Parliamentary Standards Bill

I, too, would like to express concern about the message that is sent to the public. I greatly agree with my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours that this is really about driving the message home to Members of Parliament, but I am afraid that the message to the public will be rather different. One of the concerns that I have heard repeatedly expressed by the public when I speak at public meetings, as I have done over the past few weeks in discussing our democracy, is that somehow opportunities are availed to Members of Parliament that are not normally availed to the public if they are involved in dishonest behaviour. One of the examples is that if one were to in any way abuse the social security system, people are prosecuted for making claims or not drawing to the attention of the authorities how their situation has changed and so on. They say, "There seem to be different rules for those in Parliament than there are for the rest of us. If we were found not to pay our capital gains tax on the sale of a house, we would not be able to just write a cheque willy-nilly, there is the real risk that we would be prosecuted". There is a sense among members of the public that there are different rules for Members of Parliament than there are for the general public. My concern about the creation of an offence specific to Members of Parliament is that it seems to be that, for the very same kind of behaviour that the public would be involved in, Members of Parliament are going to have a much more limited response by way of sentencing. We should be clear about the nature of messages. I agree with my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours that we want a clear message to Members of Parliament that dishonesty will not accepted. You can do that in a number of different ways, and one was mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay: by having it firmly on the forms that are filled in that any dishonest claim will be dealt with by existing laws. However, I am concerned that this sends a message to the public that laws will be introduced, specific to Members of Parliament, which carry a much lesser sentence and which will be dealt with in a different way.