Parliamentary Standards Bill

Two things—first, the Secretary of State says he needs to think about the report. We need to think about it as well, but the trouble is that our consideration of the Bill will all be finished at 7 o'clock this evening. Secondly, I would have more sympathy with his concern about having a criminal standard of proof—the point raised by the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore)—if it were not for the fact that the system of investigation, when linked to clauses 8 and 9, is a seamless line potentially moving towards a criminal prosecution. Because the Government have set up the structure in that way, and—I come back to this point—given powers to the commissioner of a kind that I do not believe he needs to do his job properly and make sure that our allowances are properly given to us, we will be ratcheted into much higher standards of proof. If this is the model that the Government insist on adopting, which I wish they would not, the line taken by the hon. Member for Hendon will have to be followed.