Parliamentary Standards Bill

My Lords, I support the Bill. I congratulate my noble friends on the Front Bench on the marathon in which they have been involved in getting this legislation to its present state. As a member of the Constitution Committee, I would have liked more time to consider the Bill, although I did not support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, which I believe would unfortunately have had the effect of kicking it into the long grass until October. Criticisms about parliamentary recesses and nothing being seen to happen for three months would have put us in a very difficult position. My main purpose is to make a brief intervention, which follows from what the noble Baroness, Lady Oppenheim-Barnes, said. During this debate, a number of noble Lords, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Crickhowell and Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, stressed that the other place is increasingly dominated by people without outside experience. I am not sure that that is the case. I have recently looked at the House of Commons research papers on the background of Members of another place, and there are many MPs with a range of outside experiences. We should not confuse outside experience before coming into the other place with the debate about whether Members of the other place should be doing other jobs while they are full-time Members of Parliament. That is a different debate, and we do not want to get the two things confused. It was said that the other place is finding it difficult to find people to fill the law offices. The figures that I have seen show that while the number of barristers has reduced over the past 15 years, the number of solicitors has increased. There are 70 or 80 Members of the other place with a legal background, which does not seem to be too small a pool from which to draw law officers in future. It is true that there are fewer manual workers and fewer miners in the other place than there were, but that simply reflects society, as does the increased number of women, and that makes for a better reflection of society than in the past. Outside experience before coming into Parliament is important, and the figures show that there are more people who were politicians or political researchers in the other place than there used to be. However, the figures need to be looked at with some caution because they merely record the jobs that people had immediately prior to entering Parliament, not the jobs that they may have had prior to that. In those circumstances, people who have been MEPs are recorded in the figures as being politicians or political researchers, whereas most of us had other jobs prior to becoming Members of the European Parliament. It frequently seems that when we talk about professional politicians, it is always done with a sneer. We would not say professional doctors, professional accountants or professional any other profession with a sneer, and we ought to be prepared to defend the idea of professional politics. Professionalism in politics is important. We all know that we keep on learning in the political forums in which we are active over many years. I support the provisions of the Bill, but I would like to think that the Government and the Opposition will be prepared to defend the profession of politics and the role of politicians, which are so important for the future of democracy in our country.