Parliamentary Standards Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) for raising this matter. It may help if I explain how the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000 will work in respect of the new authority. Section 1 of the Data Protection Act defines a data controller as""a person who (either alone or jointly or in common with other persons) determines the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal data are, or are to be, processed"." Whether someone is a data controller is not a matter of election by that individual but subject to an objective test. As soon as IPSA arrives at a situation in which it is determining the purposes for which, or the manner in which, any personal data that it holds are to be processed, it will become a data controller. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the matter, but I hope that he will accept that the new clause is not necessary. The new clause mentions "two months". On Second Reading, which seems two years ago, but was only two days, several stirring victories and one defeat ago, I gave an undertaking about the likely time scale. I suggested that, with the likelihood of Sir Christopher Kelly's recommendations being available in October, and taking account of the time for running a competition to appoint the senior people to the authority, for the authority then to appoint a chief executive and for the transfer of staff, which the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) raised, we are aiming for Sir Christopher Kelly's proposals, and the new authority, to start operating on 1 January next year. It is not remotely likely that the authority will be up and running in two months. Assuming that we get Royal Assent by the end of July, that would mean establishing the authority by the end of September. I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) accepts that the first part of the new clause is unnecessary and the second is not achievable. Apart from that, it is fine. It has provided an important platform for a useful debate. Under clause 14, clauses 12, 13 and 14 come into force by statutory instrument, and different days can be appointed for different purposes. That is standard form, so the exact time at which the authority comes into force depends on when it is ready. I should also point out that that, like the Bill, will be the formal responsibility of the Leader of the House, because the measure is essentially a creature spawned by the House, not by a Department—although I have been delighted to play my role in ensuring that it is improved, as it has been. As the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton will recall, paragraph 27 of schedule 1 and paragraph 10 of schedule 2 provide that IPSA and the commissioner become public authorities for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; the House has agreed that. Those provisions will come into force when the authority has some information that will make it the subject of FOI requests. That will happen as soon as it becomes operational. I hope that that helps, and that the hon. Gentleman will therefore be willing to withdraw the new clause.