Parliamentary Standards Bill

Clearly, as I said yesterday, Members of the House are either elected representatives who are free to earn outside, or professional politicians who are not. It is with that thought that I shall address the clause and the amendments. As some hon. Members know, I have become convinced over a period that, unfortunately, the House is heading in the direction of professional politics. That, for better or for worse, is why I have decided not to stand again. I confess that when I made my decision, pessimist though I sometimes am, even I could not conceive of a clause as poor as clause 5. Let me explain my reasoning. First, the Secretary of State has said consistently, throughout the proceedings on the Bill, that we need the Bill in order to quell public anxiety over expenses, but it ought to be obvious to every Member of the House, including those who have just entered it, that the clause has nothing at all to do with expenses. It is to do with the declaration of financial interests. If the Secretary of State had wanted a Bill concerned merely with expenses, he could have had it quickly yesterday and that would have been an end to it. But no, we have to have this Bill and this clause. The clause places before us a series of rules that will apparently be replaced by a code. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) have just been through all the arguments, and it is not ultimately clear whether "rules" is to be replaced by "code"—the most likely explanation is that the Prime Minister has promised a code and that is an end of it—or, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex just argued, whether the courts will be given the power to rule on the clause, thereby obviating the removal from the Bill of clause 6, which was offered to us as a concession yesterday. Furthermore, I do not know what will replace clause 5(8), if anything. Some Members may know because the Justice Secretary has been scurrying back and forth to speak to them. However, we do know what remains and looks likely to be punishable by the courts under clause 9. Nevertheless, we do not even know whether what the Bill seeks to give effect to, namely the provision whereby we have to declare in detail every hour that we work outside this place, will stand or be replaced by whatever Sir Christopher Kelly brings forth. I thought I heard the Secretary of State say this afternoon that, if Sir Christopher comes forth in due course and says, "I do not much like any of this," it may all have to be replaced anyway. I thought also that I heard my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex say that Sir Christopher, in conversation with him, seemed to intimate that he was not happy with every aspect of the Bill, raising the further question why it exists and why the clause exists. Underneath that tangled mess, which is so tangled that my description is even more tangled that it normally would be, lies a simplicity. As other hon. Members have said, the Government are creating an atmosphere of illegitimacy around outside interests. That is the purpose of clauses 5 and 9, and the ceiling that has been descending year upon year on outside interests, ever since the Nolan report and probably further back, is being ratcheted down under this Bill. It is essentially unjust, because the one group of people who will not have to declare how much time they spend working on business other than those of their constituents are, of course, Ministers. If there were any justice, they would accept the amendment tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends, so that Ministers had to declare how many hours they spent moonlighting outside this place—to use the language that they frequently throw at us. But of course, they will not accept it. Either we are to be elected representatives who are free to work or, if we are to be professional politicians, we will have to separate the Executive and the legislature, and being an MP will be a full-time job. I do not expect the Justice Secretary to address that argument fully or completely openly. I understand why the Leader of the House cannot be present, but, notably, the Justice Secretary has been sent in because, with his usual combination of charm and cunning, he is the only Front-Bench spokesperson likely to get the Bill past unsuspecting Government Members who, if they are still here after the next election, will find that it bites as much on them as on any other Member. My closing words, however, are not to the Justice Secretary but to my Front-Bench team. If, as may be, there is a Conservative Government after the next election, they are going to inherit this mess, and they are going to have to make a fundamental decision themselves, despite all the political difficulties. The question is, are they going to allow the boat to continue to drift all the way down to the professionalisation of politics, or are they going to make a stand and allow this House to return to what it should be—namely, a forum in which the clash of interests is represented and debated? If this House does not do that, there is no purpose in it being here at all.