Parliamentary Standards Bill

The Committee may be relieved to hear that there are no great issues of principle in this group of amendments, in contrast to the two previous groups. These are simple matters of correction and clarity. There is a whole series of drafting problems in the Bill, which I suspect are a product of the speed at which the Bill has been produced. All that we are trying to do is to be helpful by pointing them out in the hope that the Minister will be able to accept them or, at least, commit to government amendments to deal with any defects on that basis. I shall briefly canter through the difficulties that we have encountered. First, on Amendment 7, it appears to us that there is no initial reference to the short title of the Speaker’s Committee in Clause 1(5). The committee is, however, later referred to in subsection (6), so I anticipate that there is a need for clarity, although I understand that the Minister may be able to correct our correction, in that it is the view of officials that the correction should be in line 12, rather than in line 11 as it is in our amendment. Amendment 18 is a probing amendment. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain why the interim chief executive will need to incur expenditure on behalf of the whole of IPSA without the approval of its chair or other members. That would seem to be out of character with the normal procedures of a similar organisation. Worse still, in paragraph 15(2) of Schedule 1, an extraordinary permission is given to the interim chief executive—"to do other things". Other Members of your Lordships’ House have much longer experience than I have, but I have been either in or out of Parliament for 35 years and watching legislation with considerable personal interest during that period. I do not recall ever seeing any organisation giving to its chief executive the ability "to do other things". What sort of other things have we in mind? It rather beggars belief and is slightly mind-boggling, if I may put it that way. I have never seen such a phrase before. What exactly are the other things? Perhaps the Government can indicate what they have in mind. If they want to be more specific, I hope that they may be able to come back on Report and tie this down more securely. Amendment 19 is again about drafting and no more. Paragraph 17(3) of Schedule 1 states: ""The IPSA must make such arrangements as it considers necessary to ensure that"." Ensure what? I can see the Minister nodding. I think that he, too, finds that a slightly curious way of expressing what seems to be in need of more careful formulation. We think that the Government mean that IPSA must make arrangements to ensure that it complies with paragraph 17(2), so that is what our amendment says; it does what it says on the tin. Finally, Amendment 22 omits the rather clumsy phrase, ""as to which see further"," which has the feel of an A-level response to a question where the student wants to sound more formal and authoritative than he or she feels has actually been the case in a hastily constructed essay. We assume that the Government simply mean "under", and that is what we have put. All these amendments are pretty straightforward. We are trying to tidy up a Bill that shows all the defects of hasty construction. That is what this House not only has an obligation to do, but, on the whole, is very good at doing. We hope that the Government will accept the amendments in this group. I beg to move.