| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
I am not aware whether any Committee has sat, but I rather doubt it. The plain fact of the matter is that it is entirely open to the Government
to table a motion. That was done, that motion has been decided, and we are now living with the consequences. Whatever strong feelings there are in the House, we have limited time, and I should try to ensure that such time is used to debate what is on the Order Paper.
Mr. Straw: The amendments that were made in the other place are a reflection of the effectiveness of a bicameral system. I wish that there had been more time, but we shall leave it at that, because many of the Lords amendments were made in response to commitments given in the Commons. That is part of the purpose of a bicameral system.
The principal changes-I do not wish to entertain the House by running through all of them-change the way in which the enforcement powers in the Bill would operate. Members will recall that initially the Commissioner responsible for parliamentary investigations would have submitted reports to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which would have considered them and effectively given directions and recommendations to Members, and made recommendations to the Standards and Privileges Committee. In shorthand, IPSA has now been cut out of that arrangement, so the Commissioner will now report directly to the Standards and Privileges Committee-a much simpler process-except where either the Commissioner judges that a complaint is ill-founded or he or she has reached an accommodation with the Member concerned.
There are new safeguards in the Bill that pick up the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. As for the offences, Members will recall that when the Bill left the House, there were three offences: paid advocacy; failure to register an interest; and making a false declaration. As a result of concerns about parliamentary privilege, I agreed that we would drop the provision on paid advocacy, which is covered by the proposed new offence of bribery in the draft Bribery Bill.
There were considerable concerns about the provision on the failure to register an interest. My noble Friend Baroness Scotland spelt out the fact that there is a difference-as indeed there is-between the offence of making a false declaration and the more severe offence in section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006. She pointed out that there are plenty of parallels for the offence, including offences in social security legislation under the European Communities Act 1972 and offences under the Scotland Act and the Government of Wales Act. That provision therefore remains in the Bill. Some other amendments have been made, including one in response to a recommendation from my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), to ensure that IPSA provides MPs with general guidance about taxation issues.
Angus Robertson: When the Justice Secretary began the process of discussions with all the parties, which I very much welcomed, he argued that it was important to have four offences in the Bill, but in the final stage we are left with one. What kind of message does he think that sends the public? At the start he thought that it was important to have tough sanctions against parliamentarians who broke the rules, but we are now left with just one offence.
Mr. Straw:
I do not accept that the sanctions are not tough-but there is the issue of how that is achieved. As for the paid advocacy, or "cash for questions", offence, the Bribery Bill proposals, which I commend, and which
include a carve-out on article 9 of the Bill of Rights-proposals that have yet to go through the House formally, but which have received approbation from Members on both sides of the House-will do that job.
There was controversy about the other two offences. Speaking for Members on both sides of the House-and it was I who urged one of the offences on the House-this was not a question of people going soft. It was about deciding what was the appropriate mechanism. The provision on making a false declaration remains in the Bill.
The final Lords amendment to which I wish to draw attention is the so-called sunset clause, which provides not that the Bill would automatically cease to have effect after two years, but that after two years, if clauses 5 to 9 of the Bill that left the Commons were to continue, they would have to be extended by an affirmative order, which would give the House a chance to draw breath and review the operation of the authority after, in practice, it has been in force for at least a year.
Now let me deal briefly with the proposal by the hon. Member for Stone, which would add at line 3:
"Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972, the European Convention of Human Rights or the Human Rights Act 1998".
I urge Members who support that amendment to reflect on the matter and not to put it to a vote. If they do, I urge the House to vote against it. The arguments against the suggestion in the amendment were well spelt out by Members from all parts of the House of Lords yesterday. There are two aspects to this: whether it is necessary, and if it is, whether it is possible to exclude the operation of, first, the European Court of Justice in respect of the European Union, and secondly, the European convention on human rights, as regards this authority and this House.
On the EU and its institutions, my noble Friend the Attorney-General said that she did not believe that the Bill had any effect on matters within the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, and she spelt out why. I think that it was the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) who said that the Attorney-General also used the words, "it is very unlikely," but as we are talking about the future, I must say that very few things are absolutely certain. I would, however, make a very large wager, which I am very happy to take in public as well as in private, that the prospect, first, of British judges in a British court deciding to refer to the ECJ is-
Mr. Straw: Remote, says the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve). If they did, the prospect of the ECJ taking on that jurisdiction is doubly remote. I hope that that provides some reassurance.
Mr. Jenkin: There is no doubt that the charter of fundamental rights, if incorporated into the treaties, would create all kinds of legal apparatus in the European Union which would overlap with the matters in the Bill-and, indeed, with parliamentary privilege. Article 234 of the charter states unequivocally:
"Where any such question is raised in a case pending before a court or tribunal of a Member State against whose decisions there is no judicial remedy under national law, that court or tribunal shall bring the matter before the Court of Justice."
There is no question of there being a choice for the national court; there is an obligation on it to refer the case to the European Court of Justice. And, it is no good pretending that those matters in the charter of fundamental rights have nothing to do with free speech, because that is there, in the charter.
Mr. Straw: Mr. Deputy Speaker, you would not appreciate a discussion on the finer points of the Lisbon treaty just now, but I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's analysis, not least because of the horizontal clauses in the Lisbon treaty.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Straw: No. I am sorry, but I need to make progress.
On the second point, about the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, Lord Jenkin of Roding said:
"As these"-
"concern the international obligations of the UK...we could not simply assert our own constitutional arrangements as a conclusive answer."-[ Official Report, House of Lords, 20 July 2009; Vol. 712, c. 1419.]
That is absolutely right. Indeed, the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield made exactly the same point on an intervention, when he said that such an amendment, even if it were introduced into law, could not be binding or have any impact. That is because both obligations arise in international law, under treaties that we have signed up to.
Mr. Straw: No, I am going to stop there.
It is open to us as a sovereign Parliament to denounce our subscription to both treaties or to either treaty, in which case we would no longer have the burdens and obligations of either the European Union or the European convention on human rights. If we wanted to do that, that would be the appropriate thing to do-but in the absence of that, certain consequences follow from international treaty obligations, and, no matter what is in the amendment, those obligations would operate. In any event, however, I warrant that the European Court of Justice would not take up any jurisdiction.
On the European Court of Human Rights, although there is no way in which one can stop an individual petitioner petitioning the ECHR in Strasbourg, there would not be an issue. The hon. Member for Stone is wrong to say that the matter is about a reference being made by a court. Our courts do not make references to Strasbourg; individuals put forward petitions against the UK Government. As we know from the 2003 case of A v. United Kingdom, the prospects of such a reference then being entertained are limited to the point of zero.
I urge the hon. Member for Stone to withdraw the amendment. If he does not, I urge the House to vote against it.
5.15 pm
Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) (Con): We are asked to consider the amendments made in another place. May I say at the outset, before I go through some of the detail, that we on the Conservative Benches broadly support the amendments that the Lords have made to the Bill? Most have been the subject of vigorous debate and negotiation.
Just over a week ago, the Bill arrived in the House in a state of some confusion. It was immediately clear that the Government were trying to do too much in too short a space of time. As I explained in my Second Reading speech, which I will not rehearse again now, it was obvious that Ministers had been required, at very short notice, to create a Bill that had-initially, at least-to match the Prime Minister's press release, no matter what the consequences. It quickly became apparent that those consequences would have had a devastating impact on the House and the ability of its Members to go about their business freely and without being trammelled by the judgment of the courts. That was not just our opinion, but that of the Justice Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Clerk of the House.
So we are pleased that the Government have made some significant concessions, both in this House and another place, that have ensured that we have, in large part at least, avoided a full-on constitutional collision with the judiciary. We have now achieved most of what it was ever necessary to achieve in the interim, before Sir Christopher Kelly's committee reports in October-that is, the establishment of an independent fees office that will set and administer our allowances and expenses and provide an independent mechanism to investigate any alleged misuse of those allowances and expenses.
I now turn to the amendment to Lords amendment 1 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). We appreciate what my hon. Friend is trying to do. The House will note that a stipulation is already laid down in Lords amendment 1, which explicitly states that the issue of parliamentary privilege will remain unchanged by the Bill. The House will also note the powerful points made by the Attorney-General in her letter to their lordships and her speech to the upper House on Report.
It would be impossible to exclude the European Court of Human Rights from the Bill, because we have an international treaty obligation not to do so. However, an ECHR judgment has no real power in this country because, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) has consistently pointed out, it is not enforceable as such in our courts. If the Government felt obliged to adhere to whatever judgment the ECHR had made, they would have to go through the painful route of introducing primary legislation. I should register my doubt that amending the Bill to exclude the Human Rights Act would have any effect at all, given Lords amendment 1.
However, despite all that, the intention behind the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is completely clear. It is reasonable, given the
concern registered and the number of colleagues who signed up to the amendment, that Conservative Front Benchers should support it. As this final concession will not have any negative impact on the Bill, I urge the Government to give it to us and join us in the Lobby.
Mr. Jenkin: Will my hon. Friend recall the words of the Justice Secretary? He said that he was prepared to wager that nothing arising from the Bill would go in front of the European Court of Justice. Are we to make the foundations of our constitution depend on a wager made by the Justice Secretary? Why do we not just put in place the belt and braces that we need?
Alan Duncan: At the risk of annoying the House, I shall put €10 on it now.
I am pleased that the Government accepted Lords amendment 1, a Conservative amendment that categorically states that the issue of parliamentary privilege will remain unchanged in the Bill. The original Bill would have succeeded in unravelling, in just a few days, fundamental rights that have been at the foundation of our democracy for centuries. Although the Justice Secretary held to a remarkably calm and sanguine view of the impact that the Bill would have had on the proceedings of Parliament, great anxiety-even alarm-was expressed by the Clerk of the House, by two Select Committees of this House and by many hon. Members on the Floor of this House, as well as by a great number of Lords and Ladies, and their Committee in another place, who thought it best, given the nature of this concern, to ensure that there was an explicit warning to the courts that there was nothing here for them. We agree, and we are glad that the Government have acquiesced.
On Lords amendment 2, we are pleased that the Government have agreed that nothing in the Bill should affect the House of Lords. We entirely support the intention behind the amendment to ensure that if the House of Lords wishes to establish a similar body it can do so, perhaps with the wisdom of our experience behind it.
As regards IPSA and the commissioner, I will not go through every amendment in detail, but I will touch on each clause to see exactly where we have ended up. There have been very few changes to the fundamental restructuring established by the Bill, for under clauses 1 to 4 IPSA will essentially set the allowances regime, pay salaries and allowances, design our code of conduct on financial interests, administer the register of financial interests and establish procedures for investigations. The Lords have also untangled the dual roles of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations. The Government have made the commitment that the existing non-statutory role currently undertaken by John Lyon will remain, responsible to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, in addition to the new statutory Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations.
However, the commissioner's role will be separate from IPSA, so there is now nothing in the Bill suggests that the new body functions both as judge and jury, and that is surely a sensible approach. The commissioner will investigate complaints of any breaches or misuse of the expenses and allowances regime or the rules on the registration of interests. He will then refer his findings, as appropriate, to the Committee on Standards and
Privileges, if the matter has not already been settled by repayment. He will receive any relevant information from Members and report any non-co-operation to the Committee. He will also give Members the right to make representations, to be heard in person, and to call and examine witnesses. In addition, the Government have removed two offences: first, on the registration of financial interests; and secondly, on paid advocacy. Those are covered elsewhere in law.
We are very pleased to have a sunset clause. Any legislation that is put through so quickly, and from a standing start, will benefit well from revision and reassessment at a set date in the future. On clauses 5 to 9, the Government have accepted our argument on the need for such a two-year sunset. We understood the argument that the Justice Secretary made to this House on the potential damage that an overall sunset clause would have had on IPSA's ability to get itself up and running and to recruit and retain staff.
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: The Leader of the Opposition has announced a quango hunt. Has my hon. Friend noticed that the sections of the Bill that are largely untouched are the schedules setting out Crown appointments, pensions and pay with regard to the new quango? Has he any idea of the additional costs to the public purse? If it turns out that the new commissioner's duties can be adequately undertaken by the existing Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, will he keep the new body on the quango-hunt list, at least provisionally?
Alan Duncan: Thanks to our hard work, my right hon. Friend will be able to advance all those arguments when the sunset clause is triggered in about two years' time. He may well find that he has some very good arguments.
Mr. Cash: My hon. Friend referred to what I was trying to do. I simply make the point that the "notwithstanding" provision is in line with the metric martyrs' case and Lord Denning's judgments, both of which raise the question of whether, under our laws, we preserve our parliamentary system. It is vital for us to understand that.
Alan Duncan: I understand my hon. Friend's point, which he has made strongly. I sense that he wishes to push his amendment to a Division shortly.
We should all face up to the fact that the Bill is essentially a panic measure. The Government have been forced to make it up as they go along. Even before the ink is dry it is not perceived, in the eyes of many, as a permanent solution. One of the great remaining problems is that the various elements that make up a Member's remuneration are assessed in an utterly fragmented way. The authority will consider only expenses and allowances. There is a pressing need for some structure or system that can examine pay, pensions, allowances and expenses as one, so that the House does not have to suffer being chewed in different places at different times, as we have been in the past few weeks.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |