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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

Indeed. I greatly welcome the hon. Gentleman's intervention. Sadly, the history of the Standards Board is littered with abuse by councillors settling scores with each other, and vexatious cases, which have driven many of us to distraction, and led to Conservative Members' great concern about whether the Standards Board can be relied upon to do a good and effective job. We know that there are reforms in place. Our position is that we are agreeing to wait and see what they will produce, but we have hesitations about the Standards Board, as the Minister will be aware. However, we are looking all the time for avenues to close down unnecessary references—things that could be used that are totally contrary to the spirit of the board; things that do not pertain to elected members' actual activity, but which could be used in a trivial manner—and we are not certain. Let me quote briefly from the Joint Committee on Human Rights report, ““Legislative Scrutiny: Fourth Progress Report””, its eleventh report of the 2006-07 Session. Paragraph 1.19 states:"““We see no reason why the Bill should not expressly state on its face the exact extent to which the code shall apply to private conduct by members, for example by providing that the only private conduct to which the code applies is conduct which has resulted in a criminal conviction. There is no reason, legal or otherwise, why such a limitation should only be contained in the code. On the contrary, in our view, there are very good reasons why such a limitation should be on the face of the Bill, to make it less likely in practice that the power will be exercised incompatibly with Articles 8 and 10.””" That is the area of hesitation for us. I would be grateful if the Minister could give the House an assurance that he believes that trivial and vexatious issues will not be caught up in the wording that is already in the Bill. Plainly it is not his intention that they should be, and it was not the intention of his noble Friends. However, we are unsure whether the wording in the Bill will not lead to the very concerns that I believe the hon. Member for Hazel Grove will raise, and which were raised in the other place and which we are raising now—that is, our main hesitation about the provisions that are in the Bill as an amendment.