Parliamentary Standards Bill

With your Lordships’ permission, I shall treat Amendments 13A, 13B and 20B as being still grouped with Amendment 3 and the others that we are discussing at the moment. The noble Baroness the Leader of the House has already referred to these three amendments, which are all similar, and so has the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, from the Liberal Democrat Benches. The point of them is very simple, at any rate in comparison with the things we have been discussing. When it is suggested that the chair of IPSA or a member of IPSA or the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations should be removed from office, should that be solely a matter for the House of Commons or should it be a matter for this House as well? The appointment of these various people is to be done by Her Majesty but on the recommendation of the House of Commons in the various procedures set out. Only the Commons, not the Lords, is concerned with the appointments. It seems to me that all the matters under discussion are entirely matters concerning Members of the other place and that your Lordships should not be involved in a petition to the Queen to remove them. I think we should be placed in an awkward position if such an Address were to be moved to Her Majesty and the Commons agreed to it and then your Lordships were asked whether we agreed to it. Suppose we were inclined not to agree. We would get ourselves into a very peculiar position. It would be very difficult for us not to agree if the House of Commons had agreed that the appointment should be ended, so supporting an address to Her Majesty. If the Commons supported it when the particular person was entirely concerned with the Commons, it would be very difficult for us to make a different ruling. Without saying it is a matter of huge moment, or to press it too strongly, I suggest that we should consider whether these powers should be left to the Commons alone and that your Lordships should be taken out of the procedure for presenting an Address to Her Majesty.