Parliamentary Standards Bill

Clause 1(3) states categorically: ""There is to be an officer known as the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations ("the Commissioner")";" hence my shorthand in calling that person the commissioner. I hear the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and I am grateful for his advice. However, we accepted the amendment because there are clearly such strong feelings in this House about the issue, which we did not want to obscure or to damage consideration of wider issues in the Bill. We agree that the amendment must be regarded as being for the avoidance of doubt, although we can see nothing in the Bill, as drafted, which affects Article IX; but we are happy to accept the amendment. I turn to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. There are a number of reasons why the Government consider that these amendments and the approach taken in them are not acceptable. First, they are at odds with the approach that the Government have taken to privilege and, I might say, at the urging of the other place and noble Lords. Since the removal in the other place of the provision explicitly dealing with privilege, our approach has been to ensure that the Bill does not affect parliamentary privilege in any way. That is one of the reasons why we have tabled government amendments in this House removing IPSA’s recommendation and direction function, and the offence of paid advocacy. In short, the new scheme will not affect parliamentary privilege and, taking the views of noble Lords and the other place to their full extent, we have accepted Amendment 1. In other words, this Bill will explicitly not affect Article IX of the Bill of Rights—the key provision which deals with parliamentary privilege. However, the noble Lord’s amendments would affect parliamentary privilege. The Government are bringing forward amendments to make it clear that the work of IPSA and the commissioner will be limited to administering the schemes on allowances and the code on financial interests, and making factual investigations about alleged breaches of either. The outcome of any such investigation will be passed either to the Committee on Standards and Privileges or to the police to take forward. The work of the committee—the Committee on Standards and Privileges—is, of course, already fully covered by Article IX. I have already mentioned that the offence of paid advocacy is removed. This means that IPSA and the commissioner will not deal with privileged subject matter. There is then, we believe, no need to extend the cloak of privilege around them.