Parliamentary Standards Bill

All we have are our reputations, which can be destroyed by a critical report from my Committee. That has happened many times. The reputational hit is not fully understood outside the House. Clause 8 tries to make the Standards and Privileges Committee the agent of an outside body. The moment we do that, we run into all sorts of difficulties, which the Clerk of the House identified in his memorandum. One cannot make us the agent of an outside body, as subsection (2) would do, without running into all the constitutional difficulties that we outlined. Amendment 32, which my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) tabled, would remove IPSA's power to recommend to my Committee the application of a particular sanction. For that, it substitutes a power to refer its findings to the Committee. That would broadly replicate the current position, whereby the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards reports his findings to the Standards and Privileges Committee, which then determines the appropriate sanction. I support that amendment because it replicates, as far as possible, the current position. I remind the House that my Committee has said that it would be prepared to have lay members serving on it if that helped solve the problem that the Government identified of our being somehow out of touch with the outside world. Amendment 12 would remove the provision that allows the new commissioner to conduct an investigation into a case that is simultaneously the subject of criminal proceedings—the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) made a point about that—while leaving in place the provision that allows him to carry out an investigation into a case that has already been the subject of such proceedings. That is crucial. We cannot have a position whereby a Member is subject to competing jurisdictions for the same offence. He cannot have his collar felt by the Metropolitan police and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards at the same time. Perhaps I can leave the amendments that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) has tabled to him to consider. I have some sympathy with amendment 19, which deletes subsection (6). That would deal with the problem that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield outlined. If subsection (6) is to remain, we must knock out the reference to the Speaker's Committee. The Committee on Standards and Privileges should be responsible for drawing up the protocol; it is nothing to do with the Speaker's Committee, which is solely concerned with appointing and spending plans, not procedure. I have genuine anxieties about the implications of the Bill. The way through is to follow the path laid out by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, which avoids some of the complications that he rightly identified.