Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Attorney-General on her clear and concise exposition of her case. Perhaps I may make a brief point on Clause 8(1)(a) in relation to a false claim. I shall try to illustrate how narrow the difference is between the Government’s case and the case of those of us who have spoken at some length and with great force against that measure. It is perfectly clear that, in so far as the vast majority of cases which come under Clause 8(1)(a) are concerned—as was illustrated so trenchantly by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, last week—the vast majority will inevitably involve dishonesty. It is impossible to conceive of a situation where a person deliberately makes a representation knowing it to be false or misleading without it being dishonest. However, when the Leader of the House was asked last week about illustrations, she helpfully described two situations where it might be difficult to prove dishonesty as defined under the authority of R v Ghosh some 25 years ago, a case which has been regarded as the classic enunciation of that interpretation. The noble Baroness said that there could be a situation where a person rents flat 22A but then, for one reason or another, moves to flat 24A in circumstances that are identical. The claim that would be made would be incorrect—it would be false—but it would be for exactly the same amount of money as would be deserved by that claimant in any event. The other illustration would be perhaps more difficult to deal with. It envisages a situation where a Member of Parliament had gone along to one of the servants of the House and had been assured that it was perfectly proper, moral and legal in every way for a claim to be made, only to find out later that that was not the case. Those two instances illustrate the difference between offences under the Fraud Act 2006 and the Theft Act 1968 and the offence now under Clause 8(1)(a) and (b). However, the point I make is this: in those instances, would anyone in his senses wish to prosecute a Member who had been told in terms by a servant of the House that what he was doing was entirely proper; or where the person did not want to fill in a whole barrage of forms to change his application from 22A to 24A? Indeed, there may be some other reason—he may have formed a relationship with someone and did not want to publicise the fact that he had gone to a different flat—but would anyone in his senses prosecute in those circumstances? If the answer to my rhetorical question is no, what is the point of breaching the fundamental rule of privilege that the jurisdictions of the High Court to Parliament and the jurisdictions of the other courts are mutually exclusive? It is not worth it.