Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, as your Lordships will appreciate, I am the 24th speaker and the last man in, as it were, from the Back Benches. As last man in, if I can push a few singles past mid-off in a short period, I shall be more than happy. We all appreciate that two or three months ago a bombshell exploded. In consequence of that, one of the greatest parliamentary scandals of all time has occurred. It may not be, by a long way, the worst scandal that has occurred in the history of Parliament, but its effect is probably the most injurious development in at least the last 100 years—and possibly the last 200—in the life of Parliament. It is against that background that we must consider this issue. In such circumstances, any Government would immediately say to themselves, "What must we do?". There was a case for immediacy and the Government have acted with immediacy, but immediacy means different things. Immediacy means the immediate acceptance of the problem, commitment to dealing with it and setting up of proper institutions to make that possible. Immediacy does not mean an immediate problem, an immediate answer and immediate legislation. That, I think, is exactly where the Government fail. They fail probably not on account of their faults but on account of their virtues—by believing that it was somehow possible to conjure a complete, wise and Solomonic solution to the dreadful situation that is now upon us. It is not a situation that can be met with logic because public anger does not operate logically. Public anger can very often be brought about by the very measures that we would impose on ourselves in this connection. What should the Government have done? They should have set up the most rigorous inquiry into exactly what has happened and how it started. There have been very candid contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Crickhowell and Lord Jenkin. Whether it started exactly on their watch or earlier does not matter. It started some time in the last 30 years. It is what might be called the nettle problem—the failure to grasp a nettle that was there. The nettle was the realisation that practically every other Parliament in western Europe paid anything up to twice as much as British Members of Parliament were receiving. It was, happily, just after the time when the electorate released me from Parliament. MPs very properly went to their masters and said, "Raise our salaries". They were told, "It is not possible but we will think of a few alternatives, provided you are reasonable about them". That was the beginning of it all. In addition to that examination, there should have been an examination of all the possible alternatives, to meet not only substantially, but psychologically, the anger that has now built up in the public against Parliament. All those alternatives should have been considered and, after that, there should have been the fullest consultation. I do not mean consultation between party leaders, which is sometimes rather conspiratorial, but consultation with the public. It is, after all, their Parliament and it is right that they should feel involved in dealing with the problem and, indeed, the whole issue. Then—and only then—should a draft Bill have been prepared. Once that Bill was prepared, it should have gone to one place, namely the Constitution Committee, for the most rigorous scrutiny that a Bill has ever had. We have done none of these things and have done the exact opposite. I say "we", taking responsibility—corporately, as a member of the community—for what the Government have done. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House, for whom I—like every other Member of the House—have profound admiration and respect, tells us that this is not a Bill that in any way involves this House. That, of course, is technically true, but it is a Bill that massively affects and involves this House, which is exactly what we must consider. I accept what is now said about the intention to tag this House on to the Bill. Indeed, there is nothing in Clause 1 that refers specifically to the House of Commons. It could refer to both Houses. Be that as it may, I accept completely that there will be no tagging on now, nor indeed—as the noble Baroness the Leader of the House says—until there is some change in the constitution of this House. I suppose that must be many, many years hence. Nevertheless, there will still be effects on the House as the upper Chamber of Parliament. There is bound to be an effect on its relationship with the courts. We have had the benefit of the most erudite and valuable opinion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf; we must accept him at his word. One of two things will occur. If the Bill remains as it is now drafted, there will be a flood of applications for judicial review. If that right is removed a very gross misjudgment will have been made, and a very gross injustice will have been imposed on those Members of Parliament. There may be halfway houses between the two situations. It is far too late at night to consider them now, but they are extremely complicated and each has its counterdifficulties. So, what are we to do? I agree completely with everything that has been said by the noble Lord with regard to the amendment. It seems to me that the whole issue can be distilled to one question. Does anybody in the House not believe that, if the House—in dealing with this Bill of crucial constitutional significance, in the full glare of public contempt and anger—is able to avoid its responsibility of scrutinising the Bill line by line and word by word, the House will have abrogated its right to existence as a Second Chamber? That is the whole issue as far as the timing is concerned. How it is overcome is not all that important. It may be done by delaying the matter until the end of the summer vacation. It may be done by spending practically the whole of the period that we have left until 21 July on the Bill. It may be done by delaying the vacation by a few weeks. It matters not. If we fail to do it, we will have betrayed the very best interests of this place. If we do it, I believe that we will have properly earned a substantial measure of public respect. I mention a very narrow legal point that has already been alluded to by many noble Lords; namely, the offences section and the proposal that Members of Parliament responsible for abuses in relation to expenses claims should be dealt with in a particular way. This is not at all a case of double-banking and unnecessarily creating an offence. The offences are contained in Section 17 of the Theft Act 1968—the offence of falsification of accounts—and in Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006. The major point to remember is that the wording of those offences, in the Theft Act and in the Fraud Act, is almost identical to the wording of the offence in subsection (1) of the relevant clause. This means therefore that the elements of those three offences are exactly the same. There is not the slightest necessity or justification for this subsection. Why was it introduced and what will its message be? Its message is this: whereas ordinary citizens who commit these fraudulent offences are liable to 10 years’ maximum imprisonment under the Fraud Act, and seven years’ imprisonment under the Theft Act, there will be a very tame and limited tariff of one year’s imprisonment, or six months or 12 months in the magistrates’ court depending on whether that matter arose before or after the Criminal Justice Act 2003. That will be seen not as trying to lay better standards for Members of Parliament but treating them in a way in which the ordinary member of the public is not treated.