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Parliamentary Standards Bill

I will explain why not to the hon. Gentleman. He asked me a question and I would now like to answer it, if I may. Sir Christopher Kelly and his committee will come forward with proposals for the scheme of allowances, which will come before this House. As far as I know, all the party leaders have indicated that unless those proposals are in the realm of complete irrationality, which I do not anticipate, they will be accepted in full, and so they should be. However, that is about the content of the scheme. The Bill is about the operation of the scheme, which includes, for example, who runs the Fees Office, who adjudicates in respect of the scheme and so on. Our plan—we can go into this in more detail in Committee tomorrow and on Wednesday—is that in the early autumn Sir Christopher Kelly will make his recommendations, which will be subject to approval by this House. Those recommendations will be the platform for the scheme that the new authority will operate. With luck, they could all come into force by 1 January next year if we have the authority in place, so the two will work in parallel and then merge together.