Parliamentary Standards Bill

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael), because if an opportunity arises, I will vote against the measure, and I wish to use this short contribution to explain why. The Bill fundamentally changes what we mean by representation, and we should move carefully before we change what has been built up over a long period and what the British people generally trust. Of course, there is the question of expenses. There is another side of that tale to be told, but perhaps this is not the place for that. There may be huge demand outside the House for us to deal with that issue as quickly as possible, but despite the hundreds of e-mails and letters that I have had from around the country, nobody has said that we should rush into legislating on it, let alone change our constitution in the fundamental way that I believe the Bill will. The words of the Justice Secretary that the Government were open and listening would have had more effect in the House if we were not whipped on the Bill. We have to decide on it in a couple of days, and the Government will whip us through the Lobby if they can, to get the desired effect. The Bill will make a fundamental change to representation as the British public have seen it in the past. I refer specifically to clause 5(8). I will not be much affected by it, which may make it easier for me to speak about it than it will be for other Members. Twin principles govern our understanding of democracy and freedom in this country: representative government and responsible government. We have a crisis in both parts of that understanding of our constitution, because to gain responsible government we need a party system so that a group of people can be held accountable for the programme that they believe the electorate have given them a mandate to carry through. Yet we live in an age when political parties are dying, and we have not yet come to terms with that when considering what responsible government means. The concept of representative government means various things, but partly that in some genuine way this House should represent the people whom we are elected to serve, in the sense that we should somehow mirror them. In my 30 years in the House of Commons, the pool from which MPs are drawn has become narrower and narrower. Unlike 50 years ago, we now have no senior trade union figure in the House. We have no senior business figure, no outstanding entrepreneur and no great musician. No one who has played a part in the IT revolution that has shaped our world is represented in the House and part of our affairs. Clause 5(8) will make it even more unlikely that such people will ever seriously consider coming into the House of Commons. The subsection is not only about listing our outside interests, it is about listing how much time we spend on them. In a moment I shall explain how impossible it will be to enforce that, other than by encouraging Members to be untruthful in the returns that they provide. I shall give a number of examples of the problem. The provision suggests, although of course this is not stated, that all our time is somehow purchased by our being Members of Parliament. It suggests that there is something wrong and unclean about our having outside interests for which we are paid, and that we need to justify that. What sort of world are we creating if it is not thought unnatural for me to go to sleep, play golf or watch a football match—I do not have to make an entry about that, as it is considered totally proper for a Member to have a rounded view—but if I earn any money outside the House, not only do I have to declare it, which is quite proper, but I should somehow have an egg timer and calculate how long I spend on each activity?