Parliamentary Standards Bill

Of course we could put all that into the requirement. Clause 5(8) is unfair and unworkable; moreover, it will begin to change the nature of the House of Commons. It comes from the Nolan report, which I know everybody is supposed to bow down to and worship, but I thought it was an appalling report. It misinterpreted what this House is about. It is not about the 19th-century view that we represent purely ourselves. Over the centuries, it has been about representing interests. In one fell swoop, Nolan said that that was wrong, and that somehow the great interests in this country should not be represented here, and that if we started to represent them, we might find ourselves expelled or imprisoned. My first concern about the clause is therefore that it will change the nature of the House. My second is that it is unworkable. I shall give an example from this morning. A merchant banker, a good guy who has not been disgraced and whose bank has not caused any of the problems that we are in, came in to talk to me about some ideas that he has had. One of his ideas was local communities buying, in a mutual way, their services from public utilities. I immediately realised that that would be relevant to a body on which I sit—a mutual based in Liverpool, about which I declare an interest and from which I gain remuneration as a non-executive director. I realised that offering such services to our members might infuse new life into the mutuals. We could not only cover health products, but ask whether members wanted to buy gas, water, electricity and other fuel, telephone services and so on through that mutual arrangement. How do I declare what happened this morning? I thought that I, as a Member of Parliament, was meeting somebody who wanted to develop ideas, but, during the conversation, those ideas became relevant to an outside interest for which I am paid. How do I sub-portion the time between listening to that banker and answering his questions, and then seeing the relevance of his points to the mutual associations in this country and my particular interest in that?