Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, the practice of the House of Commons, as I understand it, is that when an amendment is called that involves financial privilege—in the opinion of the Speaker acting on the advice of the Clerks—this is intimated; and my understanding is that the Government would not be able to challenge that at all, just as we, as a matter of practice, do not challenge it either, although sometimes there have been occasions when some have felt there was a possible reason for challenge. However, as a matter of practice, we do not do that. It is open to the Government—notwithstanding the fact that financial privilege is involved—to invite the House of Commons to agree to an amendment that involves financial privilege. Then the Speaker has to certify in the Journal that a matter involving financial privilege has been passed by the House of Commons. The reason for that is that the House of Commons requires, generally speaking, a money resolution in respect of any expenditure involved in a Bill; and if a Bill involves expenditure, a money resolution has to be passed at some stage during the course of the Bill. In this procedure, there is no room for a money resolution as such, because that happens earlier, but the signification made by the Speaker—in that situation where the House of Commons has decided, notwithstanding that financial privilege is involved, to agree to the amendment, in whole or in part—goes into the Journal in order to replace the need for a money resolution, and it of course authorises the Treasury to disperse money on the basis of that resolution of Parliament. That has nothing to do with the question of whether or not the amendment should be agreed, but, so far as concerns this House, if the resolution is based on financial privilege, the understanding has been—notwithstanding how difficult it might be on occasion for some of us to understand exactly how it arises—that we do not dispute that proposition.