Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, I completely agree with the noble Lord. The issue is whether Section 6 is human rights compliant. I was addressing a different issue: what happens if IPSA makes a recommendation to the Committee on Standards and Privileges with respect to the possibility of the court judicially reviewing the committee? Now that the noble Baroness has underlined that she has made that concession, I will not trouble the House on the matter any further. It is an important concession from the Government, and I thank her for it. It is also crucial to change the offences provisions under Clause 8. We on the committee will seek to expunge the whole of Clause 8. There are three offences. We need not trouble ourselves any further about Clause 8(3), because now that Clause 10 has been removed from the Bill, it would be impossible to use parliamentary proceedings as evidence in court, and therefore impossible to establish a prosecution case against any Member of Parliament. The other two provisions remain. The first one has been spoken to by a number of noble Lords, in particular by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. I respectfully agree with their conclusions. It is clear that the matter is covered by Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006. Therefore it is unnecessary to have a provision that mirrors it in Clause 8(1), particularly since the provision only carries with it a sentence of imprisonment for one year, whereas Section 2 of the Fraud Act carries a sentence of 10 years. It will be suggested by the public that, by inserting Clause 8(1), the Government are trying to set a much lighter penalty for Members than for the public. That would be highly dangerous—I am delighted to see that the noble Baroness is nodding.