Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment and I would like to add one or two comments. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, indicated, judicial review would be extremely rare in this context. Therefore, inserting the word "fair" as a requirement of procedures would not make it more likely that the courts would become involved in deciding whether a procedure was fair. But as I said in earlier debates on the Bill, Members of Parliament are entitled to be treated fairly. I am sure that everyone in the House and the other place would agree with that. Since it is important that procedures be devised in the other place that ensure fairness, one of the important aspects of this amendment is to send a signal—in the Bill or in some other way—that this House hopes that the other place will ensure fairness in all its procedures. There may be other ways of dealing with this, but I ask the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, or whoever is responding, whether this might be done in some way to ensure fairness. I have one other slightly odd thing to say. For a different purpose, I have been looking at the procedures in Hong Kong—that remarkable, small but very energetic place. I found to my surprise that the Government there have dealt with members of the Legislative Council's expenses, complaints and anything else, including a fair procedure and an appeal, in the most remarkable way. I find it amazing, having taken it to bits over the weekend for another purpose, that they had been able to do that in the Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. Hong Kong has a basic law and fairness spelt out. It does not have the sovereignty of Parliament, but it does have parliamentary privilege. At the very least, should we not ensure that Members of Parliament are treated fairly by saying so—either in the Bill, as this amendment suggests, or in some other way?