Parliamentary Standards Bill

As drafted, clause 7 does not provide an opportunity for Members to refer their own cases to the new Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations. The Bill thus removes a facility that is currently available to Members and which has been used on several occasions in the past couple of years. Amendment 9 would restore that facility. I think it is right that there should be no automatic entitlement for Members to refer their own cases. Currently, the commissioner seeks the agreement of my Select Committee on Standards and Privileges before he proceeds with an investigation into a matter that has been self-referred. In my view, it would be appropriate for the procedures that will be drawn up under this clause to prescribe a similar process whereby a self-referral leads to an investigation only if IPSA gives its assent. For example, there may be allegations made about a Member which receive widespread publicity but nobody actually makes a complaint. The only way in which that Member can have his name cleared is to refer himself, currently to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, go round the course and then, hopefully, be cleared. Amendment 9 would replicate that facility in the proposed new regime. Amendment 10 deals with a different point, but it is similar in that the purpose is again to restore a feature of the current system that will otherwise be lost, and which in the opinion of my Committee has worked well. I am referring to the rectification procedure. The amendment allows the new commissioner to rectify certain cases without making a formal report to IPSA. It closely replicates the language of Standing Order No. 150. Typically, cases suited to rectification involve the misuse of a few prepaid envelopes, or an inadvertent and relatively minor error in the content of a letter sent out using the communications allowance. Where the Member accepts that such a relatively minor error has been made and makes the appropriate restitution, the matter can be regarded as dealt with. I fear that if no provision of this kind is made, IPSA will find that it is kept very busy considering reports on relatively minor and inconsequential breaches of the rules. Subsection (4) states:""After conducting an investigation, the Commissioner must make a report to the IPSA on the Commissioner's findings."" If the reports are to be substantive they will, again, involve a lot of work about very little. It would be helpful if the Secretary of State could say something about how that unqualified requirement to report might work in practice. Finally in this group, amendment 11 would require IPSA to consult before it determined a set of procedures applying to the treatment of complaints, the conduct of investigations by the new commissioner and the publication of the commissioner's reports. The procedures will be of considerable importance to the House, and I am surprised that no provision for consultation was included in the Bill, especially as it very commendably includes consultation provisions in clauses 3, 5 and 11—a fact that should make it easy for the Government to accept this amendment. I would have preferred the new commissioner rather than IPSA to be in the driving seat when it comes to drawing up the investigation procedures, and my failure to table an amendment to that effect is but one more symptom of the haste with which this Bill is being put through. I have, however, tabled such an amendment for Report, and it would be helpful if the Secretary of State could comment now on whether he will accept it. A further question arises on this clause: its relationship with clause 9. Given that all the alleged breaches of the rules that the commissioner may investigate under clause 7 will also be offences under subsections (1) or (2) of clause 9, do the Government expect the commissioner to be at all busy, because these will now be criminal offences—and is it not the case that all serious breaches will be handled by the police, leaving only relatively minor cases such as the misuse of prepaid envelopes and the inadvertent inclusion of a party logo in a letter funded by the communications allowance to be investigated by the commissioner? Therefore, what exactly will the work load be? Amendments 48 and 45 stand in the name of the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) respectively, so I shall not comment on them. However, having successfully had a number of amendments adopted by the Government yesterday, I regard myself as being on something of a roll, and I hope that my good fortune may carry on to today.