Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, as will be apparent from my speech, which I approach with great trepidation, I am not a lawyer. However, I have had experience in the other place as shadow leader of the Commons for some eight years. During that time I made a great many friends and had many contacts with Members on all sides. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, properly said, many Members on all sides of that House are looking to us to save them from themselves. It would be an illusion if we were to expect and accept that this House must somehow just rubber-stamp what has happened in the other place. I shall come back to that point in a moment. Let us not fool ourselves; there is a genuine dilemma. Everyone on all sides—this is apparent in your Lordships’ House this afternoon—is keen to see a practical resolution to the various expenses scandals, which starts us on the long road of trying to renew public trust in both Houses of Parliament, and, indeed, in our political system. Anyone who works anywhere near this place, be they the most senior parliamentarian or a temporary contractor, knows that the mere mention of where we work gives rise at the moment to howls of derision. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, used those words. It is a serious problem and we should not in any way underestimate that. The public simply do not understand, or accept, that MPs or Members of your Lordships' House should be solely responsible for setting their own pay and conditions. Very few members of the public set their own salaries and still fewer can claim expenses underwritten by the honour of their signature alone rather than by the presence of a receipt. People are understandably urging that Parliament should meet the same standards as the people for whom we legislate. However, this is the dilemma: Parliament is sovereign. Deciding things is what Parliament does, so it is quite difficult to make laws to stop it deciding things. That is the centre of the dilemma which this Bill is all about. It is going to be very difficult to find a way in which Parliament can legislate so that it no longer has any say on this issue. For one thing, what will be the budget of the IPSA and who will set it? Is it not the primary responsibility of the House of Commons to be responsible for "supply"—for money? That is what it is for and has been for many centuries. The Government, and in a sense the whole political establishment, are acting as though this is a new problem. That is why we are told that this is emergency legislation with special procedures. But this problem is, of course, not new. It is a pitiful situation in which we now find ourselves—the proverbial bulls lumbering around the china shop, with a piece of poorly drafted, ill thought-out legislation. I have not yet heard anyone say this afternoon or this evening that this Bill is in a proper form to go on to the statute book. As has already been said—legislate in haste, repent at leisure. It was ironic that on the very same day that the Commons could not find time to have a Third Reading of this Bill, a Bill was brought before that House to amend the Dangerous Dogs Act. I think that others have referred to this Bill as the Dangerous Politicians Act on the same basis; namely, that it is a knee-jerk and inadequate reaction. My noble friend Lord Shutt has said that we on these Benches are not in the business of delay for delay’s sake. All of us are here to do our job, and our job is to try to make sure that what returns to the other place is a great deal better than the Bill that has come to us. We simply cannot attempt to make an inadequate response to the critical situation we face. The Bill that leaves this House has to be seen as a great improvement on what we have at the moment, even if that is achieved through very drastic surgery. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that there is no question of us nodding through the Bill in its present state.