Parliamentary Standards Bill

It is. My reading of the drafting suggests that none of this is subject to parliamentary approval. IPSA needs the agreement of the Speaker's Committee, but we are not told what happens if the Speaker's Committee does not agree. IPSA could publish and try to assert its view regardless, because it appears that it is primus inter pares in these matters. No procedure is set down for reconciling disputes between the Speaker's Committee and IPSA. The implication is that once IPSA has published, preferably with the agreement of the Speaker's Committee, then that is the statement from which not only this House but the courts, if they become involved, will have to operate. That is totally unacceptable. We are being asked to override not only the Standards and Privileges Committee but our own law-making powers by delegating a crucial element in how this complex and bureaucratic system is going to work to a draft from IPSA that it could not possibly undertake for several months until we know who the chief executive is and that person has a staff who can get to work and take advice. Presumably they would then come to see right hon. and hon. Members from the Standards and Privileges Committee. However, as the drafting makes clear, they do not have to take the view of those Members—they can come up with their own independent view and assert that. For all those reasons, I hope that the Minister will realise that this proposal is impractical and cumbersome, that it cannot work, that it will delay justice rather than give justice, and that it will make the House of Commons look ridiculous rather than showing that we take these matters seriously. The overriding of procedures that have worked well is symbolic of a Government who love to railroad their way through traditional institutions that are already functioning in the name of modernisation without thinking about the difficult consequences that my follow. This will not produce more justice or a better administered Parliament; nor will it deal with cases that the present system would not otherwise deal with. It is a recipe for disaster.