Parliamentary Standards Bill

The—[Interruption.] Hold your breath! All those involved in the cross-party talks will confirm that my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House of Commons and I worked hard to achieve consensus, sometimes revisiting draft clauses in the meetings to make them more acceptable. It was a genuinely collaborative process, and I am glad that the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) acknowledges that. The original draft of clause 4 combined the scope of the current clauses 5 and 6. That clause was regarded as too wide. So to answer the points raised, the redrafted clauses 5 and 6—which are now in the Bill—were brought forward and, though time was pressing, raised little objection in the cross-party talks. That said, I always made it clear that everyone involved in the cross-party talks was entitled to further reflection on the Bill and its contents. The result of that further reflection is that considerable concern has been expressed by the learned Clerk of the House about the possible impact of clause 6, and two distinguished senior Members, the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), and my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell), have jointly tabled an amendment to delete clause 6. I supported clause 6 because I believed—and still do—that it provides belt-and-braces reassurance to the public that we will continue to have a code of conduct covering the issues, which are not many, that are not covered by the financial rules. It is fair to say that I am more sanguine than others about the effect of clause 6 and its interpretation by the courts. My officials, on advice from first parliamentary counsel, are providing a memorandum on the matter for the benefit of the Justice Committee. That said, the Clerk is the adviser to the House on matters of privilege, and much else, not me. This is emergency legislation, on which all parties are committed in principle to a speedy passage. Clause 6 is not essential to the Bill, so in the interests of consensus I will accept the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire and my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, and I will not move clause 6 when we reach that part of the Bill. There will be some consequential amendments to clause 5 and elsewhere in the Bill—[Interruption.] Well, there are bound to be. The issue is not whether the relevant sections of the code of conduct are covered by the scheme of the Bill, but how. I hope that what I have said has the approbation of the House, in the spirit in which we have approached the Bill from the start.