Parliamentary Standards Bill

I will clarify one point. What noble Lords have been saying is completely right: the issue relates to judicial review. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House made it clear at Second Reading, at col. 947 of Hansard, not only that there is no infringement of Article IX in the Bill but that a court faced with a judicial review would not be able to consider proceedings in Parliament because that would not be possible under Article IX. I completely agree with her. However, there could of course be judicial review. If I were to go on, I would explain how judicial review quite often arises in cases involving Article IX. Accepting Amendment 1—although it clearly says that nothing in the Act affects Article IX—does not resolve the underlying problems. I was attempting to explain that the courts have been resolving those problems clearly, and in a way that we should respect.