We absolutely agree on the point about IPSA expenses. To provide justice to our constituents, it is a relatively uncontentious tweak to the Bill to say that if a Member of Parliament were convicted of serious wrongdoing they should not be able to evade natural justice just because their offence was carried out before Royal Assent. Let me now make a little more progress.
We see these three amendments as sensible steps towards improving the Bill and significantly strengthening the rights of constituents to hold their Members of Parliament to account. I am grateful to Members from the other parties and to those on the Government Benches who have signed our amendments or who have indicated that they will support them tonight. I hope that when the Minister responds he will confirm that he, too, supports our proposals and that he will encourage all his colleagues to endorse them so that they can be carried without a Division.
I now turn to the new clauses and amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Cambridge and for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath). I want to deal first with new clause 2 and the amendments relating to it. As I said in
Committee, we support the principles behind the idea. We agree with the hon. Gentlemen on the idea of an independent mechanism when it can be demonstrated that wrongdoing has occurred. Like the hon. Gentlemen, we entered into talks with Ministers in good faith to make it work. However, as has already been mentioned by the hon. Member for Cambridge, despite lots of warm words from Ministers the Government have walked away without fully engaging. At no point did Ministers proffer alternative wording, which will of course leave many wondering whether parliamentary counsel were ever engaged properly. The Government Chief Whip who, yet again, is nowhere to be seen, seems to have decided that this is all too much effort.
That is no way for the Government to behave, not only after giving clear assurances in Committee but on a Bill that was, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park said, a key plank of the coalition agreement. The result of the Government’s behaviour is that we are left with a new clause that is, by the admission of the hon. Member for Cambridge, not in a fit and proper state. I appreciate that its promoters have tried as hard as they can to get these principles into a workable state, but despite their best efforts the amendments are simply not there.