Parliamentary Standards Bill

Yes, I have, but it may assist the Committee if I go through the other amendments in this group in the order in which they happen to be on my sheet. On amendment 16, which my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) tabled, I shall listen carefully to what he has to say before coming to a view. Amendment 27, from the Opposition Front-Bench team, would require IPSA to consult Members when preparing and revising Members' financial interests, and we will of course accept that. Amendment 28 proposes that""no member may be required to declare any specified information relating to any source of outside earned income which would place him in breach of a duty of a confidentiality"," and amendment 7 would leave out subsection (8), which is quite a detailed subsection. I want to listen to the debate on those two amendments, but I say to all parts of the Committee that I accept that the drafting of subsection (8) is potentially too onerous and restrictive of Members. I do not mean that it is too narrow; it may be too wide. However, parliamentary counsel are already looking at whether its basic purpose can be captured in far less onerous language. I think that there is general agreement that any scheme for the registration of interests should be backed by arrangements whereby interests have to be declared. Part 6 of the code of conduct, "Registration and Declaration of Interests", says:""Members shall fulfil conscientiously the requirements of the House in respect of…registration…and shall always draw attention to any relevant interest in any proceeding of the House or its Committees"." Paragraph 77 gives further guidance on how declarations of interest should be made, saying that it should be done "briefly". I think that we all accept that. I certainly accept that, as the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) said, we are now in the age of Google. Ten years ago, before Google, someone who wanted to find out whether a Member had a declarable interest had to go to the Library or to a public library—there was no other way of accessing that information. These days everybody can do it, even from a mobile telephone. The fact that the consequences of registration are so ubiquitous should mean that the need for declaration is less onerous. At the same time, there must be some provision for declaring an interest; otherwise, we would get into some extraordinary situations. Somebody may, perfectly properly, be an adviser to a particular company and wish to say something—not paid advocacy—in a debate. For example, an adviser to or a director of a defence company may have an interest in speaking generally in a defence debate. There is no reason why they should not do so, but it is important that that is drawn to the House's attention and that of the Member's constituents.