My Lords, although two days have passed, this is the first debate following that on Amendment 31, which was moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton. After we had adjourned, a thought occurred to me which I probably should have put on the record in that debate. In all truth, it did not occur to me then; but it has since, so I wish to do that. In col. GC239 of Tuesday’s Hansard, in summing up his amendment, the noble Lord listed a number of institutions with which he had been in communication in framing it. One of them was the Institute of Physics, which he said has 45,000 members. It was not until I was on my way home that I realised I should probably have said that I am an honorary member of the Institute of Physics. I suspect that does not even remotely influence anything but, for the record, I make that clear.
As regards Amendment 39, I want to point out that it was drawn to the Joint Committee’s attention that when a constituent speaks to a Member of Parliament, that Member, if he then relays the information given to him or her in the House, has privilege as far as Parliament is concerned. However, there was a question mark as to whether the communication between the constituent and the Member of Parliament was also covered by privilege. It seemed to the Joint Committee that it was extremely important that it should be covered by privilege because at the very heart of our democratic process is the concept and the reality that a Member of Parliament acts on behalf of his or her constituents. That ought not to be mitigated or reduced by pressures that would rule out things that the constituent could say to his or her Member of Parliament.
We were also told that the Government intended to bring forward legislation on privilege. We all understood that and the committee took the unanimous view that—how do I put this delicately?—this might be a long, drawn-out process, which started with ministerial statements some time ago that the Government intended to legislate in this area, and various steps have been taken along that path. There was no great confidence that we would soon reach the end of that path. Unanimously, the committee decided to recommend to the House and the Government to clarify the position and to remove any doubt that what is said between a constituent and his or her Member of Parliament should also be covered by privilege. The argument was raised by one witness that these days you cannot necessarily trust every Member of Parliament to behave appropriately in such circumstances, to be careful in the use of what would probably be highly contentious information and to use it in such a way that would be in keeping with the well established standards of the House of Commons.
The Joint Committee took the view that an occasional misuse of information by an individual Member of Parliament was not sufficiently important to offset the fundamental issue that we were addressing. Our thoughts are encapsulated in this amendment, which I beg to move.