Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Peston, I begin my contribution to this debate by thanking the Leader of the House for the sensitive way in which she introduced the Bill this afternoon, and I admired the delicacy of her footwork. However, among the very sound doctrine about the need and duty of this House to revise legislation coming to it from the House of Commons, there was also a delicate warning off from any notion that we might be looking at an extension of the time that the Government desire the Bill to take. If I remember correctly, the noble Baroness said that this was about the House of Commons only and for the House of Commons, and that it would not be extended to this House. She was taken up on that by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. I add one further reference, taken from the first report on this matter from your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution. Paragraph 4 says: ""A document deposited in the House of Commons Library by the Government on 20 May 2009, referring to the proposed Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, states that it is clearly appropriate that this new body also takes responsibility for these issues in the Lords"." It is only fair to go on to say that the document adds: ""We recognise that the principle of self-regulation operates differently in the House of Lords. It is clear that extensive work and consultation will be necessary in order to ensure the agreement of the House to the effective transfer of responsibilities to the new body"." Like my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Peston, I look forward keenly to the noble Baroness’s response to the questions that she was asked in that regard. The very brief life of this Bill rather starkly illustrates the wisdom of the old parliamentary adage, "Don’t go legislating in haste, or you will repent at leisure". A gloss on that might be added, "Especially in July". The remarkable Clause 6, providing for a statutory code of conduct for MPs, has already had to be withdrawn. In fact, the Lord Chancellor was driven to repent before he had finished his Second Reading speech, by withdrawing that clause. He did so in the face of some savage condemnation for what might be called its unconsidered constitutional dismemberment, with warning criticism, already referred to, from the Clerk of the House of Commons. The Lord Chancellor then suffered the mortification of Clause 10—the no less objectionable parliamentary proceedings clause—being defeated without any debate, the Lord Chancellor's own guillotine having descended on himself. I tried to think of some allusion about petards, but failed. Now, today, it was announced at the end of the Leader of the House’s speech that part of Clause 5 relating to paid advocacy is also to be withdrawn. It is a shrinking Bill, but one that I none the less suggest to your Lordships still needs the extra time—that should more appropriately be called the ordinary time—that would be secured by the amendment to be moved later by my noble friend Lord Norton. One could take a certain grim pleasure in all this if it were not for the fact that the Bill itself is so deeply alarming. So much has been said about that that I shall try not to repeat it. Your Lordships’ Select Committee has done full justice to it in a report the like of which, for the severity of its unanimous criticism, I have never seen. Of the two clauses concerned, the report states at paragraph 2: ""Both of these clauses threatened to undermine freedoms which are essential for Parliament to operate properly and risked opening the door to conflict between Parliament and the courts"." Like several noble Lords who have spoken today, I think that it is a real pity that the word "privilege", attaching as it does to constitutional safeguards, has acquired a rather foreseeable pejorative flavour. In truth, the privilege is that of the public who are ensured that their representatives in Parliament speak without fear of unpleasant consequences, whether at the hands of the Executive or the judges. The trouble with the Bill even as amended in the other place is that it still—I quote again from the Select Committee’s report at paragraph 7—establishes, ""a statutory external regulator of important parliamentary matters, acting within a statutory regime and potentially subject to the jurisdiction of the courts"." The committee describes that development as, ""a profound change which has the potential to give rise to conflict between Parliament and the courts, the implications of which require very careful examination"." Those last three words bear perhaps even more weight than what precedes them, and even that is putting the matter a little laconically. Immense benefits for individual freedom and the rule of law have flowed over the centuries from the settlement in the Bill of Rights and the separate jurisdictions of Parliament and the courts. We had an enormously interesting and authoritative speech from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, on the importance of that being maintained. I am quite certain that the judges do not wish to see it disturbed. I reckon that they are mightily relieved that under our domestic constitutional arrangements, Members of Parliament answer only to their electorates in respect of parliamentary matters, not to the judges. As for the Commons, in my 23 years there, I never detected any desire to offer any sort of welcome for what was liable to be described as interference from the judges. Since it is the extraordinary fact that these proposals certainly have not received the very careful examination called for by the Select Committee, or anything approaching it, and since the Government intend that they shall not receive it here, one is driven to ask why. I am afraid the answer is that Ministers have simply lost their heads. I have sympathy for them and for all MPs in their present travails, but it cannot be sensible to behave like this, without even a sunset clause, in order that, ""something may be seen by the public to be being done about the system for regulating MPs’ expenses"." That is the end of the quotation from the Leader of the House’s explanation to the Select Committee. I repeat that it is said to be simply in order that, ""something may be seen by the public to be being done about the system for regulating MPs’ expenses"." It cannot be sensible either, I suggest, on constitutional grounds. Nor can it on more immediate practical grounds, for when its true import is understood, it is likely to diminish public confidence even further. My right honourable friend Mr David Heathcoat-Amory said at Second Reading in the other place: ""The Government have an emergency, but the constitution does not".—[Official Report, Commons, 30/6/09; col. 195.]" That, I suggest, should be the operative perspective. What is needed from this House, therefore, is surely some cool, calm deliberation.