Contempt of Parliament

Contempt of Parliament in United Kingdom

Contempt of Parliament

The United Kingdom Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege attempted to provide a list of some types of contempt in its 1999 report:

  • interrupting or disturbing the proceedings of, or engaging in other misconduct in the presence of, the House or a committee;
  • assaulting, threatening, obstructing or intimidating a Member or officer of the House in the discharge of their duties;
  • deliberately attempting to mislead the House or a committee (by way of statement, evidence, or petition);
  • deliberately publishing a false or misleading report of the proceedings of the House or a committee;
  • removing, without authority, papers belonging to the House;
  • falsifying or altering any papers belonging to the House or formally submitted to a committee of the House;
  • deliberately altering, suppressing, concealing or destroying a paper required to be produced for the House or a committee;
  • without reasonable excuse, failing to attend before the House or a committee after being summoned to do so;
  • without reasonable excuse, refusing to answer a question or provide information or produce papers formally required by the House or a committee;
  • without reasonable excuse, disobeying a lawful order of the House or a committee;
  • interfering with or obstructing a person who is carrying out a lawful order of the House or a committee;
  • bribing or attempting to bribe a Member to influence the Member’s conduct in respect of proceedings of the House or a committee;
  • intimidating, preventing or hindering a witness from giving evidence or giving evidence in full to the House or a committee;
  • bribing or attempting to bribe a witness;
  • assaulting, threatening or disadvantaging a Member, or a former Member, on account of the Member’s conduct in Parliament; and
  • divulging or publishing the content of any report or evidence of a select committee before it has been reported to the House.[1]

In the case of Members, the Joint Committee also considered the following types of conduct to constitute contempt:

  • accepting a bribe intended to influence a Member’s conduct in respect of proceedings of the House or a committee;
  • acting in breach of any orders of the House; and
  • failing to fulfil any requirement of the House, as declared in a code of conduct or otherwise, relating to the possession, declaration, or registration of financial interests or participation in debate or other proceedings.[2]

Just as it is not possible to categorize or to delineate every incident which may fall under the definition of contempt, it is also difficult to categorize the “severity” of contempt. Contempts may vary greatly in their gravity; matters ranging from minor breaches of decorum to grave attacks against the authority of Parliament may be considered as contempts.[3]

Source: House of Commons Procedure and Practice, Second Edition, 2009

Resources

See Also

  • Parliamentary privilege.

Notes

  1. Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege (United Kingdom), Report, March 30, 1999, Chapter 6, par. 264. This list was also included in the Ninth Report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, presented to the House on November 4, 2003 (Journals, p. 1225).
  2. Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege (United Kingdom), Report, March 30, 1999, Chapter 6, par. 264.
  3. Kaul, M.N. and Shakdher, S.L., Practice and Procedure of Parliament (with particular reference to Lok Sabha), 5th ed., edited by G.C. Malhotra, New Delhi: Metropolitan Book Co., 2001, pp. 256-7. For a listing of the main types of contempt established in the United Kingdom, see Griffith and Ryle, 2nd ed., pp. 137‑8. Of the prima facie cases of contempt raised in the Canadian House since 1867, only five motions containing the word “contempt” have been adopted by the House. The first occurred in 1873 when the House found an article printed in the Morning Freeman newspaper to be a “high contempt of the privileges and the Constitutional authority of this House” (Journals, April 17 and 18, 1873, pp. 167‑72). The second motion was adopted in 1913 when a witness called to the Bar of the House refused to answer certain questions put to him: “[H]is refusal to answer said question constitutes a breach of the privileges of Parliament, and renders the said Mr. R.C. Miller guilty of contempt of this House …” (Journals, February 20, 1913, pp. 274‑8, in particular p. 278). The third motion containing the word “contempt” was adopted in 2002 when Keith Martin (Esquimalt–Juan de Fuca) was suspended from the service of the House “for his actions in disregard of the authority of the Chair and in contempt of the House” (Debates, April 17, 2002, pp. 10526‑7; April 18, 2002, p. 10537; Journals, April 22, 2002, p. 1323, Debates, pp. 10654‑70; Journals, April 23, 2002, pp. 1337‑8, Debates, pp. 10747‑8; Debates, April 24, 2002, p. 10770). The fourth motion was adopted in 2003 when the House found the former Privacy Commissioner, George Radwanski, in contempt for providing misleading testimony to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates (Debates, November 4, 2003, pp. 9150‑1; Journals, November 6, 2003, pp. 1248‑9, Debates, pp. 9229‑31, 9237). The fifth motion was adopted in 2008 when the House found Deputy RCMP Commissioner Barbara George in contempt of the House for providing false and misleading testimony to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Journals, April 10, 2008, p. 685, Debates, p. 4271).

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