Parliamentary Standards Bill

I agree entirely with my hon. and learned Friend. Indeed, although I know we are supposed to be in a process of general atonement for our misdeeds, if the Government had suggested to me that we ought to have a criminal offence that did not involve a test of dishonesty, I would have suggested to the Secretary of State that prison capacity would have had to be considerably expanded. It is quite clear, as I think the Secretary of State has acknowledged, that MPs can make mistakes, like everybody else. The test of dishonesty is clearly fundamental to the offence. As we are having this debate, will the Secretary of State provide the House with some persuasive arguments as to why we should concoct a specific offence for us, identical to other offences that affect the general public, but visited with a sentence that could be one tenth of the maximum duration that someone might get elsewhere? What sort of message does that send? The second offence in clause 9 is committed if""without reasonable excuse, the member fails to comply with a requirement included in the MPs' financial interests rules"." I do not believe that either that offence or the previous one has any bearing whatever on parliamentary independence, so if the Government wish to have them, they can. In respect of the offence in clause 9(2), however, the Secretary of State needs to provide some explanation of how the reasonable excuse provisions will work in practice. Members of Parliament have known for a long time how easy it is to fail to comply with requirements included in Members' financial interests rules, and how that can be done innocently. I wonder whether we are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. This is a straightforward regulatory offence that we seem in the past to have succeeded in dealing with quite satisfactorily through the sanctions imposed in this House. It is odd that, because the new offence can be visited with only a fine as its penalty, if a conviction were obtained it would not disqualify a Member from serving in this place. I simply ask whether the offence is strictly necessary.