Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, Amendment 13 would impose on the IPSA a duty to ensure that the procedures which it lays down for the conduct of investigations by the commissioner must be fair. Subsections (11) and (12) already require that the procedures must satisfy specific requirements of fairness, but all other matters of procedure are at present left to the IPSA, with no governing principle in the legislation. Given the novelty of the functions that the commissioner and the IPSA will perform in relation to investigating the conduct of a Member of Parliament, and that these new functions are being created in order to respond to the public demand for a transparent and fair system, it is necessary for the legislation to state that fair procedures are required. That would not limit the discretion of the IPSA to decide for itself what fairness requires in this context. But it would be helpful to IPSA, the commission and the public by leaving no doubt that the general criterion in relation to the important procedures is one of fairness. I beg to move.