Parliamentary Standards Bill

I was not criticising the Justice Secretary in any way, but merely drawing to his attention some very important speeches. He heard some of the speech of the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), but he should read all of it. Every speech made this afternoon, including the admirable one by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael), has had one theme: this legislation is being rushed unnecessarily. No one in the House is against the setting up of an independent body to administer our pay, allowances and expenses. There is a difference between allowances and expenses, which has not always come out in recent weeks. I find it slightly strange that Members who very properly—I stress this—have claimed the whole allowance for a very large mortgage, have come in for very little criticism, whereas some of those who might not be so well off, and who have claimed for certain items of furniture and perhaps a modest rent, have been crucified. We ought to bear those points in mind, and I hope that Sir Christopher Kelly will do so; a lot rests on him. We are having this debate because the Prime Minister has panicked over the bad publicity in the past few weeks. He has been responsible for some of that bad publicity. I have been in the House for 39 years, and I have never known a time when morale has been so low, when Members in all parts of the House have been so depressed, and when their families have been so depressed. We owe it to those who sent us here to put our house in order as quickly as we can, as far as pay and allowances are concerned. When two or three Members gather together, the talk is not of recession, Afghanistan, health or education, but of pay, allowances and expenses. We need to get away from that, and to become a Parliament again, in the fullest sense of that word. I could not help but think of Horace Walpole's diaries of 1759—the annus mirabilis—in which he said that every time one went down to breakfast, one had to ask for news of the latest victory; it was a wonderful time of rejoicing. Some years ago, the Queen said that she had had her annus horribilis. We have had ours this year: every time one gets up in the morning, people ask what is in the paper and which colleague has been fingered. We need to move away from that, but not by panicking into bad and unnecessary legislation. I repeat that it is right that we give the responsibility for the financial matters to an outside body. I have always felt that the salary, allowances and expenses for parliamentarians should be fixed at the end of a Parliament for the whole of the next Parliament, perhaps with some index for inflation. No Parliament should then be in the position even of being tempted to adjudicate on its own remuneration. I hope that Sir Christopher Kelly and his committee will come up with a recommendation along those lines. However, we must concentrate this afternoon on the other clauses of this extremely hastily drafted Bill. It really is monstrous that it should be pushed through with such indecent haste. At the very least, as the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said, we should have had another two days next week. We could quite easily have divided the Bill into two and dealt with its financial provisions this week, allowing for some proper scrutiny, in which the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and the hon. Member for Hendon, as Chairmen of their respective Committees, could have taken part, and in which the privileges report—extensively quoted from earlier—could have been studied by Members. We could then have come back in the autumn—in September if the Government preferred, or in October—and dealt with the other aspects of the Bill if, by that time, we felt that a Bill of that sort were necessary. At the heart of this debate is the very purpose of Parliament and the function of Members of Parliament. We are sent here by our constituents, and in the immortal words of Burke, we owe them not just our industry but our judgment. When we have fulfilled the term of the Parliament, it is up to them to decide whether they wish us to return. The privilege that we enjoy is not a personal privilege that belongs to me as the Member for South Staffordshire or to my right hon. Friend as the Member for North-West Hampshire; it is the privilege of the electors of North-West Hampshire and of South Staffordshire that enables us to speak without fear or favour in this House. All that is at risk because of this Bill. I have never known a time when the Clerk of the House thought it proper to send round the sort of letter that we received at the end of last week.