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Parliamentary Standards Bill

Under the new rules, not only in the Bill, but in the Green Book that has been waved around, the notion that anybody could find time to write a book while serving as a Member of Parliament has gone out of the window. I do not know whether that is healthy. Many of us feel that we should spend more time reading books; one or two of us are mad enough to try to write one, but there will be little time to do that under the new proposals. I appreciate that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is trying to get things right and I accept that he is sincere. He is a great parliamentarian—one day, he may even become a Back Bencher again, though that is difficult to imagine. He would be a good Back Bencher and, if he were to become one, he would not want to be hobbled by the Cromwellian commissioner that he proposes.