Parliamentary Standards Bill

As my noble friend Lord Cope pointed out, he and I have put down amendments which appear to oppose each other. That is not what my noble friend and I are about, so I am rather embarrassed if that is the impression that has been given. My noble friend Lord Cope has managed to draft an amendment that allows for the raising of the issue to which I wish to speak but without seeming to argue for an unworkable registration, or a potentially unworkable registration, of ministerial duties. Let me be clear: in Amendment 42 I am not seeking to suggest that Ministers should have to register their payments or all the time they spend on ministerial duties. What I was intending to identify, and what my amendment was designed to give me the opportunity to highlight, was the distinction the Government were drawing between different types of jobs. There appears to be a false distinction between the value of MPs having voluntary or government-paid jobs and the apparent harm caused by having a non-governmental job involving remuneration. In the first case, I hope that the Government would agree that it is of great benefit to Parliament to have people with hands-on knowledge of the real world. For example, knowing intimately the work that charities do at the grass roots or the difficulty of complying with reams of regulatory requirements can only improve the quality of the legislation that Parliament inflicts upon the people of this country. However, the Government appear not to agree—this is where I part company from them—that it is also of value to have MPs who know what it is like to have been at the coal-face of, for example, the legal profession or the medical profession. Both of these careers can be well remunerated and very time-consuming, and it is to many MPs’ credit that they are willing to maintain these professions or any other job while also putting in a full day’s work as a Member of Parliament. The example that my noble friend Lord Cope made as a Northern Ireland Minister was very compelling. Not only did he put the enormous hours into the work but he was also travelling over to the Province. I hope that the Minister, on behalf of the Government, will be able to explain why they have drawn the line in the way they have and why they are making what I believe to be a false distinction between voluntary and government jobs and those that are remunerated.