Parliamentary Standards Bill

I want to contribute briefly to the debate, not least because I want to put it on record that I am breaking the habit of a lifetime and agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. It is not just for the reasons given by the noble and learned Baroness that I think that it would be totally inappropriate to accept the amendment but because it would go against the whole rationale of the Bill. The Bill is trying to divide the responsibility for making recommendations on matters of salary and allowances, taking it away from the Divisions that have taken place on the Floor of the House of Commons. I was there in July 1974, a very new Member; I was amazed that the House of Commons should vote on these matters, particularly that it should vote in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said, under the influence of a Prime Minister who was not prepared to accept the independent advice of the SSRB. I entirely endorse the comment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. Yes, there were competitive self-abasement challenges to each party every time this came up. I did not succumb to that on many occasions and when I subsequently became Chief Whip for my party and shadow Leader of the House I tried to encourage my colleagues to stand up for what they thought was right. But we are not there now and, while it is entirely understandable that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell of Markyate, is trying to bring together these two issues—they have been seen as separate in the past—the wrong way to go about it is surely for the House of Lords, at this stage, to pre-empt the discussions of the SSRB, to pre-empt the Kelly inquiry and to pre-empt, indeed, the discussions of IPSA. That would be extraordinary. At the very moment when Members of Parliament no longer think that they should be defining precisely what will happen but should take professional advice from outside, get good comparators and look at this issue in a wider context, what would the public say if the House of Lords imposed a new straitjacket, to use the noble and learned Lord’s phrase, by putting these amendments into the Bill? I hope that the government Front Bench will very speedily take advantage of the mood throughout the Committee that it would be inappropriate for us to proceed in this way.