Parliamentary Standards Bill

It is a matter of regrettable record that in the past 18 months or so, this House in its various guises has been in dispute with the Information Commissioner about applications in relation to the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the keeping of our expenses records and so forth. That has led to matters being taken to the High Court on two occasions, at considerable public expense. None of us—or at least only a very few of us, and I was not one of them—was asked for our view on that matter, but we are now none the less staring at the consequences of the High Court's decision. [Interruption.] It is interesting how one gets conflicting instructions from time to time. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), "Relax, mon brave." That having been said, I wonder whether the Secretary of State, or whichever Minister is to respond to this very short debate, will be able to tell me whether they or any other arm of the Government have communicated with the new Information Commissioner to see how he is approaching the Bill. For example, I wonder whether he has a view about whether the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority should become the data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998. I entirely agree with the thrust of the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) made, but we need somebody to deal with the matter. Unless that is explicit in the Bill, it will cause unnecessary confusion. If we are not very careful, we could get into the same sort of difficulty as in the past.