Parliamentary Standards Bill

We now have to consider the criminal offences that the Government think it right to create and to impose on Members of this House if they transgress. Let me first make absolutely clear something that has been said on many occasions: if Members of Parliament commit criminal offences, no privilege or any other protection should exist in respect of them. There is nothing new about that: it has been the position for hundreds of years. However, the Committee should spend a moment considering whether the offences created in clause 9 add anything to the existing criminal law and whether they will create problems that will be damaging to the way the House operates. We have to consider three offences. First:""A member of the House of Commons commits an offence if the member…makes a claim under the MPs' allowances scheme, and…provides information for the purposes of the claim that the member knows to be false or misleading in a material respect."" The penalty for that action will be:""on conviction on indictment…imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or…a fine or…both."" I have no difficulty with that offence, but I have to say that it sends a very strange message about how we view the criminal law to create an offence specifically for ourselves, and which I assume will therefore be used on Members who transgress in this way, when there already exist in the criminal law at least two, and probably more, offences which relate to exactly the same activity and would attract maximum sentences of seven and 10 years. How can I go back to my constituents and say that the House is taking them seriously when the offence that we have created for ourselves appears to be a much lesser one than that under the general criminal law? I would have thought that the Secretary of State for Justice, with his knowledge of the criminal law, would acknowledge that it is much better that this House should be subject to exactly the same criminal law as would be visited on anybody else who behaved in this way by obtaining their allowances fraudulently. There are already two such offences on the statute book: the offence in section 17 of the Theft Act 1968, which is about false accounting and carries a sentence of seven years; and the offence in the Fraud Act 2006, which attracts 10 years' imprisonment. Both fulfil exactly the same criteria as the offence in clause 9(1). The Secretary of State has told me informally—I am sure he will not mind my telling the Committee—that there are differences. Well, there are some minor differences in wording, but as regards what has to be proved against the individual concerned—namely, the provision of information in the knowledge that that information is false or misleading, which implies dishonesty on the part of the person concerned—I cannot see any distinction, in terms of ease of conviction or otherwise, between the more general offences and this offence.