Parliamentary Standards Bill

The fact that the rules are linked to regulations on declarations of interest and what constitutes paid advocacy that are not in the Bill, and the fact that those rules are developing and changing, must give rise to the real possibility that Members of this House could be prosecuted for doing their jobs. That was one of the things that caused me anxiety when I came to look in detail at the Bill. The Government will argue—perfectly fairly, I am sure—that that is not their intention. However, the conflation of the draft, the offences section, the requirements on paid advocacy and the regulations that we will have as of 1 July—I have had to look at them for my own sake, as I am sure has every hon. Member—seems to make that a real possibility. So, yes, on that point my hon. Friend is right. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) outlined the extent to which the proposals as brought before the House do not reflect any of the discussions that have taken place and fly in the face of accepted practices as regards Members' conduct. The hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) highlighted from his long experience as Chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that if we are moving to a statutory system of regulation it must be ECHR compliant, yet what is proposed is plainly nothing of the kind. If that is maintained, we will land ourselves with considerable difficulties. The hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) made a powerful and passionate speech, outlining what she thought being a Member of Parliament was all about, which I think is accepted across the House. She is right to be concerned about the proposals, because I fear that, even unintentionally, they will undermine her ability to do her job. My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) also made a powerful speech about an MP's role. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) highlighted the extent to which the Bill of Rights of 1689, which is often only cited in this place as some decorative extra, is in fact the rock and foundation on which freedom of speech in this country and in this House has been built, and the extent to which those rules will be changed by this Bill, which will be passed in three days by this House. The same points were made by the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory). The thing that shone through as the debate progressed was that, save for a half concession by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), no one who participated in the debate was happy with the entirety of the Government's proposals, or with anything close to their entirety. My hon. Friends the Members for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) and for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) highlighted the fact that the legislation appears to have been embarked on in great haste and contains a series of objectives, some of which can be readily supported but others of which appear to be entirely unclear. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) made an eloquent speech about Parliament and what it is to be here. I can speak only for myself when I say that I came into this House with romantic notions about what it was to be a Member. Those notions survive, but over the past few weeks I have come close to despair and, at times, to following the example of my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe—I wish I could talk him out of this—and just walking away from this place in despondency and sadness, because we are close to the point of no longer being able to do our work at all. To change direction, may I say to the Secretary of State how I think this issue ought to be approached? He is right when he says that there is an urgent issue to be considered. We have been exposed to unparalleled levels of public anger, hostility and disgust about this place. Those of us who have held public meetings—I have done so in my constituency—have had no difficulty in picking up on the extent of public dissatisfaction with the way in which we conduct our business, but I suggest to him that, as has been rightly highlighted in the debate, the issue goes further than salaries and expenses; it goes to our very relevance. The growing perception of our irrelevance is the foundation on which the current crisis has occurred, and we have failed to address that irrelevance for a long period. Whatever he may say, the public perceptions are that this place is powerless against the Executive and that it is supine. All people ever see of this place and all that is ever reported about it is the bear garden in this House—it is not the work that hon. Members do elsewhere, often in an atmosphere of far greater consensus and moderation—which tends towards exposing us to ridicule. The public then examine what we have been up to in respect of salaries and expenses. It was an urgent need that those things be dealt with outside this place, and I am delighted that the first part of the Bill provides for—or sets the scene for so doing—exactly that. There is a problem in that, without Sir Christopher Kelly having reported, many of the issues that should be of urgent importance to us are not yet covered. We must face up to the fact that the Byzantine system of allowances and what it allowed people to claim for has created some of the problems, and until it is sorted out we will not have reached our goal. This House can be comfortable with and happy about the fact that we will no longer be responsible for issues relating to our own remuneration, because that is not what we were sent here for—it is the additional extra to our work. We can be wholly content with that outcome. The other thing to have emerged from this crisis is that the transparency that we are now to have is probably the greatest moderator of all in ensuring that things do not go wrong in future. How much better it would have been if the claims that were exposed for criticism in the past two months had been posted the day on which they had been made and an MP could then have realised the public hostility to what he had been asking for, rather than our all facing the problem of having to justify, six years after the event, what many people were told at the time was justified. Transparency will take us a long way too. For those reasons, the Government's intentions and the first part of the Bill seem to us to be entirely necessary. We will support the Bill—or we will certainly not impede its passage—because we take the view that something must be done on those matters, but I must say to the Secretary of State that when one examines the second part of the Bill, one finds that the whole issue starts to become opaque. The Government have created—or they have certainly set about initially creating—a structure of regulation and punishment of MPs for transgressions that, if it had been given its full rein when first introduced, would in essence have turned us into the creatures of a quango. The Government drew back from that, but one is left with the impression that having put together a Bill that was constructed around the ex cathedra statements of the Prime Minister, without having previously having consulted anybody, they now feel obliged to pursue at least more than a fig leaf to show that he meant business. The reality, however, is that the Bill is fundamentally flawed in its approach to our regulation. The Bill would create criminal offences. I have nothing against criminalising Parliament. Indeed, the point was made to me at a public meeting that I attended that one reason for our unpopularity is that the public feel so dumped on and criminalised by a succession of over-zealous Governments over the years. They feel that we are being treated differently to them. However, that may be a good reason for Parliament's starting to decriminalise many of the things that we have imposed on the public, rather than starting to criminalise ourselves. If we are to be criminalised, it should be for some good reason that meets an objective. The first offence that we would create for ourselves would be one for which the general law already provides with far more draconian sanctions. How can we seriously tell our electors that we have a special fraud offence for MPs, punishable by only 12 months' imprisonment, but that they will get 10 years if they commit fraud? What is the purpose of that? Secondly, we will criminalise paid advocacy. I happen to think that paid advocacy is bribery. I thought that we were already criminalising bribery in a way that succeeded in taking into account the Bill of Rights and ensured that it would not be an obstacle to the conviction for bribery of a Member of Parliament. If so, what is the purpose of criminalising paid advocacy? It is a serious disciplinary offence against this House, and—as we have highlighted—the way in which the rules on outside interests and gifts are now drafted means that Members will be subject to severe anxiety about what constitutes paid advocacy and what does not. If any hon. Member wishes to understand that point, I suggest that they read the latest rules on what has to be declared after 1 July. The doubt about the difference between a gift and a benefit in kind shines through those regulations. The entirety of the enforcement powers that the Bill would bestow raises serious issues of justiciability. If the House wishes to engage in the merry-go-round of litigation, we can embark on that cheerfully, but it is unclear whether the rules could be enforced by the courts. My opinion is that they would be capable of being enforced by the courts. Indeed, hon. Members may derive some comfort from the fact that they would be able to challenge the rulings by the new Commissioner of IPSA in the courts if they disagreed with them. Some of those results may be inevitable, but I do not think that all of them are. I am convinced—I hope that the Secretary of State will be open-minded in Committee—that we can achieve the objectives that we all share without creating some of the difficulties that have been highlighted by the memorandum by the Clerk of the House and by virtually every hon. Member who has spoken. This debate is not about arcane issues—I do not really like talking about parliamentary privilege. It is about whether we can do our job. It is about whether we have the self-confidence to maintain our standards and to act corporately in challenging the Executive and holding them to account, which is one of our primary purposes. If that is undermined, we will be back in our constituencies in 12 months being criticised for something else and with the knowledge that our role is becoming more and more irrelevant. I ask the Secretary of State to have the courage to stand up for high standards, for the protection of the freedoms that we were sent here to protect, and to ensure that not only we but those who follow us have a framework within which to do that. If the Secretary of State and the Government listen, we can all break up for the recess at the end of July knowing that we have put on the statute book the first building block, and have taken a step in the right direction. However, if we are simply obliged to sign up to the Bill because if we do not we will all be condemned to the outer darkness for failing to appreciate public anger and respond to it, we will do ourselves and everybody else a grave disservice.