Parliamentary Standards Bill

We are, of course, pleased that the Government have decided to remove clause 6. However, we wish to make clear that that is not because we do not approve of the idea of a code—indeed, we already have one—but because, as the Clerk of the House made clear, the clause would have put us on a collision course with the courts. While I welcome what I expect the Secretary of State for Justice to tell us in a moment, this does rather take us back to the future. I will not rehearse all the arguments that were in my Second Reading speech, but I will say that if clause 6 had remained in the Bill, the legitimate concerns of constituents would have been replaced by the vexatious concerns of litigants. We are, however, disappointed that yesterday, having delighted us by saying that they would withdraw the clause, the Government brought it in again through the back door, in a slightly watered-down form, by changing all the language of clause 5 from the word "rules" to the word "code". That, in our view, has introduced a new element of confusion. Before the amendments were passed, there was a welcome hint of clarity. The word "code" now refers only to financial interests. It is to some extent sub-divided in the language of clause 5, but, as with the use of the word "standards", the Government have introduced that element of confusion, which could otherwise have been avoided. I think that the origin is, once again, interference by the Prime Minister. Page 8 and other parts of the document that he produced yesterday, "Building Britain's Future"—itself probably an inaccurate title—state:""We are introducing legislation to create an independent regulator for Parliamentary standards, and a tough, legally binding Code of Conduct for MPs."" If we juxtapose the amended clause 5 and the soon-to-be absent clause 6 with what the Prime Minister has said about a legally binding code of conduct, and if we take what he has said at face value, we see that we may once again be heading for a justiciable code of conduct, which is exactly what the removal of clause 6 was designed to avoid. We are not clear—I am convinced that there is still confusion—about whether that will create the problems surrounding justiciability that the Clerk of the House has already highlighted, but I am afraid that our pleasure at the removal of the clause has been tainted by our disappointment that many of its disadvantageous elements have crept into the Bill elsewhere.