Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, wishes to have clarification of this clause. As he said, we have returned to a point made in an earlier debate by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. The initiative for any transfer of functions must come from the Speaker. It has to be discussed with the Committee on Standards and Privileges as well as with IPSA. The Speaker has to lay any agreement to transfer functions before the House, and it cannot come into effect until the House has resolved to approve it. Therefore, I think that it is clear that there is little opportunity for a transfer of the sort of functions that noble Lords may be concerned about, because those who would be responsible for this transfer of functions would not make a recommendation unless they had decided that it was in the best interests of the House. Moreover, it is important to be clear that Clause 9(4) can only be used to transfer existing functions of the parliamentary commissioner for standards. The new statutory commissioner would then in essence be wearing those non-statutory functions as a separate hat. There would be no question of the statutory commissioner exercising his statutory functions in relation to those matters, and, in particular, the statutory commissioner would be acting in accordance with the standing orders of the House rather than the procedures of IPSA. So, in future, if the House of Commons and the Speaker of the House wish to have just one commissioner, not two, that would be possible. But that commissioner would wear two hats: he would wear one hat with his statutory functions and one with his non-statutory functions. However, I can assure noble Lords that there is no intention that this provision could be used to give the new commissioner responsibility for things that both Houses have made clear during the discussions on this Bill they would not wish him to take on. But there may be functions of the existing commissioner that are purely administrative which it may be thought useful in future to transfer to the new commissioner. That is why we have left the provision in the Bill, along with that for allowing the transfer of functions to IPSA in relation to the keeping of registers. It is therefore a process of evolution. We are future-proofing to some extent, because we believe that in future they may wish to transfer some administrative functions of the commissioner for parliamentary standards to the new commissioner—that is, the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations. We are enabling that process to take place should the Speaker of the House of Commons deem it fit.