Parliamentary Standards Bill

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for bringing amendments 56 and 57 before the House. I see his exact purpose in doing so. The difficulty that I perceive with amendment 56 brings us back to a debate that we had earlier on a fundamental issue—the extent to which we wish to set up an independent authority to regulate our allowances. If it is the desire of the Committee to have such an authority, so that it can distance itself from the decisions taken, amendment 56, while it would achieve the aim that my right hon. Friend desires, would effectively defeat the intention behind the legislation. It would turn IPSA into something very similar to the Fees Office, as it currently stands. That is a difficult issue. All that I can say to my right hon. Friend is that I do not think that the sovereignty of Parliament is involved in the matter, because just as we have the power to set up the authority, which would be at one remove from us—we would have to accept what it came up with—if at a later date we decided that we wanted to get rid of it, we could do so through primary legislation, so the power remains with us. The question is: to what extent do we wish to interfere with its daily operation? My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point when he highlights the fact that when Sir Christopher Kelly's report comes out, there may be incompatibilities between it and the structure that we have set up. I have no idea who will be in government when that happens, so all that I can say to him is that if there are incompatibilities, we will have to have primary legislation to resolve them. It is quite apparent that we cannot have those incompatibilities. If they occur, the fault will be due to the way in which the Government approached the matter. On that, I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend.