Parliamentary Standards Bill

It may be appropriate for me to follow the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, although—and in this there is no sense of criticism of him—I shall be somewhat shorter. I simply want to talk about what was nearly his penultimate point concerning the reference in government Amendment 43A to "such other conditions". I was struck that at this stage it is impossible for the commissioner or IPSA to define all the circumstances in which they will find themselves becoming involved. Any reader of the Daily Telegraph would have recognised that there was an almost infinite variety of circumstances in which they might find themselves involved. Therefore, I do not think that it is unreasonable that in this clause the commissioner may have regard to, ""such other conditions as may be specified by the IPSA"." That is referred to in proposed new subsection (5)(b) in Amendment 43A and, similarly, in relation to financial interests, proposed new subsection (5B)(c). However, it seems important that these provisions should not be absolutely at large. Therefore, I suggest that it would be an improvement if the word "reasonable" were added before the word "conditions" in both places, so as to read "such reasonable conditions". The insertion of that word would simply act as a signal that, if the commissioner and IPSA found themselves with a case which might arouse strong emotions because people had behaved very badly, they should not be allowed to introduce vindictive conditions but, rather, reasonable conditions. Going back to what I said earlier in the debate on Amendment 1, which the noble Baroness the Leader of the House was so readily willing to look at again, if we establish that none of these activities is justiciable, then it will not be for a court to decide whether something is reasonable. Of course, if a court were looking at the case, it would have to take that into account. If, in the end, the noble Baroness does not accept my amendments which were grouped with my noble friend’s Amendment 1, then it is conceivable that this could be justiciable, in which case the word "reasonable" would be an indication to the court that it would have to apply some judgment as to whether the conditions were or were not reasonable. I hope that we will not reach that position and that we will be able to get to the point where the court is not involved with any of these matters—a view held, I think, by a large number of noble Lords in all parts of the House. However, we have not got there yet, and I hope that the Government will be able to accept the insertion of the word "reasonable".