Parliamentary Standards Bill

We will probably return to some of the points that were made in the debate, but, as I was saying, I regard my job as an MP as a full-time job, and I have done since I entered the House. It is dangerous to start saying that we can adequately do the job alongside other tasks. Since I have been a Member, I have been a member of a Select Committee and taken a specialist interest in various subjects, such as health and social care. Clearly, there is more than the constituency to represent, and now I have a ministerial role, too. The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) said that he supports the principle of independent regulation, and he raised a number of issues that the Parliamentary Reform Committee, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), will look into. In fact, the latter part of the debate went into many issues that the new Parliamentary Reform Committee can look into. The hon. Member for North Essex, again, said that he did not think that being an MP was a full-time job; I disagree. My hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) made a very important point that we would all do well to remember as we near the end of the debate: we should consider the worth of Parliament, show the public that we are not just taking care but that we do care, and set up structures in a way that he called being "Kelly-ready". That might be another phrase that we can take forward. The hon. Members for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) talked about the professionalisation of Parliament, to which other Members had referred, and the separation of powers, and they were even concerned about judges flexing their muscles. I think that we will return to those aspects of the debate over the next couple of days. Cynicism has crept in, with the suspicion that there is a culture of them and us and of box-ticking. We definitely do want to move away from the "What we can get away with" culture, and I hope that, as the debate unfolds, we can agree on the principles that there should be a more transparent system of regulation and independent oversight. We have the platform on which we can move forward to discuss the detail of the Bill in a Committee of the whole House—