further questions which I think I might
be able to resolve more quickly through an interview rather than by
correspondence.
RECTIFICATION
5
10
15
20
25
32
However, before setting out my questions, I should first share with you the advice I
have received from the Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests. I enclose a copy
of the letters I have exchanged with her for information. As you can see, the Registrar
has told me that she believes she would, in 2010, have advised Members to register
redundancy payments relating to employment which had ended before their
election.
The rules were silent on whether Members had to register ex gratia and redundancy
payments and the Registrar noted that the registration form itself did not make
explicit that such payments required registration. However, she has also told me
that the published Registers for 2010 show that other new Members registered such
payments and that she has found evidence in the registration files that at least one
new Member was advised to do so when the question was raised. The Registrar has
told me that she would not have advised you to register a mortgage that had been
redeemed in 2007, given that you were first elected to the House in 2010.
The Registrar said that, based on the information in your letters of 7 April 2016, she
would have advised you to make a declaration when tabling an oral Question for
answer on 14 March 2013 and that she would not have advised declaration in either
of the debates cited.
I would now like to arrange a meeting with you to ensure that I have all the evidence
I require and to deal with questions arising from it. I would be grateful if you would
call my PA to arrange a convenient time to come to my office. You are welcome to
bring someone with you to the interview if you wish to do so but I will be expecting
you to respond personally to my questions. (Please tell when making the
appointment whether you will be accompanied.)
In our meeting, I will want to focus on the following issues:

Establishing a clear and evidenced time-line for all the relevant financial
transactions.

Exploring whether the Union’s 15% share in your property represented
an ongoing financial relationship with you after your election to
Parliament in May 2010.

Understanding the £85,426 shown in the Union’s 2013 accounts for
redundancy payments and how that relates to the sums you have
identified as attributable to you (i.e. £27,889.93 paid to you and £28,500
in respect of the redemption of the Union’s 15% share in your property).
It would be helpful to know how much tax and national insurance was
paid and whether this accounts fully for the balance of the £85,426.

The Land Register entries for your property—the steps taken to have the
Union removed from the register as a relevant lender and how the Union’s
15% share in the property was formalised.
30
35
RECTIFICATION
33
I would also like to understand better the relationship, if any, between the NUM (NA)
Provident and Benevolent Fund and the NUM (NA) Executive, and the reference
(attributed to you) in media reports about a ‘compensatory award’ linked to the
endowment policy attached to your mortgage.
5
10
I am grateful to you for your co-operation with my inquiry. I hope that this outline
of the topics I wish to explore will allow you to gather together any further evidence
you have, or might obtain, which would be relevant to my inquiry.
If you have any comments on the Registrar’s advice, or questions about any aspect
of my work, I would be happy to speak to you in the meantime. I would be grateful
if you would, in any case, contact my office as soon as possible to set up an interview
date. It is difficult to say quite how long we will need but I suggest we allow 90
minutes.
10 May 2016
13. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 7 July 2016
15
Thank you for our meeting last week, further to this please find enclosed
documentation as promised. I trust this will be sufficient to conclude your current
inquiry.
As always if I can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me.
7 July 2016
20
Enclosure 1: Letter from Trustee of the NUM (Northumberland Area)
Provident and Benevolent Fund, 23 June 2016
As a trustee/former trustee of the above fund, I have been asked to confirm the
procedure adopted to clear the Land Registry charge originally placed on the above
building in 1994.
25
In June 2015 we were informed by Mr Lavery that the charge on his property
[address given], was still in place, despite the fact that his mortgage agreement had
been settled in 2007. The trustees agreed that I would communicate with the Land
Registry in order to remove the charge. As I have stated, this should have been done
in 2007.
30
I completed the relevant documents and communicated with the Land Registry
resulting in the charge being removed. Please find documents attached.9
9
Copy of Land Registry forms DS1 & DS2 attached, evidencing application for removal of the charge on
Mr Lavery's property - facsimile not included to preserve confidentiality of address details
RECTIFICATION
34
I trust this meets with your approval.
[name redacted]
5
Enclosure 2: Extracts from NUM Northumberland Area Executive Committee
Meeting Minutes, dated 12 October 1951; 28 August 1952; 5 December 1975;
and 29 April 1977
[These documents provide evidence of approval by the Executive Committee of
previous property purchases.]10
Enclosure 3: Extract from NUM Northumberland Area Executive Committee
Meeting Minutes 13 May 2005
10
"It was agreed to invest in the purchase of 15% of the value of [Mr
Lavery's property address] with the valuation of £240,000.
The Secretary/President suggested that the legal document be drawn
up in order to legalise the aforementioned investment."
Enclosure 4: Email from [Financial Institution] to Mr Lavery, 18 June 2015
15
Good afternoon
Regarding your [name of institution] application.
20
Thank you for letting us know that your mortgage to National Union of Mineworkers
has been repaid. As the charge is still registered against your property (please see
points 6 and 7 in the C Register on the official copy attached) we are unable to
proceed until it has been removed. I would advise contacting them directly to have
this removed.
Enclosure 5: Legal advice obtained by Mr Lavery11
14. Statement from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 7 July 2016
25
I have fully co-operated with your investigation to the best of my ability. I remain of
the view that I have not breached any of the House Rules concerning declaring or
registering interests as they existed when I entered Parliament.
There are two issues raised in your investigation
10
The content of the extracts is not relevant to my inquiry
11
Content not reproduced as this evidence is not relevant to my inquiry and has not been used
RECTIFICATION
35
The mortgage
5
I cannot see why I should have had to register and/or declare this matter as it was
redeemed in 2O07 long before my election. The fact that a charge was not removed
until January 2016 (before the complaint) due to an oversight is not relevant—I
didn’t know it was still there.
My redundancy package
It is clear from the NUM accounts and annual returns that I received a redundancy
package.
I have told you what I was paid to me by way of redundancy payments.
10
15
I cannot fully explain the amounts in the union accounts I was not involved in their
preparation. My understanding is that the amount of £85,426 in 2013 included the
sum of £28,500 which represented the investment in my property being written off.
I do not know why it was only recorded in the accounts in 2013. Nor do I know what
the balance of £29,036.07 represents. I have not received it and have written twice
now to the union for further information but have yet to receive a response.
If I had been made redundant at any time after the 14th April 2015 then the rules
would have been explicit. Under Chapter 1 Clause 7(c) it provides for the
registration of redundancy and ex gratia payments and I would have complied with
this obligation.
20
25
The rules in 2010 did not contain a requirement to register redundancy or ex-gratia
payments.
You state in your letter dated the 10th May 2016 that the rules were silent on
whether Members had to register ex gratia and redundancy payments. Further, you
accept the registration form did not make it explicit that such payments required
registration. I think another and fairer way of expressing this would be to say that
in the absence of a specific rule there was no mandatory requirement to register a
redundancy payment.
I cannot see how it is right or proper that I should be considered to be in breach of
a rule that did not exist.
30
The fact that two other Members (of 227 new MPs in 2010) apparently sought
advice on registering payments from former employers and were advised to do so
cannot in the absence of a specific rule be said to create some sort of obligation on
other Members to do the same.
RECTIFICATION
36
I was unaware anyone else had sought advice on this point and/or had been given
advice to register redundancy payments. At the very least in these circumstances I
should be given the benefit of the doubt.
Mr Scully in his letter of complaint states:
5
10
15
“The main purpose of the Register is to provide information of any
financial interest or other material benefit which a Member receives
which might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her
actions, speeches, or votes in Parliament, or actions taken in his or her
capacity as a Member of Parliament.”
I am well known to be an ex miner from an ex mining area. It is a background of
which I am proud and would never seek to make any secret of. The idea that, in the
absence of a specific rule relating to redundancy payments, a payment in respect of
my well known past employment could possibly be ‘reasonably be thought by
others’ to influence what I say or do as a Member any more than any other past
employment relationship for any other Member of the House is frankly absurd.
I, therefore, respectfully suggest that I have not broken any rule of the House.
7 July 2016
15. Letter from Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 27 July 2016
20
Thank you for your letter of 7 July. I am sorry it has taken rather longer than I would
usually take to provide the transcript of a meeting, but I am now able to provide a
copy of our note of the meeting we had on 30 June.
25
I would be grateful if you would check the transcript carefully to ensure that it
accords with your recollection of our discussion. If wish to listen to the recording,
please contact [my Complaints Manager] and she will be able to arrange a time for
you to do that in my office. Otherwise, if you believe there are any factual
inaccuracies, please let me know. We covered a wide range of points; if there are any
on which you would like to provide further clarification, I would be happy to
consider that too before I reach my decision.
30
35
Finally, when we spoke, you said that you had written to the NUM to try to obtain
from them any records they have relating to your redundancy, including the
redemption of their 15% share in your property and the payment of your
redundancy entitlement in instalments. It would be helpful to have copies of any
material you have received from them or, if you are still waiting for a response, any
information you have able when they expect to respond formally to your request. I
hope that, once I have your response to this letter and any material from the NUM, I
will have all the information I need to decide how best to conclude this matter.
It would be most helpful to have your response to this letter by 16 August 2016.
RECTIFICATION
37
27 July 2016
16. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 12 August 2016
Thank you for your correspondence following our recent meeting and for attaching
the written transcript of this.
5
I have now had a chance to check over the document and am happy with its content
subject to one change as below;
Page 7, paragraph 5, final sentence. This should read “And what I can do is prove
what I have received.
I hope this meets with your approval.
10
15
20
I attach correspondence sent to [named redacted], Secretary NUM
(Northumberland Area) on 24 May 2016 in response to previous correspondence
from the same that an overpayment of redundancy had been made. In this I have
explicitly asked for full details of the claim to be provided.12
I attach another undated piece of correspondence that was sent to [the Secretary]
following up on the matter. Sadly I do not have the exact date this was sent although
it was after 24 May and before 30 June.13
I met with [the Secretary] on Thursday 30 June, incidentally the same day we had
met, to discuss the content of this correspondence. In this meeting I once again
requested the detail laid out in the enclosed and agreed to meet again to discuss. We
agreed at this meeting to enter into the process as outlined in the letter of 24 May.
As of today I have not been provided with the relevant information.
As ever, if I can be of any further assistance with your enquiries please do not
hesitate to contact me.
12 August 2016
25
17. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 25 August 2016
Thank you for your letter of 12 August. I am happy to make the one amendment to
the transcript you have suggested.
12
Text of that letter is not included as it relates to the alleged overpayment of redundancy and this is not
relevant to my decisions
13
Text of that letter is not included as it relates to the alleged overpayment of redundancy and is not
relevant to my decisions
RECTIFICATION
5
10
38
Thank you also for the copies of the correspondence you have sent to NUM
(Northumberland Area). As I am sure you will appreciate, the significance of the
information in these letters is not entirely clear without sight of the correspondence
which preceded them and/or the responses you have since received. I would,
therefore, be grateful if you would provide copies of those letters as well. As I hope
I have made clear previously, should any of this evidence prove not to be relevant, I
will not publish it at the end of my inquiry.
Unfortunately, I still do not have sufficient evidence on which to make a decision
about how to conclude this inquiry. I think it might also be helpful to summarise the
outcome of my work so far and then to set out the questions which I think still need
to be resolved.
Outcome of my work so far
15
20
25
When I began my inquiry in March 2016, I put to you the allegation that you had
failed to register redundancy payments made by the NUM in 2010, 2011, 2012 and
2013. I subsequently extended the scope of my inquiry to consider whether you had
also had a duty to register the financial relationship arising from the NUM’s financial
interest in your property. (I first understood this to be the relationship arising from
a mortgage arranged through the NUM Provident and Benevolent Fund. I now
understand there is another aspect to this, in the form of the NUM National
Executive’s ownership of 15% of the property for a period.) I am also considering,
as part of my inquiry, whether any of these interests gave rise to a requirement to
make declarations during parliamentary proceedings.
You have responded to these allegations and provided information about the
amounts and dates of receipt of your redundancy payments as well as information
about the NUM’s involvement in your mortgage and their 15% share in your
property. You have also set out clearly your view on the correct interpretation of the
House’s rules on the registration and declaration of interests.
You have told me that:

You received your redundancy entitlement in five separate payments
made between May 2010 and June 2013. These payments were made as
and when the union had the necessary resources, having had some cashflow problems.

You do not recognise the figure of £85,426 given in the union’s 2013
accounts in respect of the last redundancy payment; you have since
explained that you received £27,889.93 net of
30
35
—
the sum to redeem the union’s 15% share in your property (£28,500),
and
—
tax and national insurance contributions.
RECTIFICATION

Your mortgage with the NUM (NA) Provident and Benevolent Fund, which
had begun in 1994) came to an end in 2007, although their interest
continued to be shown in the Land Register when I began my inquiry in
March 2016. (You have told me that this error came to light when you
sought finance for a new kitchen.)

The NUM (NA) Executive held a 15% interest in your property between
2005 and 2013. (This interest was, in essence, an investment on their part
based on an assumption they would benefit from an uplift in property
values.)
5
10
15
39
Evidence
You told me when we met on 30 June that you do not have any paperwork setting
out the total amount of your redundancy payments and the arrangements to pay the
sum owed by instalments; and that you have no paperwork relating to the union’s
15% share in your property. You have, however, provided me with a considerable
volume of contextual material and a letter from one of the Trustees of the Provident
& Benevolent Fund, confirming that your mortgage agreement was settled in 2007
and that he is in communication with the Land Registry about removing the
benevolent fund as the mortgagee in the Land Register.
The matters on which I believe I still need to see some supporting evidence are:
20

An explanation of the £85,426 quoted in the NUM’s 2013 accounts. (I
understand from your letter of 24 May 2016 that you are in dispute with
them about whether you have received an overpayment. I should
emphasise that that is not a matter for me; I need only to establish
whether the rules required you to register the value of the payments
actually made. To this end, I need to understand the difference between
the figures you have provided and those appearing in the accounts.)

Confirmation of precisely when the NUM relinquished their 15% share in
your property.
25
30
35
I must emphasise again that I have not yet come to a view on whether or not you
have breached the Code of Conduct, and that I will include in the evidence I publish,
only that material which is relevant to my decisions on the alleged breaches of the
Code.
When we met, I suggested that I might approach the NUM direct if you were having
difficulty in obtaining the evidence that I need. Now that I have seen your letter to
them of 24 May, I understand that you may have some difficulty in providing that
evidence. If you are not able to secure the evidence for me by 21 September 2016, I
will approach the NUM direct, making clear that I need to ascertain what was paid
when and that, for the purposes of my inquiry, I do not need any information about
what should or should not have been paid.
RECTIFICATION
40
I hope that you will be able to clarify the outstanding issues shortly so that I am able
to bring my inquiry to a conclusion. I look forward to hearing from you.
25 August 2016
18. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 7 September 2016
5
Thank you for your letter dated 25 August 2016.
In this you advise two issues that you still require evidence on, in order to conclude
your current enquiries. Furthermore you advise that if I am unable to provide this
by 21 September you will contact the National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland Area) directly to seek an answer.
10
With this in mind please find enclosed correspondence I have sent to [the NUM
(Northumberland Area) Secretary] explaining the need for this information and
asking for his assistance.
I hope this is helpful.
7 September 2016
15
Enclosure with letter of 7 September 2016: Letter from Mr Lavery to the
Secretary, NUM (Northumberland Area), 31 August 2016
Further to our previous correspondence, I have been again contacted by the
Parliamentary Commissioner with regards to her ongoing investigation.
20
The Commissioner is seeking a breakdown of the figure of £85,426 itemised in the
2013 accounts attached to the AR21. Furthermore, she has requested to be supplied
with the date the Union formally redeemed its 15% interest in [address redacted].
The Commissioner has advised that if I am unable to obtain this detail from yourself
by 21 September then she herself will make contact with you directly to try to
expedite this.
25
I would be grateful if you could supply me with this information to try to conclude
the case with the Parliamentary Commissioner.
May I thank you for your continued assistance in this matter.
RECTIFICATION
41
19. Letter from the Commissioner to the Secretary, NUM (Northumberland
Area), 3 October 2016
5
10
I am writing to seek your assistance with my inquiry into an allegation of a breach
of the Code of Conduct for Members14 by Mr Ian Lavery MP. Before setting out the
specific information I require, I hope it will be helpful if I first explain a little about
my work and the rules that apply to my investigations.
My role is to investigate alleged breaches of the House of Commons Code of Conduct
for Members, where I am provided with sufficient evidence to justify beginning an
inquiry. My work is conducted in private and protected by parliamentary privilege
until such time as any report is published. At that point, all the relevant evidence,
including correspondence relating to the inquiry is usually placed in the public
domain.
I may make inquiries of third parties where it is relevant to do so. Mr Lavery is aware
that I am approaching you and of the information I am seeking.
15
20
I have seen Mr Lavery’s letters to you of 24 May and 31 August and one other,
undated, letter which Mr Lavery told me was sent sometime between 24 May and
30 June. My inquiry concerns an allegation about the disclosure of Mr Lavery’s
financial interests in accordance with the rules of the House of Commons. In order
to resolve that allegation, I need to establish the value of any financial transactions
between the Union and Mr Lavery after his election in May 2010. Mr Lavery has
provided a considerable amount of information to assist me with this matter but
there are two outstanding points on which I am seeking your assistance.
The first concerns the value of the transactions during 2013 and the second
concerns the Union’s interest in Mr Lavery’s property ([address redacted]).
25
It would be helpful if you would provide me with the following:

An explanation of the £85,462 quoted in the 2013 accounts as redundancy
paid to the ‘Past General Secretary’; how was this figure arrived at? (Mr
Lavery has told me that he received £27,889.93 as the final instalment of
his redundancy package and that a further £28,500 represented
redemption of the Union’s 15% interest in his property at [address
redacted]. This leaves approximately £29,000 unexplained.)

The date on which the Union relinquished their 15% share in the
property.
30
35
I understand from the correspondence I have seen that there is some dispute over
whether Mr Lavery has received an overpayment of redundancy. I should stress that
my interest is in the value of the transactions that took place, and not in the amounts
14
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmcode/1076/107601.htm
RECTIFICATION
42
that should or should not have been paid under the terms of Mr Lavery’s
redundancy.
5
It would be helpful to have any supporting evidence you are able to supply, for
example, copies of any paperwork relating to the calculation of the £85,462 figure
and a copy of any formal agreement between the Union and Mr Lavery concerning
the terms of the Union’s interest in his property and the redemption of that interest.
10
As my inquiries are protected by parliamentary privilege, I must ask that you do not
share the contents of this correspondence more widely than is strictly necessary in
order to collate the information requested and that you make clear the
confidentiality restrictions to anyone with whom you do share this matter.
15
I do not generally disclose the names of third parties when publishing my decision
at the end of an inquiry unless it is of particular relevance to the decision. In this
instance, I would not expect to disclose your personal details although I would make
clear in the published evidence that I had sought evidence from the NUM
(Northumberland Area) and set out the extent of the evidence provided.
It would be helpful to have this information at your earliest convenience and, if at
all possible, by no later than 17 October 2016. However, please let me know if you
need additional time to respond. I enclose a copy of the Commissioner’s Information
Note15 by way of background information.
20
3 October 2016
20. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 3 October 2016
Thank you for your letter of 7 September, which I received on 13 September 2016,
enclosing a copy of your letter to the Secretary of NUM (Northumberland Area).
25
30
I have today written direct to the Secretary seeking the information which I
requested in my letter to you of 25 August. I enclose a copy for your information. I
will share their response with you in due course.
When you wrote to me on 12 August you provided copies of two letters you had sent
to the NUM. When I responded, I explained that without sight of the preceding
correspondence, the significance of those letters was not clear and I asked for copies
of any relevant earlier letters and of the responses you had subsequently received
from the NUM. I would be grateful if you would provide that material as soon as
possible.
3 October 2016
15
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/pcfs/New%20Website%20Documents/PCS-informationNote.pdf
RECTIFICATION
43
21. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 13 October 2016
Thank you for your letter dated 3 October 2016. Please find enclosed copies of
correspondence from [the Secretary] that you have requested.16
I hope this is helpful.
5
13 October 2016
22. Letter from the Secretary, National Union of Mineworkers
(Northumberland Area) to the Commissioner, 28 October 2016
10
15
Thank you for your recent letter. Mr Lavery was entitled to receive 18 months'
salary as a redundancy payment in the sum of [£107,000]. Unfortunately due to a
severe cash flow problem the NUM Northumberland Area was unable to pay
Mr Lavery that sum immediately.
He was paid over a period of three years as and when the Union was able to recover
its monies from investments. The delay was no fault of Mr Lavery’s and it obviously
would have been much better if we had been able to complete his payment upon his
redundancy from the Union. There were insufficient funds available to do that.
Dealing with Mr Lavery’s redundancy payments. I have forwarded an email letter
from our previous accountants, which hopefully explains the payment calculations,
including the overpayment.17 Unfortunately I did not have sight of that letter until
this year.
20
25
I enclose a letter, which I sent to Mr. Lavery with his final payment cheque. In this
correspondence I explain the revaluation of house, and what I understood he had
been previously paid. The Union relinquished its 15% share in the property on 24
May 2013.
When I made the final calculation on 24 May 2013, I understood the balance of his
redundancy payment to be [£76,000 gross], to make his total [£107,000].
There was then added a payment for employers National Insurance that increased
the payment, for the accounts and the AR21, to [£85,462]. I enclose an email from
the accountant confirming this.
If you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact me.
30
28 October 2016
16
Text of that letter is not included as it relates to the alleged overpayment of redundancy and this is not
relevant to my decisions
17
Text of email not included as it is not relevant to my decisions
RECTIFICATION
44
Enclosure: Letter from the NUM to Mr Lavery, 24 May 2013
Please find enclosed a cheque in the sum of [£27,889.93] as full and final payment
of your severance pay.
5
Due to the time you have had to wait the Executive Committee decided to write off
your loan account of [£10,919.32] and revalue the house investment to reflect the
current market value of your property.
With the [£31,000] you have already received the total sum reflects the fact that you
have now paid back all monies owing to the Union from your previously agreed
accounts.
10
We have deducted Tax and N.I. at the rate of 20% you will need to speak to your
accountant regarding any further tax and N.I. that may be due.
May I take this opportunity of thanking you for your patience and for your
considerable contribution over many years to the National Union of Mineworkers.
23. Letter from the Commissioner to the Registrar, 9 November 2016
15
20
25
In April I sought your advice on a matter concerning Mr Ian Lavery MP and the
registration of his financial interests. You may recall I am investigating whether it
was contrary to the rules of the House that Mr Lavery did not register a financial
interest arising from redundancy payments he had received from the National Union
of Mineworkers (Northumberland Area) after his election in May 2010. I have also
been making enquiries of Mr Lavery concerning his mortgage arrangement with the
NUM.
I am writing now to seek your advice on whether my conclusion on one specific
aspect of the original allegations would alter any of the advice you gave in your letter
of 28 April. I would also welcome your advice on a further point arising from new
evidence obtained since I first sought your advice.
Mr Lavery’s redundancy payments
I will deal first with one aspect of the inquiry on which I have now reached a
conclusion, namely whether the rules of the House required Mr Lavery to register
the redundancy payments he received between 2010 and 2013.
30
35
In accordance with my usual practice, I shared your letter of 28 April 2016 with Mr
Lavery and gave him the opportunity to comment on it. I have considered your
advice and Mr Lavery’s response to it very carefully. (You will recall that you told
me that you would have advised Mr Lavery to register the redundancy payments if
he had sought your advice at the time, acknowledging that the rules did not then
make that an explicit requirement and that the registration form would not have
prompted Mr Lavery to make such a disclosure.)
RECTIFICATION
5
45
In my view, the advice you would have given would have been sound and absolutely
consistent with the purpose of the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
However, Mr Lavery did not seek advice, seeing no reason to do so. While at least
two other Members did seek advice, it seems likely that many others did not. After
careful consideration, I have decided that Mr Lavery was not in breach of the rules
by not registering his redundancy payments.
I am, of course, aware that the rules were updated in May 2015 and that the Guide
to the Rules now deals specifically with the registration of redundancy payments.
10
15
While the registration and declaration requirements are overlapping and
interdependent, the rules of the House do require the declaration of certain nonregistrable interests. I would, therefore, be grateful if you would now review the
advice you gave in your letter regarding the declaration of those payments when Mr
Lavery tabled an oral Question on 14 March 2013. I see no reason to revisit your
advice about the proceedings on 28 October 2014 and 29 January 2015, as they took
place more than 12 months later than Mr Lavery’s last redundancy payment was
made.
New evidence
20
25
I have had extensive correspondence with Mr Lavery and with a third party since
April and I enclose with this letter copies of only those letters which are directly
relevant to the new issue on which I would now like your advice.
In the course of my enquiries to reconcile the figures Mr Lavery had initially
provided with those published in the NUM (Northumberland Area) accounts, Mr
Lavery told me that the union had previously had a 15% share in his property. Mr
Lavery told me that the NUM had initially sought to buy the property as an
investment and, when he had declined that offer, the union had instead acquired a
15% interest in it. Mr Lavery bought out the NUM’s interest in the property by way
of an abatement of his final redundancy payment, which was made on 24 May 2013.
I would appreciate the following information:

the advice you would have given Mr Lavery about the need or otherwise
to register the fact that the NUM (Northumberland Area) had a 15% stake
in his property until 24 May 2013;

the advice you would have given Mr Lavery about making a declaration of
that interest when he tabled an oral Question on 14 March 2013.
30
35
I would welcome any other information which you consider relevant to the above
matters, and be grateful to have your advice by 24 November 2016. I have, in the
meantime, written to Mr Lavery to share with him my conclusion on the registration
of his redundancy payments and to provide him with a copy of this letter.
RECTIFICATION
46
9 November 2016
24. Letter from the Registrar to the Commissioner, 18 November 2016
5
10
15
Thank you for your letter of 9 November, and its enclosures. You ask what advice I
would have given Mr Lavery about disclosing his interests in the light of the new
information now available.
Mr Lavery’s circumstances were unusual. It seems that, even though he had ceased
to work for the NUM in 2010, until June 2013 the union owned 15% of his home and
owed him part of his redundancy award, which was paid in stages between May
2010 and June 2013. There was therefore a continuing financial relationship. In
addition [the Secretary's] letter of 24 May 2013 refers to a loan which was written
off in June 2013.
In such complicated circumstances, if Mr Lavery had approached me I would have
had a conversation with him in order to ensure that any advice I gave was based on
an understanding of the facts. Without such a conversation, I have done my best, on
the basis of the information you provided, to say what advice this office would have
given at the time.
Should Mr Lavery have registered the NUM’s part-ownership of his house?
20
25
In your letter you have said that you had reached the view that Mr Lavery did not
breach the rules by not registering his redundancy payment in 2010. I understand
and accept this. Nevertheless, your letter provides evidence of a more complex
financial relationship with the NUM. On this basis I believe that if Mr Lavery had
consulted me in 2010 on whether to register this relationship - and particularly the
union’s 15% stake in his home - I would have advised him, in the interests of
openness, to record it in the register, under the miscellaneous category. If he did not
register or declare this, other Members and the general public would have thought
that his financial relationship with the NUM had ended in 2010 when in fact it
continued for three years. Registering the information would have made it available
on a permanent basis to Mr Lavery’s fellow MPs, and also to his constituents and to
the general public.
30
My advice is based upon paragraphs 11 and 12 of the 2009 Guide to the Rules:
35
"11. The main purpose of the Register of Members' Financial Interests
is "to provide information of any financial interest or other material
benefit which a Member receives which might reasonably be thought
by others to influence his or her actions, speeches or votes in
Parliament, or actions taken in his or her capacity as a Member of
Parliament." The registration form specifies twelve Categories of
registrable interests… Apart from the specific rules, there is a more
general obligation upon Members to keep the overall definition of the
Register's purpose in mind when registering their interests.
RECTIFICATION
47
12. The purpose of registration is openness. Registration of an interest
does not imply any wrongdoing."
In my view others might reasonably have considered a continued relationship with
the NUM to influence Mr Lavery’s actions or words.
5
10
Under the rules which applied at the time, Members did not have to give detail when
registering interests under the Miscellaneous heading. The following wording (or
something similar) would have been sufficient:
"I left my position as General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers in 2010 but my severance package has not yet been finalised.
In the meantime I receive benefits from the NUM, including: …"
Should Mr Lavery have declared the fact that the NUM part owned his house when
tabling his Question which was answered on 14 March 2013?
15
20
25
30
35
The rules of the House require Members to consider on a case by case basis whether
any particular occasion requires them to disclose an interest they may have.
Paragraph 74 of the 2009 Guide to the Rules said:
"74. It is the responsibility of the Member, having regard to the rules of
the House, to judge whether a financial interest is sufficiently relevant
to a particular debate, proceeding, meeting or other activity to require
a declaration. The basic test of relevance should be the same for
declaration as it is for registration of an interest; namely, that a
financial interest should be declared if it might reasonably be thought
by others to influence the speech, representation or communication in
question. A declaration should be brief but should make specific
reference to the nature of the Member's interest."
I have already said that I would have advised Mr Lavery on this occasion to declare
his redundancy payments. You have forwarded me Mr Lavery’s letter to you of
11 April which suggests that he did not accept this. My advice was based on the fact
that these payments (and the part ownership of Mr Lavery’s house) undoubtedly
amounted to a financial interest, which appears to have lasted until 2013. It was for
Mr Lavery to judge, within the rules set by the House, on whether the interest was
sufficiently relevant to need declaration. Members often ask for our advice on such
matters and I have set out here the advice I believe I would have given.
In his question of 14 March 2013 Mr Lavery did not refer by name to the NUM, which
was the source of his financial interest. If he had made such a reference at any time,
I would certainly have advised declaring that interest. Nevertheless, if asked, I would
I think still have advised Mr Lavery, when tabling this question, to tick the box to
indicate that he had an interest. That was because he was speaking not of a
constituency concern but of the future of deep mine coalmining, and the economic
wellbeing of miners in another area of the country. It seems to me that others might
RECTIFICATION
48
reasonably consider this question to have been influenced by his continued
relationship with the NUM.
5
10
15
Members who tick the box when tabling a question are expected to make a note of
the nature of their interest, if not obvious. I would have advised Mr Lavery to make
a note along the lines I suggested above for the register.
Finally, Mr Lavery says in his letter that others would have expected him to raise his
question of 14 March 2013 because he represented an area with a history of deep
coal mining. I agree; but the rules of the House required him also to consider
whether others might reasonably consider his financial interest to influence him. I
would have advised Mr Lavery to bear in mind the expected views of other Members,
and also those of the public who might come to hear the debate or to read the record
of it in Hansard, which could be much later. I would also have said that by declaring
an interest a Member can help to avoid suspicions of a secret motive. For all these
reasons I would have advised him to declare an interest on this occasion.
I have set out above the advice that I believe we would have given. I accept that you
will now need to reach your own view on whether Mr Lavery breached the rules of
the House by not registering or declaring this interest.
18 November 2016
25. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 21 November 2016
20
25
When I wrote to you on 9 November 2016, I said I had sought further advice from
the Registrar. I have received her response and a copy is enclosed for your
information.
Before I reach a decision on the remaining allegations I am investigating, I would
like to give you the opportunity to comment on the Registrar’s advice. As you can
see, she has told me she would have advised you, if you had sought her opinion on
whether to register/declare the fact that the NUM had a 15% share in [your
property], to:

register your continuing relationship with NUM (Northumberland Area)
and particularly the union’s 15% stake in your home, under the
miscellaneous category; and

make a declaration, by indicating a relevant interest, when tabling your
question of 14 March 2013.
30
35
The Registrar has explained, with reference to the rules, the basis on which she
would have given that advice. She has also underlined the purposes of registration
and declarations, and she has, I think helpfully, underlined that such disclosures do
not imply any wrongdoing.
RECTIFICATION
49
I asked for your comments on my last letter by 24 November. In view of this new
evidence, which I would like you to consider before I reach any conclusions, I would
be happy to receive any comments you wish to make on either my letter of 9
November or this one, by 5 December 2016.
5
21 November 2016
26. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 5 December 2016
Thank you for your letter of 21 November 2016 with the Registrar’s further advice
the contents of which I note. I have prepared this response in consultation with my
legal advisers including my counsel.
10
15% interest in my home
I do not accept that I was required under the 2010 rules to register this matter for
the following reasons:
a)
15
the interest did not constitute remuneration from employment
concurrent with my being an MP. My employment with the NUM ended
prior to my becoming an MP;
b) I do not accept that this interest was covered by Category 11 which
covered miscellaneous interests which might reasonably be thought by
others to influence my actions as,
20
25
30
35
i)
the interest in my property was purchased by the NUM back in 2005,
five years before my election. It was an investment by them in a
property that I already owned. I gained no benefit from it other than
the receipt of money back in 2005. Given I received this money long
before my election I cannot see how it could possibly be said to
influence my actions five or more years later;
ii) as you are aware, I was entitled to a redundancy severance payment
on leaving my employment with the NUM which, as per the letter
dated the 7th January 2015 from H2H Accountancy Ltd, amounted to
£107,000. As you are also aware, as a result of the union’s financial
circumstances in 2010, they were unable to pay me this or any
amount at that time. Consequently, far from receiving any benefit
from the union after my election as an MP, I was a net creditor. They
owed me money. I do not understand Category 11 as requiring me to
register anything in these circumstances;
iii) subsequently, as is also confirmed in the letter from H2H
Accountancy Limited, the 15% ownership of my house was written
off as part of my redundancy package which you have now accepted
I was not required to enter in the register. This being the case, I
RECTIFICATION
50
cannot see why the Registrar (who accepts your view regarding the
redundancy) nevertheless thinks that part of that redundancy
payment should have been registered;
5
iv) the Registrar says I should have said in an entry to the register words
to the effect that,
“I left my position as General Secretary of the National Union of
Mineworkers in 2010 but my severance package has not yet been
finalised. In the meantime I receive benefits from the NUM including …”
10
15
20
Had I done this it would have been incorrect. My package had been
finalised. All that remained was for it to be paid. Whilst the delay in
payment of the redundancy and its payment in stages may have been,
as the Registrar puts it, ‘unusual’, the payments whenever and
however received were associated with my previously agreed
redundancy package. Further, there was good reason for the delay
related to the union’s finances. It would be grossly unfair if my being
prepared to be flexible and accommodate my former employer’s
financial circumstances were to be used against me. Had my ex
employer been more financially secure the delayed payments would
never have occurred and there would have been no issue to be
considered by the Registrar.
I have maintained throughout that I looked at the rules as they existed in 2010 and
decided not to seek advice from the Registrar because there was no reference to the
need to register redundancies.
25
30
35
It seems to me that the Registrar is working on hypotheticals—‘if Mr Lavery had
approached me I would have ...’. The fact is the rules did not require me to approach
her and/or declare this matter and, after giving the matter considerable thought, I
didn’t approach her.
The Registrar says that ‘in my view others might reasonably have considered a
continued relationship with the NUM to influence Mr Lavery’s actions or words’. I
simply do not accept this.
I understand the registration of interest rules are there to ensure that when an MP
carries their Parliamentary duties, the public and their colleagues are aware of any
possible conflict of interest based on their personal circumstances, interests etc. I
fully accept that this is important. What I do not accept it that my termination
package and other financial arrangements with my former employer created any
conflict of interest.
I would ask you to consider the content of the question I asked.
RECTIFICATION
51
“The Minister is very much aware of the situation at Daw Mill colliery, where 650
miners who have given their lives to the coal mining industry are facing uncertainty
with regard to redundancy payments. Will he give a commitment to do everything in
his power to ensure that these men receive their entitlements in full?”
5
10
I cannot see how anyone could seriously think that I was influenced to ask this
question based on my outstanding redundancy entitlement from the NUM and/or
their previous investment in my property. I would not gain anything personally from
this question which has nothing to do with Northumberland NUM as the colliery in
question was in the West Midlands.
The Minister’s response ¡s also important,
“There are few in this House who can match the hon, Gentleman’s understanding,
knowledge and support for the coal industry. I cannot match it, but what I can match
is his determination to do right by the workers there …”
15
20
25
The Minister clearly knew my background and my motive for asking the question.
No-one would reasonably consider that I had a secret ulterior motive based on my
outstanding entitlements from my previous employment with the NUM which
crystallised before I became an MP. I cannot think of any person in the House who
does not/did not know that I am an ex miner and official of the NUM. Indeed, I have
always referred to my past when I have asked questions relating to mining (which
used to be but no longer is a big employer in my constituency). Mining is my
background and I am proud of it. I do not hide it in any way. I have and will continue
to speak out for mining and miners whenever I consider it useful.
The Registrar cannot point to any rule that clearly required me to register or declare
either my redundancy package or that part which constituted the 15% interest in
my property acquired back in 2005. What she does cite is para 74 of the 2009 Guide
to the Rules which said,
“74. It is the responsibility of the Member, having regard to the rules of the House, to
judge whether a financial interest is sufficiently relevant to a particular debate,
proceeding, meeting or other activity to require a declaration.”
30
35
She goes on to say it was for me to judge whether within the rules set by the House,
the interest was sufficiently relevant to need declaration. I did consider this and
could not see how it was relevant. The fact is that the continued relationship with
the NUM was solely based on my past employment prior to my becoming an MP and
was only ongoing because of my being understanding of the union’s financial
position.
I trust that, given the historical nature of this matter occurring nearly seven years
ago, that you will be able to conclude, as with your finding regarding the nondeclaration of the redundancy, that my not registering or declaring an interest
RECTIFICATION
52
related to my former employer’s interest in my home—which was part of that
redundancy—was not in breach of the rules of the House as they existed in 2010.
5 December 2016
27. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 14 December 2017
5
10
15
20
Thank you for your letter of 5 December, which I received on 8 December. I said
when I wrote to you on 21 November that I wanted to give you the opportunity to
comment on the Registrar’s advice before reaching a decision on the remaining
allegations.
I will give careful consideration to the points you have raised and write to you again
as soon as I have done so. In the meantime, I hope it will be helpful to underline the
decision of which I notified you on 9 November 2016, i.e. that I do not uphold
Mr Scully’s allegation that the non-registration of your redundancy payments was a
breach of paragraph 13 of the Code of Conduct for Members.
The issue I am still considering concerns whether the rules of the House required
the registration of the ongoing relationship arising from the purchase by the NUM
(Northumberland Area) of a 15% share in [your property] in 2005, which came to
an end when you bought out the NUM’s interest in May 2013. I am also giving
consideration to whether the rules of the House required you to declare a relevant
financial interest when you tabled an oral Question on 14 March 2013.
At this stage, I cannot be sure whether there is are any further enquiries which I
need to make before reaching my decision. I will write to you again as soon as I am
able, which I do not expect be before the end of this month.
14 December 2017
25
30
28. Letter from the Commissioner to the Secretary, National Union of
Mineworkers (Northumberland Area), 12 January 2017
I had thought, after receiving your letter of 28 October 2016 that I would not need
to trouble you again in connection with my inquiry concerning the conduct of Mr Ian
Lavery MP. I am sorry therefore that I do now have some follow-up questions, with
which I hope you will be able to assist me. My questions involve one point of
clarification about the NUM’s investment in [his property] and one new issue,
arising from the letter from H2H Accountancy dated 7 January 2015, which you
kindly forwarded to me in October 2016.
[Address redacted]
35
I have seen in an extract from the Minutes of the Northumberland Area Executive
Committee Meeting held on Friday, 13 May 2005, that
RECTIFICATION
53
“It was agreed to invest in the purchase of 15% of the value of [address
redacted] with the value being [redacted].
The Secretary/President suggested that the legal document be drawn
up in order to legalise the aforementioned investment.”
5
It would be helpful if you could provide a copy of any documentary evidence which
now exists concerning the investment the NUM (Northumberland Area) made in
[Mr Lavery's property] in 2005.
New issue
10
[The correspondence you previously provided refers] to a loan of £10,919.32 to
Mr Lavery which was “written off”. I would be most grateful if you would provide the
following information about that loan.

When the loan was made, for what purpose and on what terms (amount,
rate of interest, term of loan, etc.).

Whether those terms were comparable with the market rate at the time and
if they were not, whether they were set at a preferential rate.

When the decision was made to write off the loan.

When that decision was communicated to Mr Lavery.
15
I am copying this letter to Mr Lavery and will, as you are aware, share with him a
copy of your response.
20
It would be helpful to have this information at your earliest convenience and, if at
all possible, by no later than 26 January 2017. However, please let me know if you
need additional time to respond.
12 January 2017
29. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 12 January 2017
25
30
Thank you for your letter of 5 December. I have reviewed carefully the evidence I
have gathered in the course of my inquiry and given very close consideration to the
points you have raised and to the advice I have received from the Registrar.
I am writing to let you know that I have today put some further questions to the
NUM (Northumberland Area). A copy of my letter to [the Secretary] is enclosed. I
think the information I am seeking from him is clear but I thought it would be fair to
explain in more detail to you the reason for seeking that information. In order to do
that, I must first explain my emerging conclusions.
RECTIFICATION
54
Conclusions so far
As I explained in my letter of 9 November 2016, I have already decided that it would
not be fair to find the non-registration of your redundancy payments to be a breach
of paragraph 13 of the Code of Conduct.
5
I have also decided that, given the mortgage provided via the NUM (Northumberland
Area) Provident and Benevolent Fund terminated in 2007, the question of you
registering the terms of that mortgage did not arise.
Your letter of 5 December/response to the Registrar’s advice
10
15
You have seen and commented on the Registrar’s letter to me, in which she explains
that she would – had you sought her advice – have recommended registering the
NUM’s part-ownership of [your home] under the miscellaneous category of the
Register of Members’ Financial Interests. She notes that by not registering or
declaring this, other Members and the general public would have thought your
financial relationship with the NUM had ended in 2010 when, in fact, it continued
for another three years. I have considered carefully your comments about the
Registrar’s recommendation.
You say that the interest did not constitute remuneration from employment
concurrent with your being an MP.
20
I do not consider that this is relevant; the Registrar recommended registration
under the Miscellaneous category. The question of whether or not the NUM’s
investment was remuneration for employment is not part of the criteria for
registration in that category.
You do not accept that this interest was relevant to the Miscellaneous category for
four reasons which I summarise below:
25
a)
30
b) You were entitled to a redundancy payment in 2010, which was paid over
a period of three years because of the NUM’s cash flow problems, making
you a net creditor.
c)
The interest was purchased by the NUM in 2005, and you gained no
benefit other than receipt of the money they paid to you in 2005 – long
before you became an MP.
You redeemed the 15% interest from the NUM as part of your redundancy
package and, given I have accepted that non-registration of the
redundancy package was not a breach of the rules, you do not see why this
part of the redundancy package should have been registered
RECTIFICATION
55
d) You take issue with the form of words the Registrar says she might have
recommended you use to register the interest. You say
“the Registrar says I should have said in an entry to the register
words to the effect that, “I left my position as General Secretary of the
National Union of Mineworkers in 2010 but my severance package has
not yet been finalised. In the meantime I receive benefits from the NUM
including….” Had I done this it would have been incorrect. My
package had been finalised. All that remained was for it to be paid.
Whilst the delay in the payment of the redundancy and its payment
in stages may have been, as the Registrar puts it, “unusual”, the
payments whenever and however received were associated with my
previously agreed redundancy package….”
5
10
15
20
25
30
I will deal with these points in turn but hope it is helpful to say first that I regard the
relationship between you and the NUM as a result of the NUM’s ownership of a 15%
share in [your property] as entirely separate from the settlement of your
redundancy entitlement. The agreement to sell 15% of the property to the NUM was
made before the question of redundancy arose, and it could in principle have been
redeemed completely separately from the settlement of your redundancy package.
a)
b) This is not relevant; I have already explained that while I consider the
Registrar’s recommendation about registering your redundancy
payments to be sound advice, I have decided that it would not be fair to
treat non-registration as a breach of the rules. This is also not relevant
because the rules do not ask Members to balance debts against credits
when considering registration of an interest in the Miscellaneous
category.
c)
35
40
You told me on 27 April 2016 that there were no terms attached to the
NUM’s purchase of a 15% share in [address redacted]. As a result of the
agreement, the NUM part-owned your home. Many people who part-own
their home will pay rent for the portion which they do not own. You did
not have to do this, nor was any part of your home designated for NUM
use. This was of benefit to you and your family between 2005 and 2013.
The mechanism by which you bought out the NUM’s 15% interest in your
property is not relevant. The fact that you redeemed their interest in your
property through an offset against your redundancy entitlement does not
make the 15% interest “part of that redundancy package”.
d) The Registrar said on a previous occasion that she would have advised
you to register your redundancy package. I do not doubt that she would
have done this if you had asked for her advice in 2010. Given that it would
have been good advice, it seems likely that if the Registrar had been aware
of the NUM’s share in [your property], the Registrar’s advice on that
narrower point would have been framed in the context of her previous
advice about your redundancy package. It is not your willingness to defer
RECTIFICATION
5
56
the settlement of your redundancy package that leads to the advice that
you should have registered the interest arising from the NUM’s ownership
of 15% of [your property]. You could, in principle, have redeemed their
15% share before the NUM made the final payment of your redundancy
entitlement.
Emerging conclusions
10
15
On balance, I consider that the rules of the House did require you between May 2010
and May 2013 - to register in the Miscellaneous category the financial relationship
which the NUM’s continued ownership of 15% of [the property] represented. Like
the Registrar, I consider that, by not registering this, other Members and members
of the public would have thought that you had no continuing financial relationship
with the NUM when that was not the case. I also consider that others might
reasonably have thought that that relationship would influence your words and
actions as a Member.
The absence of a record of the NUM’s ownership of 15% of [your property] in the
Land Register meant another opportunity for that information to be in the public
domain was not taken. However, even if it had been so registered, that would not
itself have satisfied the rules of the House.
Enquiry to NUM (Northumberland Area)
20
25
As you will understand from the above, I am minded to find the non-registration of
the NUM’s 15% interest in your property to be a breach of paragraph 13 of the Code
of Conduct. It is, therefore, important that I resolve any loose ends concerning that
matter. This is the reason for my request to [the NUM (Northumberland Area)
Secretary] for sight of any documents which the NUM still hold relating to the
Union’s share in the ownership of [your property].
You will see that I have also raised with the NUM the question of a loan which H2H
Accountancy refer to as having been “written off”. This is a new issue of which I was
not previously aware.
30
35
If you had had a loan prior to 7 May 2010 on preferential terms and if that loan was
not settled until after your election to Parliament, this might also represent a
financial benefit - separate from your redundancy entitlement - which might have
required registration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in the
Miscellaneous category. If, on the other hand, the loan was given on terms equivalent
to those commercially available from other providers, it is unlikely that registration
would have been required.
Subject to the response from the NUM (Northumberland Area), the arguments set
out above lead me to the provisional conclusion that these interests should have
been declared when you tabled your Question which was answered on 14 March
2013. Declarations are made for the benefit of all those listening to and/or reading
RECTIFICATION
57
transcripts of the proceedings. While other Members may be well aware of your
background in the mining industry and of your links to the NUM, members of the
public or those coming to the record of proceedings at a later date may not be
equally well informed.
5
Next step
I will write to you again when I have the NUM’s response to my letter. In the
meantime, I would be happy to consider any comments you wish to make on the
above.
12 January 2017
10
30. Letter from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 26 January 2017
Thank you for your letter of 12th January 2017 advising me of further evidence
being sought from the National Union of Mineworkers (Northumberland Area) and
your emerging conclusions.
l5% Interest in [address redacted]
15
20
25
30
I feel it extremely important to your investigation that it be noted that on cessation
of my employment with the union [the new Secretary] was employed with a specific
remit to wind the Union down. By 2010 the Union had no working collieries in its
area and its involvement in industrial disease claims was on the wane.
Part of [the Secretary's] remit was to liquidate the Union's assets and it was that
process that was the source of the staggered payment of redundancy to myself.
Clearly the Union's interest in my property would have been the simplest asset to
liquidate but it is important to understand that it was up to the Union not me to
decide when to dispose of this asset and they (not me) chose to do so in 2013.
I have throughout this investigation maintained that I was unable to reconcile the
difference in the figures provided by the union in the AR21 of 2013 and the amount
of money received by myself. It has become clear that this was due to the Union
redeeming their share of my property.
As I have previously advised I have never had a formal calculation of my redundancy
provided to me and I have accepted the payments received in good faith. That the
Union chose to account for their redemption of their 15% share in my property in
the 2013 accounts was outside of my control.
Loan Account from the NUM
My understanding of the so called "loan account" is that it was simply an accounting
term used to describe miscellaneous payments made during my duties as General
RECTIFICATION
5
58
Secretary of the Northumberland Area and as National President of the Union. From
recollection these were generally payments made on maintenance and upkeep of
my vehicle which was used to travel on a regular basis on national and area Union
business including but not limited to travel between my home and the National
Union Offices in Barnsley.
As the person who prepared the accounts until 2010 I can categorically state that
there was no "loan" between myself and the Union. How the Union chose or was
advised to account for the miscellaneous payments after my departure is again a
matter outside of my control.
10
I did however challenge the reference to a "loan" with the Union on receiving my
final payment (when it was recorded as having been written off) and I was advised
that it did not matter how it was recorded as they were not seeking repayment.
26 January 2017
15
31. Letter from the Secretary NUM (Northumberland Area) to the
Commissioner, 26 January 2017
Thank you for your recent letter. In relation to [Mr Lavery's property], it would
appear that although the investment was agreed, no formal agreement was set up.
The Union recovered the 15% investment in the sum of £28,500, which Mr Lavery
agreed to pay back from his final redundancy payment, in 2013.
20
25
30
New Issue
The "loan" of £10,919.32 that was written off in 2013, was in fact a "loan account"
which had been built up over a period of time. It was expenditure that the
accountants deemed to be "personal". It is fair to say that Mr Lavery disputed the
accountants' interpretation of whether the bulk of the expenditure under the
heading "loan account" was in fact "personal". I enclose a copy of the letter sent to
him concerning the loan account which I am sure will explain that.18
As I pointed out in my previous correspondence, Mr Lavery had to wait three years
to receive all of his redundancy payment. The Union decided, as a result of that
lengthy wait and the fact that there was a dispute over some of the expenditure, to
write off the loan account. That was done in 2013 at the time of his final redundancy
payment and a copy of a letter sent to him is enclosed.
I hope this helps to explain the issues you raise.
26 January 2016
18
Enclosure not included; detail within it not relied upon
RECTIFICATION
59
Enclosure 1: Letter from Secretary NUM (Northumberland Area) to Mr Ian
Lavery MP, 24 May 2013
Please find enclosed a cheque in the sum of £27,889.93 as full and final payment of
your severance pay.
5
10
Due to the time you have had to wait the Executive Committee decided to write off
your loan account of £10,919.32 and revalue the house investment to reflect the
current market value of your property.
With the £31,000 you have already received the total sum reflects the fact that you
have now paid back all monies owing to the Union from your previously agreed
accounts.
We have deducted Tax and N.I. at the rate of 20%. You will need to speak to your
accountant regarding any further tax and N.I. that may be due.
May I take this opportunity of thanking you for your patience and for your
considerable contribution over many years to the National Union of Mineworkers.
15
24 May 2013
32. Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 30 January 2017
Thank you for your letter of 26 January 2017. I also received a reply from [the
Secretary] on behalf of the NUM (Northumberland Area) on Friday of last week. I
enclose a copy of [his] reply for your information.
20
I explained in my last letter my emerging thinking on the question of whether the
rules of the House required you to register a financial interest arising from the
NUM’s continued ownership of 15% of [your property] between May 2010 and May
2013 and whether the rules also required you to declare an interest when you tabled
the Question which was answered on 14 March 2013.
25
In your most recent letter, you say that it was for the Union to decide when to
liquidate its interest in [the property] and that they chose not to do so until 2013,
when they accounted for the redemption of their interest in your property by
offsetting a sum against your redundancy payment. While I have no reason to doubt
this account, it does not alter my view that between May 2010 and May 2013 a
financial relationship existed between you and the NUM. (Nothing turns on this
point but it seems to me that if you had wished to do so, you might have sought to
terminate the relationship by offering to buy back from the NUM their stake in
[address redacted].)
30
35
Taking into account the information you and the NUM (Northumberland Area) have
provided about the ‘loan account’ I do not see any need to pursue that issue any
RECTIFICATION
60
further at this stage. (If I do find that further enquiries are needed, I will let you know
as soon as possible and give you appropriate opportunities to comment.)
My decisions
5
10
I have decided that you should have registered that ongoing relationship in the
Miscellaneous Category of the Register and that you should also have declared an
interest when tabling your Question. I consider that the failures to register and to
make a declaration are both breaches of paragraph 13 of the Code of Conduct.
As I have previously said, in terms, I do not consider the omission of your
redundancy payments from your entry in the Register of Members’ Financial
Interests (RMFI) to amount to a breach of paragraph 13 of the Code of Conduct. I
have also said that, given your mortgage arrangement with the NUM
(Northumberland Area) Provident and Benevolent Fund ended some years before
you first entered the House, the question of registering that arrangement in the
RMFI did not arise.
15
Next steps
20
I will now begin preparing a memorandum to the Committee on Standards for them
to consider the facts and to reach their own decision on whether you have acted in
breach of the Code of Conduct. Given the extent of my enquiries into these matters,
it is likely to take some time for me to complete a draft but I will do so as soon as
possible.
25
In the meantime, I should emphasise that I will include in my report all the
information that is relevant to my decisions. I will, as I have previously explained,
exclude information you have provided which has since proved not to be relevant.
While the content of my memorandum is a matter for me, I will share a draft with
you – in confidence - before I submit the memorandum to the Committee. You will
have the opportunity to comment on its factual accuracy and to request any further
redactions which you consider appropriate.
If there is any further evidence you wish me to take into account, I would be grateful
if you would send it to me as soon as possible and no later than 20 February 2017.
30
Finally, I should remind you that this inquiry and all the correspondence and other
material relating to it remains protected by parliamentary privilege until such time
as the House has had the opportunity to consider any report.
30 January 2017
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34. Meeting between the Commissioner and Mr Ian Lavery MP,
7 February 201719
The Commissioner talked Mr Lavery through her letters of 12 and 30 January 2017.
Mr Lavery explained that he had not received the second of those letters.
5
Mr Lavery told the Commissioner that he accepted the Commissioner's findings in
respect of the registration of the 15% ownership of his property by the NUM
(Northumberland Area) until May 2013. He sought to understand what steps were
required to rectify this matter.
34. Email from Mr Ian Lavery MP to the Commissioner, 9 February 2017
10
15
Following our meeting on Tuesday [7 February] I confirm that I accept your
conclusions with regards to the 15% issue as part of the rectification process.
Therefore my understanding would be there would be no need to proceed to the
standards committee.
I would be grateful if this could be clarified and could you inform me of the next
steps I would need to take.
9 February 2017
34
Letter from the Commissioner to Mr Ian Lavery MP, 27 February 2017
Thank you for your email of 9 February 2017 confirming your acceptance of my
conclusions.
20
Thank you also for meeting me on 7 February. As a result of our discussion, I learned
that you had not received my letter of 30 January. It had also not previously been
clear to me that you accept my finding on the registration and declaration of the
NUM’s 15% share in your property. Further correspondence, rather than a face-toface meeting, would inevitably have taken longer to reach a resolution.
25
We agreed at the end of our meeting that you would take a little time to reflect and
then confirm your position in writing. Thank you for doing so. In light of your email,
and subject to you making an apology to the House by way of a point of order, I
consider this to be an appropriate outcome to the inquiry.
The rectification process
30
As you are aware, at the end of an inquiry, my decision and the evidence on which I
have relied is published. I am grateful to you and to [the Secretary] for your cooperation in assembling the evidence I required. Having verified certain points and,
in particular, the date on which your mortgage with the NUM Provident and
19
No formal note of this meeting had been produced before Mr Lavery next wrote to the Commissioner.
In light of Mr Lavery's response, no note was prepared
RECTIFICATION
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5
Benevolent Fund (Northumberland Area) was terminated, some of the details have
proved not to be relevant. I do not think it is fair or appropriate that my inquiry
should result in the publication of information about your mortgage and other
private financial affairs which the House would not otherwise have expected you to
disclose. I have taken this into account in compiling the relevant evidence.
10
I enclose a copy of the material which I plan to publish alongside my decision letter.
As you can see I propose to redact some of the evidence and in a very few instances
to omit whole documents. I would like to give you the opportunity now to request
any further redactions you think appropriate. It is of course for me to decide what
to publish but I will consider carefully any requests that you make.
For the sake of complete clarity and to avoid further cross-referencing to previous
letters, I summarise my decisions below.
Decisions on the allegations made by Mr Paul Scully MP
15
20
Did the rules of the House require the registration of the redundancy payments you
received from the NUM (Northumberland Area) between May 2010 and May 2013?
Allegation not upheld. The Registrar has told me that she would have advised you
to register the payments you received in connection with the termination of your
employment as General Secretary of the NUM (Northumberland Area) in the
Register of Members’ Financial Interests. That would have been sound advice.
However, I am not satisfied that the rules were sufficiently explicit during the
relevant period for the omission of those details from the register to be fairly
regarded as a breach of the rules.
Did the rules of the House require the registration of the loan you received (your
mortgage) from the NUM Provident and Benevolent Fund (Northumberland Area)?
25
30
Allegation not upheld. When I began my inquiry, the Land Register showed that the
NUM Provident and Benevolent Fund (NA) was the lender on the property. My
inquiries have shown that the loan was terminated in 2007, some three years before
you were first elected to the House. (This was not recorded in the Land Register at
the time. I understand that steps have since been taken by the fund’s trustees to
have the Land Register brought up to date.) Having received verification of its
termination date, the question of whether the terms of the loan meant it was a
registrable interest, did not arise.
I do not, therefore, uphold Mr Scully’s allegations.
35
In seeking the evidence to enable me to determine the accuracy of Mr Scully’s
allegations, other matters came to light, which I decided I should resolve before
concluding my inquiry. In particular, in seeking to reconcile the figures I found that,
as part of the final transaction of your redundancy settlement, you had redeemed
the 15% share in your property that the NUM had held since 2005 and that they had
RECTIFICATION
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“written off” a disputed sum of approximately £10,000 from a “loan account”. I have
investigated whether either of the House’s rules would have required the disclosure
of either of those items.
Decisions on the matters arising during the course of my inquiry
5
10
15
20
25
Did the rules of the House require the registration of your on-going financial
relationship with the NUM (Northumberland Area), as represented by its ownership
of a 15% share in your property between May 2010 and May 2013?
It was a breach of paragraph 13 of the Code of Conduct not to register this
continuing relationship under the Miscellaneous Category of the Register of
Members’ Financial Interests. During this period the NUM part-owned your home
and you did not have to pay rent to them in respect of your occupation of their
15% share, nor was any part of the property designated for use by the NUM. That
gave rise to a relationship which others might reasonably have thought would
influence your words and actions as a Member.
Did the rules of the House require you to make a declaration of a relevant financial
interest when you tabled a written Question which was answered on 13 May 2013
concerning the future of the deep-mine coal industry in the UK?
It was a breach of paragraph 13 of the Code not to make a declaration on that
occasion. I believe that others might reasonably have thought that your ongoing
financial relationship with the NUM would influence your words and actions as a
Member on that occasion.
Did the rules of the House require the registration of the terms of the “loan account”
to which reference was made in the enclosure to [the Secretary's] letter of 24 May
2013?
30
No evidence of a breach of the rules. The explanations I have received from you and
from the NUM (Northumberland Area) are consistent. I understand that this “loan
account” refers to expenditure incurred while you were employed as General
Secretary of the NUM (Northumberland Area) and that there was some dispute
about the extent to which that expenditure was attributable to business or privately
incurred costs. I have seen no evidence which would suggest I would be justified in
exploring further any concern that this represented a loan at preferential rates
which might have required registration under the Miscellaneous category of the
Register.
35
Next steps
I attach a draft of the pack of evidence I intend to publish. The first item in the pack
is the draft of a letter I propose to send to Mr Scully to notify him of my decision.
You are invited to comment on the factual accuracy of the whole of the evidence
pack. The only substantive items in it which you will not have seen before are the
RECTIFICATION
64
executive summary and the draft letter to Mr Scully. I would be grateful to have any
comments/requests as soon as possible and no later than 13 March 2017.
5
10
Once I have considered any comments and requested redactions, I will write to
Mr Scully (sending a final copy of the material to you at the same time). I will notify
the Committee on Standards of the outcome of my work and the material will be
published on my webpages here: http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-andoffices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentary-commissioner-forstandards/complaints-and-investigations/allegations-the-commissioner-hasrectified/
Subject to you making the apology to the House by way of a point of order, the matter
will then be closed.
27 February 2017
RECTIFICATION
65
Oral evidence taken by the Parliamentary
Commissioner for Standards
Interview with Mr Ian Lavery, Thursday 30 June 2016
Present:
5
Kathryn Hudson, Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards (KH)
Ian Lavery MP (IL)
[Name redacted] Commissioner’s Complaints Manager (CM)
10
15
20
25
30
KH: I have asked you to come in today to talk about the complaint that I received
that you had failed to register some of your interests and the consequence of that
might be that you had failed to declare a matter in Parliament that you should have
done. That’s what we are concerned about this morning but, because of the volume
of information that’s come out from different sources, I just want to start by asking
you to tell me as much as you can about the background to this matter, and why we
have got into the position where I have a complaint that you had not registered your
interests.
IL: I think there are two, perhaps three, issues. The first issue would be the mortgage,
the second issue would be the redundancy package, and the third issue is a question
which I raised in the Commons in Energy Questions. It is really important to say at
the very early stage, that I find this utterly unacceptable. I find that, through
discussions and correspondence which I have had from you—which has always
been very fair, by the way—I am being accused of breaching House rules that in fact
don’t even exist. I am being accused of breaching perhaps what a Registrar might
have suggested I should have done at that time, and I think that is really critical to
the whole of this argument, because if that’s accepted then the rest falls. I still think
it is important that I explain myself as well, of course.
KH: I take the point you are making. You have made it already very clear in letters.
Let’s discuss the explanations and see where we get to. I’d like to start with the
registration of your interests because leading on from there is whether you should
have made declarations in the House.
IL: My view, and I have made it very clear in writing to you and I have got advice
from a barrister with regard to this; if you wish I can leave a copy of this…
KH: That’s probably more helpful, rather than trying to deal with it while we are
talking. [Mr Lavery leaves copy of the advice.]
IL: This really sets out my reasons for …
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KH: Right, can I just check…. If you give this to me, you are giving this to me as
evidence which I might then need to use in writing up my report.
5
10
IL: I understand that. Yes. The issue again really gets back to why, or should I, have
declared an interest or financial interest in the mortgage. My view is simple on the
mortgage. I cannot see why I would have to register or declare the mortgage. It was
concluded in 2007. That was a long time before I was elected. I don’t think anybody
is challenging that. If they are then that’s perhaps the point we need to clear up. But
the fact the charge wasn’t removed until January 2016 is something which I can
easily clarify today. If that’s basically the point, then perhaps I should tackle it now.
The charge, and I think I have some correspondence, and I think you have already
had correspondence from the Provident Benevolent Fund, explaining this….
KH: We have a letter, which I think is on un-headed paper.
IL: I have got something on headed paper. But again, this is just feeding the frenzy. I
am happy to share this. But I am not really…. Do you want to look at that?
15
KH: If you are saying that you are withholding it from me and don’t want me to use
it, then we get into a position where if I, at a later stage, think it is relevant I would
have to ask the Committee to tell you to give it to me. I cannot insist that you give it
to me.
IL: I am happy to give you a copy of the letter from the Provident Benevolent Fund.
20
KH: Thank you. That’s helpful.
IL: I am really happy to do so.
KH: But it is not signed. Is it?
IL: I’ll get one sent off to you signed. Because that was just sent to me this morning.
KH: And this was the heading that was used?
25
IL: It’s not my organisation. I cannot answer.
KH: At the very least, I need this to be signed.
30
IL: I’ll get that sorted. I also have, being sent over from the solicitors this morning, a
copy of the correspondence between the Land Registry in 2016, which shows that
this was cleared then. The reality of it is, that letter explains it, that what happened
with regard to the property. And, I think I might have something else that I might be
able to show you…
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KH: So this shows that it should have been done in 2007 and that the Benevolent
Fund has now removed it [the charge in respect of the mortgage].
5
10
IL: It is now removed. And that was done by the Provident Benevolent Fund. And it
was done, as I have already explained, because my wife asked Virgin Money for an
application for finance for a new kitchen in the house. And that hadn’t been taken
off in 2007. As a result of that I then spoke to the Trustees, then the Trustees wrote
to the Land Registry who had the forms. Actually the Land Registry sent me the
forms and I just handed the forms to the Trustees. Basically, the Provident Fund is
wound up now. It is not a live Fund anymore and it hasn’t been for, I believe, more
than eight or nine months. But [redacted] is a former Trustee and the Trustees met
and they agreed that [he] would do this on my behalf because, basically, it was an
error from 2007.
KH: And I can see that what he is doing here is confirming that there was an error
and that can now be put right.
15
20
IL: I am happy to give you that. That is an email received from Virgin Money
confirming that there was a charge and that just shows the sequence of events that
occurred. That just helps to show that none of this has in any way been fabricated.
So, with regard to the charge then, that was something completely separate to the
mortgage. The mortgage was concluded in 2007. There isn’t any doubt about that
and I would have thought again reading through the Parliamentary Commissioner’s
guidance notes that anything more than six or seven years … is it six or seven?
KH: It is seven years—unless there is continuing benefit—and it is not that I may not
look back beyond seven years, it is extremely unusual for me to want to do so and I
have to ask the permission of the Committee, if I want to do so.
25
IL: So, I wondered, can I clarify it any more with regards to the charge? What are the
outstanding issues with regard to the mortgage? I can try and give you as much
information as I possibly can.
KH: The thing that remains outstanding is the Union’s interest in the property.
IL: The 15%?
30
KH: The 15%. [Name redacted] you have a question?
CM: With the mortgage—the issue for us was that there was evidence in the public
domain of the charge still existing, because it was on the Land Registry. That is why
we have to sort that out. Once that is sorted out, it is sorted out. It’s clear, once we
know…
35
KH: Once we know what the position is, it’s ok.
RECTIFICATION
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IL: Have I clarified? I mean, ask us—it’s a great opportunity for me to try to explain
to you.
KH: It’s OK. You have given me some documents here which do assist me but it would
be helpful if that letter was signed.
5
10
CM: Can I suggest one more thing Kathryn? As far as I can see, there are no contact
details on that letter. If you are able to provide contact details so that, if Kathryn has
any questions to ask, then that can be done.
IL: Again I didn’t write the letter but I’ll ask [redacted] if he is prepared because, the
reality is, [he] and the [other] trustees are elderly people now and they are not
wanting to be on the front page of any newspaper.
KH: I don’t think that would happen. There is no reason at all why I can’t redact the
signature, if I know it. You have given me the name there.
IL: What I’ll do, I’ll speak to them as soon as I leave here and I will get something
perhaps scanned to you with [his] signature.
15
KH: He needs to sign the letter.
IL: If I get that letter re-sent to you with the contact details of [the trustee] and him
signing the letter, that would be helpful?
KH: That would be extremely helpful. It provides evidence to me, if you like, that he
exists.
20
IL: Of course. That’s what I’ll do.
KH: And then I think that we have dealt with termination of the mortgage, which is
good, which is point number 1.
25
IL: I can send you the Land Registry form (I think it is DS 1) that [the trustee] sent to
the Land Registry and the reply which will show that it was clear. And his contact
details.
KH: That would be helpful, as well. I am not saying that I will reproduce all of this as
evidence. It may be sufficient for me to say I have seen evidence of this and this has
happened.
30
IL: I really do, I really do hope that I am not appearing to be obstructive; quite the
opposite, really. I just want to try and get this sorted. With the letter, I’ll send the
two documents.
RECTIFICATION
69
KH: While we are still dealing with the mortgage, and you have clarified that point,
there is the issue of the Union’s 15% share of it, or the 15% share of the property I
should say, rather than the mortgage. If you can explain that it would be helpful.
5
IL: It is important to recognise that the mortgage was given by the Northumberland
Miners Provident Benevolent Fund. The 15% investment was from the
Northumberland Area, which are different Funds with different trustees and
different remits.
KH: And it would be helpful if you would explain the difference for me.
10
IL: Yes, I understand that. It is important, I think, to recognise that that is the case.
And, in May 2005, the NUM Northumberland Area asked if I wanted to sell my
property back to them – which is not uncommon, with past practices. And I was
reluctant to do so, for the very reason why I wanted a mortgage in the first place is
because I wanted a mortgage and I wanted my own home.
KH: And this was your own home?
15
IL: Yes, this was my home, registered in my name from the very beginning—hadn’t
been under anyone else’s name—so the Union in its portfolio asked if they could
invest 15% in my property.
KH: Why would they want you to sell it back to them and why would you want to do
that?
20
25
30
35
IL: Because—that’s two very interesting questions. The first thing is that they had
money available and were looking for the best opportunity for investments, and
right through my time in the NUM, be that at national level or local level—even in
branch level—pit level—if there was opportunity and they had money available—
they always believed that the best investment was in bricks and mortar. They were
looking for a balanced portfolio, and in that balanced portfolio, they asked if I would
be prepared to sell my property. I said that wasn’t an issue. We didn’t discuss that,
and then there was the offer of 15%. Then I said, ‘OK’. That was agreed in 2005 and
again that’s in the minutes. This is all covered properly and that was in the minutes
….
KH: I understand. I may not need to put all of this in. I might redact some of it. But
thank you.
IL: That shows the decision that was made in 2005. Again, this was a long time before
my election in 2010. And I am really upset that people have got the opportunity of
looking back at my life and scrutinising every move that my employers have made
because I am an MP 5 or 6 years later. In fact its eleven years later. I am really
unhappy with it.
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KH: Unfortunately, it is one of the things that happens to those of us in public life of
any kind. I understand your unhappiness.
5
10
15
IL: With regard to that—I think again it is important that I just …. There wasn’t any
formal charge in respect of the investment which was executed in favour of the
Union. The Union, as I have mentioned, has a long history of providing free
accommodation to the secretary, the treasurer or the president of the Union. And I
hope it does help here, I hunted the minutes out. These are the minutes of 12 October
1951, which is a purchase of a house for the president and the compensation
secretary. 28 August 1952—a purchase of a smaller house for the general treasurer.
So it wasn’t just a case of buying properties…. So again, there’s 5 December 1987
and 29 April 1977. So what this actually shows, is evidence-based fact.
KH: So what you are saying is that it was normal practice—normally it would have
been the whole house. But in this case, because you already had the house and you
didn’t want to sell it to the Union—they invested 15%—so they actually gave you a
sum of money.
IL: Yes. Remember the mortgage was set up in 1994 and that investment was made
by a different Fund in 2005. But I think it is important to recognise that the custom
and practice of the union and although these are dated—the dates I have
explained—it is important that it is from my day back to their day.
20
KH: Yes. Some of these documents may be helpful for me just to look, as background.
I may not need to use them. Would you like me to destroy them or would you like
me to return them to you.
IL: I am happy with that. I’m sure if you say you are going to destroy them you will.
25
KH: In that case, I will tell you what I have destroyed and I will keep only what is
relevant to this inquiry.
IL: That is absolutely fine. A point with regard to the 15% investment—this
investment was basically concluded as part of my redundancy package.
KH: OK, they have invested 15%—they have given you the money for that 15%
investment. How do you redeem it?
30
35
IL: They actually redeemed it as part of my redundancy package. That was part of
my package and they redeemed that, at that time. I’ve written to the NUM twice with
regards to the package to give me the information about the figures and I haven’t
had a reply yet. And I’m really… well, I’m waiting for a reply.
CM: Would it be helpful for Kathryn to write to pursue it—would that be helpful? Is
there is a delay in responding?
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IL: There is a delay in responding and I think we’ve made very little bit of progress.
KH: I could do that as part of my evidence gathering if that would be helpful to you.
IL: Basically, because I haven’t had a response I am meeting them shortly. So there
has in the last day or so been a movement and I will be meeting with them.
5
KH: Well, let’s wait until you have had that meeting and see where we have got to.
IL: I sincerely hope that we’re not going to delay things, waiting on things from them,
because…
10
15
KH: You have given me a lot of additional information this morning and it will take
me a little while to go through the paperwork and decide what’s relevant and what’s
not, and therefore waiting a little while longer for them is not going to delay matters.
We are not going to finish it today. So I think we have covered the issues that I had
about the mortgage, and you have explained how the investment was terminated
and finished through your redundancy payment. At that stage they would have
relinquished the 15% share of your property. Do you have paperwork saying that
happened?
IL: No. I haven’t.
KH: But it might be as part of your meeting with them—they have some records
somewhere?
IL: I am sure they haven’t. I’ve already asked.
20
KH: OK, well if there isn’t, there isn’t.
IL: I’ve already asked Kathryn because, as I say, I want to provide you with as much
as I can.
KH: Thank you. So let’s go on to the redundancy payments then and then we will
pick up issues about amounts if we need to.
25
IL: The redundancy payment was obviously…. I was made redundant in 2010. Again
I haven’t got any documentation relating to the redundancy. And, I will just explain
that I have written to the Union twice asking for documentation.
KH: Is that because you had it and have now disposed of it? It was some time ago. Or
did you not have it in the first place?
30
IL: Whatever I’ve had is gone. Whatever the Union has got I cannot speak for. That’s
the exact picture. But I will say that, with regards to that, I received payments…. By
RECTIFICATION
5
10
72
the way, Mr Scully has never written to me on any of these issues; never informed
me. I just thought I would place it on record. The papers which I’ve received, as I
have already explained to you, and what I am doing at this moment in time, if
necessary, the only thing I can show you is what I have received is in my bank
statements and I am happy to give you three years’ bank statements, to show you.
The reason why I haven’t brought them is because there was one missing and I am
waiting to hear from the bank. It is not good enough to show you what actually did
come in, but to show you with one missing, you might say that’s where they might
be. What I can do, and tell us if you want it, but I imagine that you would write to me
after this meeting and tell me.…
KH: After this meeting I will go through all the evidence and look to see which bits I
need to use and which bits I don’t. I will send you a transcript of our conversation
and, if at that stage I still have outstanding questions, I will ask you specific questions
so that we don’t have too many more iterations.
15
IL: What I would be happy to do, if required, is to have my bank statements certified,
legally and legally present that to yourself. I am happy to do that.
KH: It may not be necessary—let’s wait and see.
IL: That’s why I would ask, but I am happy to do that, because trying to reconcile the
figures; it has been a nightmare for me.
20
KH: And that is one of the issues—isn’t it?
IL: It is one of the main issues running through the whole of this, so what I have done
in relation to that, is that I have written to the Union twice because I want… there
has been a suggestion that I perhaps have had an overpayment of redundancy?
KH: It is there, in the ether… but that is not a matter for me.
25
IL: That’s right but it is a massive matter for me. So what I’ve done …
KH: If we can clarify it, it would be a good thing to do.
30
IL: So what I’ve done—within the correspondence—is to ask the Union, simply to
provide me with the figures. The figures which have been in the press…. The thing
is the £85,000 isn’t in the ER21. The figure that keeps cropping isn’t … it isn’t in the
ER21. I’ve got a copy of the ER21 there, and it isn’t in the ER21.
KH: You presumably know, or can work out from your bank statements, how much
in the end you received?
IL: That’s exactly what I have given you in my correspondence and that is what is
really, again, concerning. I cannot tell you I have had something, if I haven’t had it.
RECTIFICATION
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73
So, I think, to put on the record, the payments I have had are set out in Annex A of
the letter dated 23 March to you. That’s the payments I have had and I haven’t had
any other payments, other than that. And I haven’t got any documentation other
than my bank statements, so I cannot do anything other than tell you. But Mr Scully’s
letter suggested that the £85,000 was in the ER 21? I cannot find it in the ER21.
KH: That figure was it the documents somewhere. [name redacted], do you
remember which document it was in?
10
15
20
25
CM: I can’t remember which document… it was in the Union accounts, I think –
shown as the figure ‘to past general secretary’. That figure is different from this one.
The 15% you’ve talked about, which was rebated against it, may account for the
difference. But that’s why the questions about the 15% and how it fits together are
important, because if what they were doing was recovering—if they were buying
out their interest – and it was deducted from your payment. The gross payment than
would be about…. That would explain the difference.
IL: I think that that is not too far away. But, I’m not going to… at this stage, because
I am being questioned by everyone on this. My stock answer, and the only answer I
can give, is that I don’t recognise the payment—the £85,000. I don’t recognise this
payment. And this payment, this was in 2013. I mean, I had been finished three and
a half,-four years. It’s really unfair. I cannot tell people something… it’s something
that I don’t recognise. So again, I am looking to get this sorted but if the accountants
or if the Union calculates something. If the accountants use a certain procedure for
accounting for things—that is not my problem. It really isn’t my problem and I feel
as if I am being taken to task for something which the Union has either calculated or
the accountants have put in the books in a certain way—and it’s not my problem.
But actually, it is my problem—but it’s not my doing. And it’s really important to
recognise that. I’m trying to get to the bottom of it and if I can’t get to the bottom of
it, what I can tell you definitively is that I didn’t receive that. And what I can do is
prove what I have received.
KH: No.
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CM: What one would normally expect to see is something from the employer or the
ex-employer saying this is how much we owed you—this is what’s being deducted—
here is what you are going to receive. I can see that you may not have that now but
what we would hope is that they can provide copies of that.
KH: You may well have been given that at the time—when you left?
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IL: I am not sure if I was.
KH: You’re not sure, no? Well, if you weren’t, you weren’t, but it would be normal.
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IL: I can guarantee you, and it might seem strange—this, the redundancy was the
same as the contractual obligation, calculated by the Union, presumably by the
Union’s accountants.
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KH: So this is the issue of the fact that you weren’t—or you may have been—you
might like to explain to me—you weren’t actually redundant at the time when you
became a Member and you moved to your job as an MP.
IL: Yes, I was made redundant before. Basically it was a Friday/Monday job.
KH: Sorry, say that again.
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IL: I was made redundant on the Friday and then I started; I came and swore in, on
the Monday. So, I was made redundant.
KH: And have you got any evidence of that because that is one of the things that the
papers have been picking up on, isn’t it?
IL: What evidence—tell me what evidence?
KH: A redundancy notice—a formal letter making you redundant from your job?
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IL: What I have shown you is the contract of employment—on termination, there
would be redundancy. And also what I have shown you is the fact that the individual
who came in after me was on a completely different job, different grade and wasn’t
the general secretary. I cannot prove much more than that. This is a redundancy
situation. There isn’t anybody really, well nobody other than certain people,
questioning what it was, out of sheer devilment. It was in my contract of my
employment—what it was, was in my contract of employment.
KH: I think one of the problems here is I may well be able to say, actually, in the end
that is not relevant to the questions that I am looking at. But, of course, the Sunday
Times will then say, “well…”. You know, they will pursue their questions if they want
to. I can only do as much as I can do. I think that is what I’m saying to you.
IL: And I am the same, by the way – I can only tell you what I can tell you. And I
cannot tell you stuff that I…. I can only tell you every single thing that I am aware of.
I hope you don’t think that I’m in any way shape or form trying to obstruct this, it’s
just the way it is. When I left, when it was a redundancy situation because they didn’t
replace me; they couldn’t replace me because they were winding the Union down.
So, the new job was completely different.
KH: Did it have a different job title?
IL: Yes, and he wasn’t elected. I was an elected representative but the man who came
in wasn’t elected. He was appointed to basically wind the Union down and he was
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given a staff salary rather than an official’s salary. So that was the issue there—what
happened…. It was, I just simply said, “when you’ve got the money, give us it”. What
a big mistake. Sometimes in hindsight you think Good Lord, I would have changed
that if I could.
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KH: This is the interesting thing about the payments of redundancy being spread
over a number of years rather than given to you on the day when you left the
organisation.
IL: Yes. And that’s why I just simply said to the Union—which had been part of my
life since I was a boy. “Just give us what my contract says; give us it when you’ve got
it” because there had been a problem with some of their investments being frozen
for financial reasons. It was the asset management company that, I believe, had had
problems. And I was happy with that.
KH: So it was a cash flow problem for the Union.
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IL: Yes, as simple as that. That’s all it was. A cash flow problem. And then this
happens. But I’m thinking well, I’m here, I’m trying to be more than helpful. And,
Kathryn, as the secretary said “…there’s a bit of it now”, and “there’s a bit of it now”, I
didn’t even get any correspondence.
KH: And that is unusual, to say the least.
IL: Yes.
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KH: And is that to do with the way in which the Union functioned as a whole?
IL: I think it was because the redundancy was calculated—it was part of the contract
of employment. They knew that that that had to be paid, and they were really happy
with the fact that I was able to say “Give us it when the Union’s in a position to do so”.
That’s not unreasonable.
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KH: But they didn’t send a letter saying “this is your redundancy payment. Actually,
this year we can pay you so much and it will be in your bank account next month.”
There was nothing like that?
IL: That was explained to me.
KH: Right. But orally rather than in writing?
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IL: We were in the same offices. But I haven’t got any evidence. The only thing I’ve
got, and I am prepared to give you a certified copy of all my accounts, if need be …
KH: Well let’s see if it is needed. OK, we have probably covered as much as we can
on those issues unless, [name redacted], can you think I’ve forgotten anything?
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CM: Just to clarify…. They didn’t give you a statement saying this is what your
contract says you would be due, but they did have a conversation with you about it.
So, were you clear when you left how much in total you were expecting to be paid
eventually?
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IL: I was clear that what I would expect was what was in my contract.
CM: But did you know the value of what was in the contract?
IL: Yes
10
CM: So, you had a figure in mind that you knew was due to be paid over a period of
time, and therefore as they paid off bits of it, you had some sort of clock in your head
running saying, that’s about half of it—I’ve still got a bit more to come. So each of the
payments were expected in the sense that you would knew there was more to come,
and when they made the final payment you knew that that was the final payment?
IL: Yes, definitely.
KH: That’s helpful.
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CM: It was just that sense, when you were asking, Kathryn, about the redundancy
notice. I know when I thought I might be made redundant, I was expecting a piece of
paper.
KH: Yes, exactly.
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IL: You know, when I look back, when I think that what happened here, that should
have happened. But, again here, I was finished. This isn’t my fault.
KH: No, we do accept that.
IL: This isn’t my doing. Perhaps if I had been doing it for someone else I would have
done it the way as you suggest.
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KH: And the other side of it is when it comes down to it, that is not the issue that I
am looking at here. That is really helpful to have that understanding. Thank you. OK,
I think we can move on then from looking at the redundancy payment. So we then
come on to the declaration question. Which is the question whether these amounts
should have been declared. No, we are still with registration, aren’t we? We still have
your view of whether or not these payments should have been registered and you
have seen the advice from the Registrar on that. I think this is the point that you felt
particularly strongly about and were talking about earlier.
IL: I feel really strongly about this.
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KH: I have not come to a view about this, by the way. I have the Registrar’s advice.
Until I have all the evidence and have had the chance to examine it, I will not come
to a final view. So, it is important that you tell me your views on this.
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IL: I have a statement which I want to leave with you—I’ll give you that. And in that
statement, I think it comes out loud and clear, with regards to the rules of the House
and in there I have highlighted, I had been made redundant. Had I been made
redundant after the 14 April 2015, then the rules are explicit. There isn’t any
doubt….
KH: A new set of rules about this.
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IL: Absolutely but under chapter 1, clause 7c—excuse me, I’ve got to read from
this— “it provides for the registration of redundancy ex gratia payments” and I would
have complied undoubtedly with this obligation because it was there. But the rules
in 2010 didn’t contain any requirement to register redundancy ex gratia payments
and I think that is confirmed in your letter of 10 May, that the rules were silent on
whether Members had to register ex gratia redundancy payments and, again, you
accept that the registration form didn’t make it explicit that any such payments
required registration. As I have put it, in another fairer way of expressing that, this
would be to say that in the absence of a specific rule there wasn’t any mandatory
requirement to register a redundancy payment. It just wasn’t there. And I cannot see
how it’s right or if it’s proper that I should be considered to be in breach of a rule
that in fact just doesn’t exist. That is fundamental to all of this, and the fact that the
Registrar stated that two other Members…. If two new MPs in 2010 did seek advice
on registering payments from former employers and were advised to do so, can it
really mean that there is an obligation for everybody else to do that? In fact what I
would say on this issue is, I really feel this is the crux of the matter.
KH: I think this is a really important issue.
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IL: As two individuals asked the Registrar, and she advised them, I can assure you
that I understand that there’s lots of other people who had payments and took the
same view as myself with regard to the rules. They read the rules and what they say.
There’s obviously people come to me saying, “Ian, because of the fact that this has
been in the press, I have done this and I’ve done that.” And just because two do, doesn’t
give an obligation on everybody else to do what those two people did. It’s fine – if
that’s what they did, that’s what they did. I am a man, Kathryn, who all my life has
been a representative of the National Union of Mineworkers and have dealt with
rules after rules after rules. At one time I could recite the National Union of
Mineworkers’ rulebook verbatim, and I think rules are extremely important. Really.
And, I think if you deviate from rules then you eventually end up in hot water.
There’s no doubt about that, and if you try to bend rules you end up in hot water.
But the reality is, I looked through these, I looked through the guidance, not once,
not twice, but a million times. That’s an exaggeration obviously – I looked through
them a lot of times, because I wanted to be clear on it. And I didn’t see, and this isn’t
an air of arrogance, I didn’t see that there was a need to ask the Registrar. I really
didn’t. It’s not a case of I didn’t read them and think later, well, I should have. It’s a
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case of I did beforehand and there was an absence of any rules. I am categoric that
under the House rules in 2010, which would be the 2009 guidance, that I haven’t
breached any rules. What might be the case is that I might have breached what
perhaps could have been an interpretation by the Registrar – that’s not a breach of
rules. I am not being accused of that – I am being accused of breaching the rules.
KH: Yes.
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IL: The rules that quite clearly did not include redundancy ex gratia payments and
ex gratia payments. They didn’t include that, and I have already given you legal
opinion which is absolutely conclusive to suggest that and I hope that gives you the
opportunity of scrutinising that very clearly because if you accept that…. First of all,
that I should have asked for advice and should have recorded, then I would ask,
would you be prepared to trawl rest of the 2010 intake? I think that that is
reasonable and I think it does open up a huge problem. But I see it’s very simple,
black and white. Perhaps, people see it differently and that’s why. But the rules are
there and I am a rules man. And the rules to me quite simply, and it is black and
white or it isn’t black and white, that the rules didn’t say that. And because the rules
were re-written in 2015 to include that, clearly shows that there seems to have been
some ambiguity. Well if there is ambiguity, what that means is somebody could have
the benefit of the doubt, and if it comes down to it, alright, I think I should have the
benefit of the doubt. Just simply because it is not in there. I hope I have been
emphatic in that.
KH: Thank you Mr Lavery, you have been extremely clear and I think it is really
important to have that on the record. As I have said to you, I have come to no
conclusion yet but I will consider very carefully the points that you are making.
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IL: I think I have made that clear in that statement.
KH: Thank you, that’s really clear, and it will come out clearly as we write up the
transcript.
IL: By the way, I’ve got to say, I hope I’m not appearing to be aggressive – it’s my
natural way….
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KH: And I will say, No, Mr Lavery, you have not, which is fine. You are making your
points forcefully. That’s fine. We now just come on to the final question, which is
about whether you should have declared and you may have an equally forceful
statement to make on that.
IL: Quite frankly, I haven’t got any idea why the Registrar would even suggest that I
should have referred or mentioned from the floor of the House. First of all, at the
time, I didn’t believe….
KH: The declaration requirements go wider than just what was in the register.
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IL: Yes, I accept that. But the first point is, how could I, at that point in time, declare
a financial interest when indeed I hadn’t registered it in the first place? Which I think
is the point. The second point is could people reasonably say that I could have
benefitted from asking that question? I cannot understand why the Registrar has
come to that point. I cannot, because the question was asked in Energy Questions. I
was a member of the Energy Select Committee. I’m a miner – everybody knows I’m
a former miner. I keep telling people that I am not just a former miner, I am still a
miner – you cannot take that away from me. I am very proud of that—my
constituency is a mining constituency, I have been the president of the National
Union of Mineworkers; it’s a very important position, and to suggest that I could
have gained something from that is ludicrous. I’m sorry to have to use that type of
language but it is ludicrous because, if we’re talking about the redundancy, that
redundancy was paid by Northumberland Area. The question I raised was about an
area in the Midlands.
KH: But would it be reasonable for the average person to understand that
difference?
IL: I would certainly expect so.
KH: Right, even if they weren’t miners?
IL: I would certainly expect so.
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KH: But what you are doing, in making a declaration, is really to make sure the
general public, as well as the people who particularly know, can take a view on
whether you were likely to have been influenced.
IL: The reality with that is, sitting on the Energy select committee, to suggest that
every time I asked a question in that form, I might have a redundancy, which is
common. Or should I declare every time that I’ve been the Chairman of the group of
MPs also in the coalfield communities? I’ll tell you, Kathryn, this is really really
upsetting because if people are saying that I shouldn’t be asking questions without
saying look at my declaration of interests—I haven’t heard anybody say that. I
haven’t heard anybody from our side say that, I haven’t heard anybody from the
government side mention that. If I thought, for any reason, that I would have to
declare a financial interest on this issue, I would have done it. I find this concerning.
I’ll be perfectly honest with you, really concerning because, what it shows to me is,
if the Registrar has got this view then I am going to be on the telephone to the
Registrar, five days a week by the way. I’m going to be on five days a week because
I am not accepting the fact that if I ask about a colliery that had a tremendous future
and then there was a fire (because is what happened) and it meant that 650 people
were to be made redundant, I think I am entitled – I am not sure what I am getting
from it by the way. I am sure, and that’s absolutely nothing. I’m sure that I should be
in a position in Energy Questions to ask the Energy Minister if he will try and ensure
that the men will get the correct remuneration under these emergency
circumstances and I cannot, for the life of me, I think that is also in the legal opinion
as well – it’s in the statement. I cannot for the life of me see how the Registrar (and
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they are very good at their job – they do a brilliant job under tremendous pressure,
I think at times). I cannot understand why that was the case and I would never,
never, never agree that that was the case. I’ll not agree that that’s the case.
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KH: Thank you. Well, I will say to you again, I will give that consideration. I think we
have covered everything. So what I would say to you is there anything that you think
I have not covered that you would like to say this morning.
IL: If I can just reiterate—the fundamental point—you cannot breach a rule if it
doesn’t exist. I would accept the fact that, in hindsight, perhaps things could have
been different. But what I did—I looked at the rules—I didn’t ignore the rules—I
looked at them—and I am a rules man—and I cannot accept that first of all, Mr
Scully’s accusations that I breached the rules. It’s not how many payments were
made or when they were made or what the money was – that’s not the issue. The
issue is should I have declared and in my view, it’s absolutely…. I feel as if I have got
to apologise that I have actually brought a barrister’s opinion, because I really feel
as if I am trying to.… I thought this could have been sorted without a barrister’s
opinion but basically, I think it is that serious for me and my integrity. This is about
my integrity, nothing else, and I am really sorry that I have had to go that far. In
conclusion, I will do anything I can to help you conclude this investigation.
KH: Thank you. I think there may be a couple of loose ends to tidy up and then it
seems I may be able to come to a conclusion.
IL: Thank you to you both.
[ENDS]