Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, as the first speaker from these Benches, I make it clear that I am speaking as a Back-Bencher and expressing my own views; I am not speaking on behalf of my Front Bench. My past interests in this area have been as Leader of the House of Commons, chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee some 20 years ago, although much has changed since, and more recently as a Member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the committee that produced the report on the House of Lords. I wish to make four general points today. The first is this: there is no question but that there have been, it would appear, some serious abuses of the Commons allowances system, although it is easy to get an exaggerated view on how many—but more on that later. It clearly needs to be attended to and I have no objection in principle to an independent body being responsible for it. However, that does not mean that we should give this Bill, which is the Prime Minister’s answer to the abuses, swift approval. There are some serious and fundamental flaws in it, which anyone reading the paper by the Clerk of the House of Commons to the House of Commons Justice Committee, our own Constitution Committee report and the Joint Committee on Human Rights report would see in abundance. In particular, the first two are devastating in their criticisms. At Second Reading in the other place, Alan Duncan referred to the Clerk’s paper. He said that it had two central concerns, which were, ""first, that swathes of the Bill are or would have been justiciable and would set Parliament"—" "Parliament", not only the House of Commons— ""on a direct collision course with the courts; and, secondly, that this could undermine the basic principles of free speech in this House".—[Official Report, Commons, 29/6/09; col. 66.]" Those are devastating criticisms. My first point therefore is that the handling of this matter is little short of disgraceful. It bears all the hallmarks of a knee-jerk response by a beleaguered Prime Minister in a bunker making legislation on the hoof in response to newspaper headlines and announcing his quick thought for the day on YouTube. It flies in the face of all the Government’s own rules for public consultation—I stress public consultation, as distinct from secret cross-party talks—and adequate time for scrutiny of legislation. It raises serious constitutional issues as a result of the thoughtless haste with which the Government did the drafting. We see evidence of that in the continuing response by the Government in making changes and even promising some—if I heard it right—in the next Parliament. In all my time in Parliament, I have never seen such a critical report by a clerk in the House of Commons. I say to the Leader that my criticism does not include her role. I have great sympathy for her and I am grateful for the assurances that she fought for and gave today. Admittedly, in the House of Commons, Clause 6 was withdrawn and Clause 10 was defeated, albeit by a majority of three. These clauses were highly objectionable on constitutional grounds but, as the report of the Constitution Committee makes clear, much still needs to be done on what are now Clauses 6, 7 and 8. I leave it to my noble friend Lord Goodlad to talk about his Constitution Committee report, but I quote one sentence from it: ""This is no way in which to legislate on matters which raise complex constitutional and legal issues"."