Parliamentary Standards Bill

We will tomorrow consider the requirements laid down in clause 9. I could be fined and, as a professional person, I might be able to pay a £5,000 fine, but it would have catastrophic consequences for my ability to continue in professional practice. That would be an extreme double whammy. I am particularly concerned by clause 5(8) because it would put the requirements into statutory form, which would enable the offence to bite on it. I had thought that that provision would go away and we would be left with only the House's obligations and not the statutory obligations. As it is, this provision will be a fertile field for litigation. I am entitled to invoke the law as much as I can, and I imagine that, if the amendment were taken to its logical conclusion, it could end up in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In that event, my argument would be that its impact on my ability to earn a living—quite apart from the duties of confidentiality and privacy law—caused it to breach articles in the European convention on human rights. We are creating a labyrinth for ourselves. The Secretary of State is temporarily absent, but I forgive him that. I am sure that he has a good reason for disappearing behind the Speaker's Chair. I believe that it is for the reasons that I have given that he showed a slight hesitation as he approached the Dispatch Box to try to disentangle the impacts of clause 5. Amendments 29 and 30 deal with clause 5(10), which states:""The rules must prohibit a member from… by any specified means, advocating or initiating any cause or matter on behalf of any person in consideration of any specified payment or benefit in kind"." I interpret that as a preliminary for the offence of paid advocacy that appears in clause 9. What is bizarre, however, is that, according to my understanding, although a payment must be "specified"—I suppose we see that in the rules—a benefit in kind is not subject to qualification by the word "specified". On the face of it, we are putting in statute a requirement that any benefit in kind, irrespective of the rules that we are enacting, be prohibited. The regulations show that there is a real problem with benefits in kind. Those who drew up the regulations experienced great difficulty in deciding what constituted a benefit in kind and what constituted a gift. If I deliver a speech—as I did recently—to, for example, a Conservative association or indeed a rotary club, and if at the end of the evening someone gives me a bottle of claret, is that a gift or is it a benefit in kind? It is clear to anyone who reads the regulations that those who drew them up were not at all sure into which category such things should fall. As a consequence, if thereafter we come to the House and try to advocate anything that might be to the advantage or otherwise of a particular organisation, we shall be committing a criminal offence carrying a fine of £5,000. All this strikes me as a complete fantasy world. I am afraid that the reason for that fantasy world is, yet again, our semi-mad Prime Minister, who goes out and makes statements to the public without thinking through the consequences of his actions in an attempt to secure some cheap and quick public fix. That is what the Secretary of State is now having to disentangle without ruffling too many feathers at No. 10 Downing street, and that is to the extent to which, at present, we are being disgracefully governed.