Parliamentary Standards Bill

The unease among the general public is more than unease—it is anger, and a very real anger. It is not successfully addressed if what we do in the end is to create a process that undermines the rights of the public in other ways in the future without addressing that grievance. Rushing into legislation that would have the effects that I described earlier does not deal with the public anger. The setting up of an independent body to determine what pay and allowances we should receive and to police the paying of them and the claiming of them goes some way to addressing that anger, and I welcome that. The House must ensure that it deals appropriately and effectively with those who break its rules, but it should not in the process take away the rights of our constituents. If it is going even to contemplate doing so, it should give the matter serious consideration. At the end of the day, there is what I like to think of as a sort of Bradlaugh principle at stake here. The ultimate judge must be the electorate. Bradlaugh found that his colleagues in Parliament repeatedly refused to accept his insistence that a rule of the House was an unfair constraint on him—in his case, the rule requiring him to swear an oath that he as an atheist did not believe it right to swear. If a Member, like him, found that his colleagues in the House were unwilling to accept him as a Member on those terms, ultimately it would be the electorate who must be allowed to judge and to insist on sending him back to Parliament, saying, "We wish this man to represent us, notwithstanding the fact that he appears to have broken a rule that others find important." That is a pretty fundamental principle. Of course, it is not an easy principle even for the Member affected, who might have to fight or even finance an election without the support of his political party, under procedures that we have seen operating in recent weeks in this House. However, it is the ultimate protection and the ultimate principle. Before we get to that point, there must be proper due process as far as any person—in this case, a Member of the House of Commons who is accused of behaving improperly—is concerned. The processes that we create should not also, in themselves, take away protections that are designed to ensure that people can give evidence to Committees of this House without fear of a penalty for doing so and without fear that the evidence they give can be adduced in court in circumstances that they did not envisage. The Government have been presented with a very strong case today. First, they should get ahead with the creation of a body that can administer pay and allowances and, secondly, they should not rush into things that would undermine some of the most basic freedoms, which go back to the Bill of Rights.