Parliamentary Standards Bill

The Prime Minister has, in effect, handed us this Bill rather like a man handing a motorway map to a group of dejected, demoralised and, I am afraid in a few cases, discredited travellers. Like a map, the Bill contains features—a new authority here, a new penalty there. Some of them are unproblematic; others, as we have heard, are rather more of a problem. None the less, as we have heard this evening, we are being told to get a move on—that the only fitting response to the public anger is to rush the Bill through the House as quickly as possible. What you may have observed from this debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is a distinct reluctance on the part of the House to be rushed in that way, because the more Members in all parts of the House have looked at the Bill, the less they have liked it. The reason for that is simple. It is because, having looked collectively at the Bill today, we have identified a key weakness—namely, that the map before us has no agreed destination. It sets out a new body and new penalties, but it fails to set out a clear vision of what the new body will regulate and to what activities the penalties will apply. In short, nowhere in the Bill does it describe what a Member of Parliament is, or what our functions and purposes in this place are. The hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) made that point earlier. It is evident that there are two conflicting ideas of what an MP is. The first is that we are elected representatives—citizen legislators who are free to earn outside this place. The second is that we are professional politicians funded exclusively by the taxpayer and therefore members of a political class, distinct and thus separate from those whom we represent. Elected representatives must, almost by definition, represent a multiplicity of interests—the interests of capital, the interests of labour, and so on. Under our present constitutional arrangements and cultural conditions, however, most professional politicians will, I am afraid, ultimately represent only one interest—namely, that of the Executive whom they wish to serve as members, or that of the Executive-to-be. So, the movement in recent years from the MP as elected representative to the MP as professional politician—first under John Major and Nolan, then under Tony Blair and Nolan's successors—suits the Executive very nicely. It is no wonder that, by means of the Bill, the ceiling that has for years been descending on private interests will be ratcheted down still further.