Parliamentary Standards Bill

Of course I agree with that. Although we may not have got the provisions exactly right, I think that we are pretty nearly there in that respect. I will listen carefully to my hon. Friend's points about the amendments, which I have already studied. The fundamental purpose of the Bill is to replace the self-regulation of expenses, allowances and financial interests with external statutory regulation. The Bill will therefore establish the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and a separate Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations. Those provisions are in clause 1 and the schedules. Clause 6, to which I shall return, provides that the House is to continue to have a code of conduct. Clauses 7 and 8 set out provisions for investigations and enforcement, clause 9 prescribes three offences and clause 10 is intended to ensure that the system of external regulation can be operated effectively without falling foul of article 9 of the Bill of Rights on the privilege of this Parliament. I shall return to that point. Of course, I recognise that the Clerk and distinguished right hon. and hon. Members have raised serious concerns, particularly about clauses 6 and 10, which will have an impact on the privilege of Parliament. I have already explained how I intend to approach the debates about that. I will make specific comments about those clauses later, but I wish first to make three general points to set the context. First, this House has long acknowledged that in principle, external non-statutory regulation of aspects of the House's business and the conduct of its Members may be insufficient, so the House of Commons Commission is established in statute. Freedom of information is a good example of what can happen. The Government's original proposal was that Parliament should be excluded from the operation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Parliament, and specifically the Public Administration Committee in a 1998 report, said that such an exclusion""may well convey the wrong impression to the general public, given the purpose of this legislation…we recommend that the Government re-examine the exclusion of Parliament in the light of"" a report that had been produced by the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege. In the light of that pressure, which would have been impossible to resist, although I did not wish to, the Government accepted that recommendation. Famously, we are now subject to FOI legislation. Secondly, once it is agreed that there should be independent, external regulation of our allowances and much else, certain consequences follow as night follows day. Such regulation will be in statute, and interpreting statute is a fundamental purpose of our courts. There is nothing frightening or unacceptable about what then follows, which is that courts may judicially review the way in which statutory bodies, among others, operate. They will do so against long-established principles. Contrary to popular belief, the courts are slow to substitute their substantive judgments for the judgments of the relevant authority. Instead, they are there as a check against unfair process or wanton irrationality. Thirdly, and again contrary to myth, judicial review is in no sense a challenge to the sovereignty of Parliament. The Bill will put the regulation of allowances, financial interests and the code of conduct on a statutory footing. It will not affect the balance in our constitution between Parliament and the courts, as I shall explain in more detail later. We can expect the courts to continue to acknowledge the fundamental constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers in any proceedings that arise from the procedures in the Bill. Also, what Parliament does, Parliament can undo. That is a fundamental and very unusual feature of our system.