Parliamentary Standards Bill

Indeed. They were asked to stand down from the investigation. In a way, that is against many of the principles under which Lord Nolan set up the committee in the first place. One of those principles was that, in order properly to decide anything to do with this place, knowledge of it was necessary. Sir Christopher Kelly decided that the parliamentarians should stand down from the inquiry; whether that was right or not is for others to judge. We do not have a serious problem with the investigative functions of the new body. We have to hope that Sir Christopher Kelly's committee comes up with sensible, simple proposals later this year that will make any new system virtually impossible to manipulate. However, the public's view of politicians is so low at the moment that we must be prepared for what I can only imagine might be rare instances of outright fraud. In doing so, we should ensure that there is a real, and not just a cosmetic, separation of powers between the administrative and investigative competence of IPSA. Without wishing to cast any aspersions on the staff of the Department of Resources, who do what is at present a very tough job, part of the reason for our current problems has been that the Fees Office was for a long time both the administrator and the adjudicator of allowances. This clearly can no longer continue. If we are to avoid falling foul of any further elephant traps, we will need to look carefully at what the Justice Secretary has called the "firewall" between IPSA's administrative and regulatory functions. I am sure we will examine that in Committee. I refer Members particularly to schedule 1, part 2, paragraph 17. These parts of the Bill are, we would argue, the least controversial, unless one is opposed to the entire principle of contracting out our pay and allowances, although at present the new body will look only at our allowances. But there are other elements of the Bill that appear to be designed purely to satisfy the prime ministerial press release. One of the reasons we find ourselves in this mess is that we have suffered from the most trivial form of gesture politics. The Government must understand that we will not resolve the problem with yet more gestures. We can get away with some bad legislation, but if we put a foot wrong in this case, we might end up not just with an expensive inconvenience, but with a constitutional nightmare that will haunt us for decades. Although we remain cautiously relaxed about transferring powers on allowances, we are not so comfortable about the provisions in the Bill that allow IPSA to regulate the system and create new offences for false claims or failing properly to declare financial interests. That view is nothing to do with giving MPs special favours. It is about making sure that in fixing the Commons, we do not unfix the parts that are not broken. The Government must listen, and I hope they will be prepared to accept some amendments. The House had particular concerns about clause 6, which would have created an obligation on the House to have a statutory code of conduct, or at least by statute it would have required the House to have a code of conduct, which is slightly different. That would have created all sorts of conflicts between us and the courts. We still have concerns about clause 10, which creates a formal provision to allow proceedings to be admissible in court proceedings against an MP, regardless of parliamentary privilege. We will have to examine this in depth in Committee. What is at stake here has been expertly explained by the Clerk of the House in a powerful analysis of those aspects of the Bill that touch on questions of parliamentary privilege and our freedom as Members. That document is already public, and I know that the Clerk will be before the Justice Committee tomorrow night. He had two central concerns—first, that swathes of the Bill are or would have been justiciable and would set Parliament on a direct collision course with the courts; and secondly, that this could undermine the basic principle of free speech in the House. The sovereign independence of Parliament from the judiciary has been one of the fundamental pillars of our constitution for centuries. As the Clerk interprets it, had the Bill gone through unamended, we would have seen an endless merry-go-round of litigation and judicial reviews. We cannot end the culture of blank cheques to MPs, only to open up a culture of blank cheques for lawyers. Members—we—are already subject to the law of the land, just like anyone else. We are also already subject to a parliamentary code of conduct, and to the judgment of the electorate. Inasmuch as IPSA has power over our allowances, we are largely content, but inasmuch as it muddies the water and empowers the courts to intrude on our independence of action, it must be resisted. Even more dangerously, as the Clerk goes on to suggest, the casual disregard for parliamentary privilege in the Bill, particularly in clause 10, could cause permanent damage to parliamentary proceedings. As he says, it could have a""chilling effect on the freedom of speech of Members, and of witnesses before committees, and would hamper the ability of House officials to give advice to Members"." As has already been said, responding to me at business questions last week, the Leader of the House said:""He will see from the face of the Bill that the question of parliamentary privilege is not an issue in that Bill, so that is not a question that hon. Members need to concern themselves with."—[Official Report, 25 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 950.]" It is difficult to see on what basis she made such a statement. It is in obvious contradiction to the expert advice from the Clerk. We are glad that clause 6 has been withdrawn, but we are still concerned about other aspects.