Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, addresses the House with all the wisdom and moderation appropriate for a former Cabinet Secretary. If I do not follow him in that regard, perhaps I may be forgiven. I am grateful to the Leader of the House for inviting me yesterday to have a word with her about my views on the Bill—it was her invitation. What I am going to say to the House, I said very firmly to her. This Bill is one of the most deeply disturbing Bills that I have seen in my 45 years in Parliament. In this, I believe, I am reflecting the views of a great many Members—not only noble Lords in this House but also Members in another place, of all parties. Indeed, on Monday I was approached by a couple of government supporters in another place who expressed to me the hope that this House would simply throw it out. I said to them that it might be rather difficult for us to do that. I entirely understand and recognise the immense pressures that have been put on Members of another place by the hot public anger over the expenses scandal. I must share part of the blame for that. I was a member of a Cabinet which had a recommendation for an increase in the salaries of Members of Parliament; we came to the conclusion that it would be politically easier to increase their expenses, rather than their salaries. With hindsight, it is impossible not to see in this the seeds of the present expenses scandal which has done so much damage not only to the integrity of the system but to the whole political system itself. I would like to pick up a point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Howe. I am even more concerned by the traumatic loss of confidence in themselves on the part of many Members of another place as a consequence of the disclosures and what they have suffered as a result of the public reaction. Of course I recognise that all the parties share the objective of restoring public trust in our parliamentary institutions; indeed if our democracy is to survive that is absolutely crucial. We have had in the past a proud tradition of representative self-government. This must continue. But I cannot believe that this Bill, and the new code of conduct that it seeks to enshrine, is the right way to do this. Like others, I am reinforced in this view by the devastating series of reports that have come before us from committees in both Houses in recent days. We are immensely grateful for the work that those committees have done to enable us to take account of their deliberations. They have been referred to already and I do not need to do that again. What I should refer to, and I read it all, is the evidence given to the Justice Committee in another place by the Clerk in another place, Dr Malcolm Jack, about the effect of the Bill on Article IX of the Bill of Rights, on free speech and on everything on which our free democracy depends. It was rightly said by some wise man that the freedom of speech of Members of Parliament is at the heart of the freedom of speech of everyone else. It is, indeed, at the heart of our constitution. These are formidable issues which have been raised in these reports, and they need to be debated in full. I am simply repeating what has been said by others, and I hope that the Leader of the House has taken note of them. I note what she said about not moving the Motion regarding the Report and Third Reading, but we do not know what she will put in its place. It would be extremely helpful if she could tell the House this evening what she is now proposing. Others will be much better equipped than I am to advance the legal and constitutional arguments, but I should like to make just one major point. Not for the first time, the Prime Minister has wholly failed to understand the impact of how his proposals actually look to the people at whom they are aimed. What this Bill seems really to represent, and will be read by many as representing, is that all Members of another place are a bunch of immoral, self-seeking villains on whom a swingeing panoply of new controls, new rules and new penalties must be imposed if they are to regain the trust of the public. What does this actually say to the public? Surely it says that their perceptions, honed by the media, are right: that MPs are a bunch of self-seeking—and so on—villains who need to be brought to heel. The impact of this Bill is not making people say, "Well, that’s sorted then; now they will all behave properly". That is not what they are saying at all. They are saying that their perceptions are simply being reinforced and that the costs of doing this, in terms of the constitutional vandalism it involves, have to be accepted as a necessary evil to achieve that end. What is the impact of the Bill on Members of another place? My noble and learned friend Lord Howe made this point very clearly. Again the Prime Minister has it wrong. Instead of concentrating on restoring the powers of the House of Commons and the health of its procedures—as has already been said, Clause 10 was removed without a single word of debate because the guillotine had fallen—and on Parliament’s critical role in holding the Executive to account and scrutinising legislation, free from any threats of repercussions in the courts and elsewhere, this Bill simply reinforces Members’ loss of self-confidence, because the Government have not said any of that. MPs are being told that only the threat of the courts interfering in proceedings in Parliament, and the threat of new punishments after summary justice, will keep them in their place. Is anyone surprised that a number of able, long-serving and distinguished Members of another place have decided to call it a day and retire at the next election? When part of the new panoply of measures is what I can only describe as the vindictive new rule about disclosing not only interests but how much money is earned from them, and how many hours are spent on earning that money—when you see all that—can you blame the Member of Parliament who spoke to me the other day, and who is giving up, when he said that he really was not willing to live in a goldfish bowl? That is why I regard the Bill as almost wholly misconceived. Why does it impose new criminal penalties when the existing law already covers theft and fraud? Why does it open the door to the courts concerning themselves with proceedings in Parliament—something that they have never had to do before? Why does it provide for enforcement procedures that may infringe the European Convention on Human Rights? Why should we rush through all this legislation and major constitutional changes? As the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, has asked twice at Question Time, what is the hurry? Our job is to rescue another place from itself. The House of Commons is, above all, a citizens’ Parliament, representative of all the interests and varied communities that make up our nation. We do not want to end up with a Parliament consisting only of full-time politicians with no outside interests, cowed by what the Clerk at the other end called the "chilling effect" of finding themselves accountable not to their constituents but to the courts. That will be the effect of the Bill unless it is amended drastically.