Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, we are told by the Government that the Bill is designed to restore public confidence in Parliament in the aftermath of the expenses scandal. It is certainly highly desirable that that objective should be achieved, but the reality is that the way in which the Bill is being pushed through and the drafting of the Bill will themselves bring Parliament further into disrepute. That is the nub of the situation. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House says that this is a Bill that Parliament—or, rather, the House of Commons—wants and that the House of Commons ought to have it. I think that that is seriously open to doubt. I do not think that the House of Commons or, indeed, this House wants a Bill that has the most horrendous constitutional implications and undermines some of the basic building blocks on which Parliament operates. That is not the kind of Bill that either the Commons or this House wants or deserves. I find it extraordinary that the Bill in its original form should have appeared as it did. I cannot imagine what the people drafting it were thinking about. Apparently, what is now envisaged is that we must rush the Bill through so that it is on the statute book before the Summer Recess. Members of Parliament are going to rush back to their constituents waving the Act, as it will then be, almost like Chamberlain returning from Munich, saying, "Fear not! All our troubles are over. You can have faith in Parliament. I am now going to be very carefully regulated by IPSA"—they may ask what that is—"and don’t worry about it. All is well". Then, if the MP is honest, he will go on to say, "But I feel bound to point out that the cost of getting this to you now, rather than in the autumn, is that serious aspects of the Bill of Rights, which have protected your interests for years, have been eroded and parliamentary privilege has been under attack in order to get this Act to you quickly". The constituent may well turn round and ask whether parliamentary privilege is something that the MP wants to keep, but the MP may say, "It’s your privilege. It’s people’s privilege, not Parliament’s privilege. It enables me to stand up in the House of Commons and say things without fear of being taken to court by someone I am rightly attacking on your behalf". It does not seem to me to be sensible to want to create that situation so that Members of Parliament can get to their constituencies with the Act in a few weeks’ time, rather than in the autumn, by which time we could deal with some of these immensely difficult problems. I shall make one more quick point. The Leader of the House referred to a cross-party consensus. We all know that there is no cross-party consensus. What has been reached between closed doors is an agreement between the leaders of the parties, perhaps motivated to some extent by political expedience in the present circumstances. It is not a cross-party consensus and I hope very much that, in the course of the debates, abbreviated though they may be, unless we accept the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Norton, we can deal with the matter more appropriately. I believe that there is an underlying, deep, cross-party consensus against the Bill as now drafted and that we need to have the opportunity to amend it. Having said that, I agree with what the noble Baroness said in her opening remarks about the independent, self-governing aspects of both Houses. We recognise that she is very good at defending the interests of this House and is doing a splendid job in that respect. However, we must recognise that the independence of each House operates both ways. If it were just a question of qualifications, an enormous number of Peers in this House have great experience of the House of Commons and how it works, whereas, alas, very few people at the other end—although one or two of them now appear at the Bar since we have had Secretaries of State in this House—have any idea of what goes on here. That was certainly true when I was in the Commons. So, in terms of qualifications, it is more appropriate to say what we think ought to happen in that House than for them to say what happens in this House. There is no doubt that we win hands down. None the less, I think that the noble Baroness is right to preserve the view that we are independent in that sense. We have been immensely well served by the committees of the House and, indeed, the Justice Committee in the other place. We have had a succession of extraordinary reports produced at very short notice that ought to form the basis on which we go forward. In particular, the committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Goodlad has produced extraordinary reports in a short space of time. For example, the committee’s 17th report points out that the Bill has already been somewhat changed by the Government agreeing to remove one clause and by the defeat on the other very important constitutional clause. It is important to point out that so little time was allowed in the House of Commons for debate on this issue that the implications of the defeat and the consequential amendments were not able to be debated there. They will have to be debated in this House.