Parliamentary Standards Bill

I listened with care to what the Secretary of State has said, and I am conscious of the very limited time we have had to consider the matter—and the even more limited time to consider the further changes that he puts forward. He will have to answer when, ultimately, we come to point where we will have to approve the rules or the code, and it seems to me that at that stage, the matter is as much a creature of this House as it is if we have a code of conduct under clause 6—even if it has a statutory nature. All I can say is that my best advice to the Committee is that I can think of no reason why, if the Secretary of State is right, we should not keep clear the distinction between the financial rules that he wishes to create and the present code. If there is even a shadow of a doubt, the sensible thing for the Secretary of State to do is to abandon this attempt to change the word "rule" to "code" and to leave it as it is now, and we can sort it out later. I very strongly urge him to do that. Secondly, moving on to our own amendment, I note that I thought I had understood, but perhaps I had misunderstood, that the Secretary of State was going to abandon clause 5(8). I thought it was an abandonment rather than a going away to rewrite the provision in some new form. There is absolutely no doubt that once clause 5(8) comes into force, it will, as I said in my intervention earlier, have an immediate bearing on a whole series of questions relating to the rule changes we introduced two months ago or whenever it was, which have come in for so much criticism in the House. By way of illustration, let me turn to amendment 28. I am also mindful of what was said by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) a short time ago. I must declare my interest here, Mr. Cook, as a practising member of the Bar. However, that fact may be pretty academic because as I have not practised for 12 months, it is unlikely that I will practise again before the next general election—and it may well be that my appearance in court last July was the last time I will ever appear.