My Lords, until now we have had a regime that partly dealt with the problems that this Bill deals with. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, explained, the statutory framework under which this House has worked hitherto did not enable us to exercise the full powers that the House would have wished to exercise in some circumstances because of the need to curtail any sentence of suspension to the period of the next issue of writs of summons. I do not think that anybody thought that was an entirely satisfactory system. On the other hand, I thought—and I think this was generally agreed—that it was the best that we could achieve without statutory intervention.
Now we have the opportunity to introduce statutory intervention. It is extremely important that from now on we should have a system that completely replaces what was in place before without the impediment involved in the previous arrangements. This Bill does exactly that, covering in full the situation where someone, unfortunately, transgresses the Code of Conduct of the House, and allows it to be properly dealt with.
I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for taking this on. I am also grateful for the progress that has been made in the consideration of the Bill, which has made it, in my view, as perfect a statutory framework as we can have, while leaving the detail of what should happen to the decisions of this House through the making of Standing Orders, as the noble Baroness said. That has the important advantage that, if the initial Standing Orders prove to be somewhat in need of improvement, that improvement can be made. That is an important feature of the Bill in bringing in a completely new regime to replace the regime, with its unsatisfactory features, we hitherto have used. I hope that the Government feel—I imagine that they do—that this would be an improvement, and I hope that the Bill will speedily pass into law.
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