Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I have had the benefit of being in the Chamber for the whole debate and I do not think that there has been any personal criticism of members of the Fees Office. Everybody understands that a system that was not fit for purpose developed and that officials in the Fees Office did their best. Some completely impersonal general points about the experiences of Members have followed from that, one of which was that if a Member has made a complete disclosure to the Fees Office about an item of expenditure that they believed to be consistent with the rules, and if the Fees Office, after proper examination, then said that it was consistent with the rules and paid the Member, it is a little hard, to say the least, if subsequently there is a retrospective judgment that the Member should pay back that money. That would be even harsher in future, when the rules will be much clearer. Let me go through the points that have been made in the debate. I thought that the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire was cavilling at the beginning, when he was tweaking my tail about Kelly and legislation. I could have been cavilling in advance, by tweaking his tail about the fact that we would not have needed some of the legislative changes if the House had stuck to the original proposals that I put forward rather than those that he persuaded it to accept. I hope that we can conduct the rest of the debate in the spirit in which it proceeded after he had read out that cavilling stuff, which was no doubt put in there by Andy Coulson just to prove that the right hon. Gentleman is as partisan as the next person. I have to say that that act is not very convincing.