Parliamentary Standards Bill

The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) has raised an important issue that we discussed to some degree in the cross-party talks. It may be helpful if I tell the Committee what is in the Government's mind. I resist the claim by the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) that we have been unwilling to follow through the consequences of our proposals to their logical conclusion. We are not discussing clause 11 at the moment, but that clause—Opposition Members will recall its provenance—was put into the Bill to try to deal with precisely this issue. First, let me deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), who asked whether this body should have been an independent fees office, in his phrase, and nothing more. We are indeed establishing an independent fees office, but there are certain consequences that follow from that. One of the key consequences involves who then supervises that independent fees office. If we approve the principle of an independent fees office, as the House plainly has—I remind Members that the principle of the Bill was approved by a majority of 290; the vote was 291 to one—we must also approve the principle that the people who supervise it must be independent of this House. Otherwise, we would get into the absurd position of having a fees office that was allegedly independent, but when there was a complaint about its operation— whether it came from a member of the public, a Member of this House or a member of staff, and whether it concerned its administration or how it was adjudicating on individual Members' allowances and claims—that complaint would fall to be adjudicated solely by this House. If there were then a question about whether the new independent fees office was being properly run, again it would fall to the House to deal with it. We would not be setting up what we sought to set up at all, but a charade. That is why we thought that we should set up the structure that is essentially provided for in schedules 1 and 2. The authority has two branches to its work, one of which is administrative. There is a chief executive, or chief officer, appointed by the authority, but it is the chief officer, not the authority, who is the accounting officer, and he or she is directly responsible for the administration and good financial conduct of the authority and its expenditure of money. On the other side, there is a commissioner who is there to investigate complaints, which may well be about the operation of the chief executive and his or her staff. I suggest to the Committee that that is an essential part of any process to establish what the hon. Member for Gainsborough describes as an independent fees office. There is an argument for saying that the commissioner should be wholly hived off, but the commissioner is pretty nearly wholly hived off. The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire asked whether we would have two sets of investigations falling over each other with two sets of procedures. If one reads the Green Book, one can see that it is overwhelmingly concerned with Members' conduct in terms of their financial interests and allowances. That will fall almost exclusively to the new authority and the new commissioner. However, there will continue to be some work for the existing commissioner and some investigations that will go directly to the Standards and Privileges Committee, not through the authority as well. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) asked whether it might be sensible to have one person who was able to do both jobs. Yes, it might be; the double-hatting of functions is perfectly normal in many situations. That is why clause 11, which we will come to in due course, provides for two sets of things. First, subsection (1) states:""The Speaker, after consulting the Commissioner and the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges, may agree with the"" authority that it""is to carry out any registration function specified in the agreement"" that it is not already carrying out. The registration functions in the Bill will be functions relating to Members, not necessarily to Members' spouses or staff, nor, for example, to the press lobby, which is currently separate. If that is agreed, then subject to the provisions in subsection (8), those functions would go to the authority. Secondly, subsection (4) states:""The Speaker, after consulting the IPSA and the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges, may agree with the Commissioner that the Commissioner is to carry out any relevant function specified in the agreement (whether relating to a matter arising before or after the agreement is made or the date this Act is passed)."" Therefore, the existing functions could be passed over. The other safeguard for the House is that that could happen only if the agreement were approved by a resolution of the House.