Parliamentary Standards Bill

That is an entirely different point; the hon. Gentleman seeks to conflate two separate issues. I remind him that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) is on record as saying—he was not greatly supported in many parts of the Chamber—that the House should sit until all the necessary work had been done. This is a prime example of something that, if necessary, we could have sat through until we got it right. In my intervention on the Secretary of State, I asked him whether he was satisfied that the provisions of the Bill would comply with article 6 of the European convention on human rights, and he replied by reference to the declaration in the Bill concerning compliance with the Human Rights Act 1998. I have no doubt that that was not a difficult declaration for him to make, because of course the Human Rights Act does not apply to Parliament. The fact remains, however, that offences under the Bill and any processes that flow from them would have to comply with article 6 of the convention. That point was dealt with in the report by the Joint Committee in 1999. Paragraph 283, on page 75, refers to the case of Demicola v. Malta, in which the editors of a satirical magazine had been found guilty of contempt of Parliament. It was held by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg that they had not been given a fair process. The Court observed that""the person charged with contempt was a non-member"" of Parliament""but it would be unwise to assume that the requirements of fairness would be significantly less for members.""