Parliamentary Standards Bill

I am grateful to you, Sir Alan, for selecting my starred amendments in your position as Chairman of this Committee. That is, perhaps, a recognition of the fact that we are all in a tremendous rush and it is an abuse of the procedures of this House that a constitutional Bill of this importance is being treated as an emergency. The Government have an emergency, but the constitution does not, and it is wholly wrong that we are having to table complex amendments and have them considered extremely quickly. None of the amendments I have tabled is in any sense a recognition that this Bill can be adequately improved. I think it is irretrievably a bad Bill, which is why I voted against it. However, in accordance with the spirit that Committees are supposed to have, I have tabled some amendments to try to correct some of the grosser abuses and to question the Government about their proposals. Amendments 50 and 51 remove the requirement that the chair of IPSA must be appointed by Her Majesty the Queen. I have also included other members of IPSA in another amendment, because I am puzzled about why these need to be royal appointments. Therefore, I have this question for the Justice Secretary: what additional rights and status does this give them? Is it intended to elevate the importance of IPSA? That is hardly necessary, as it is already the supreme quango, at the pinnacle of the quango state; so I want to know what it is that royal appointment brings.