Parliamentary Standards Bill

I will move on as swiftly as I can. My amendment 67 addresses the question of what should take precedence. Even if there is, as I propose, an envelope of privilege around the entire activities of IPSA and the commissioner, there would still need to be some means of deferring to criminal proceedings if they were in progress. It is in any case something that we do automatically on an administrative basis within the House. The amendment proposes:""Where any criminal investigation or proceedings are concerned with the same or related matters which are the subject of an investigation by the Commissioner or of a recommendation by IPSA, the criminal investigation or proceedings shall take precedence"," and I add,""subject to the agreement of the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges"," which should surely be the final arbiter of such a case. Finally, I shall briefly refer to amendment 94, which I appreciate is in a different group. It would amend clause 10, and it states:""Where proceedings of the IPSA and proceedings of the Commissioner arise from section 7 (investigations), section 8 (enforcement) or section 9 (offences), they shall be deemed to be proceedings in Parliament in accordance with Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689."" My amendments may be imperfectly drafted and they may not create a perfect envelope around the activities that need to be enveloped, but I honestly believe that they provide a solution to the Secretary of State's problem. He wants independent regulation, he wants the independent regulator to be able to look at all the evidence, and he wants the commission to be able to conduct investigations as freely as possible, but he really does not want the courts interfering with these processes and he does not want to provide an avenue for the courts to look at what has been happening in Parliament and to have a chilling effect on free speech. If my amendments are accepted, along with those in the name of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) that strike out the final subsection of clause 10, we will have created a perfect envelope to allow the Bill to go forward—enveloped by privilege exactly as I believe the Secretary of State intends, but as the Bill fails to deliver at the moment, which is completely unacceptable.