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Parliamentary Standards Bill

We do not believe that those matters will be justiciable. Opposition Members have said that they want to reach the later amendments, so we are going to have make progress. I believe that we dealt with amendment 46 in an earlier debate, and I turn now to amendments 34 and 18. We have deliberately devised a scheme in the Bill so that the House retains the power to discipline its Members. Apart from the criminal offences in clause 9, the ultimate decision about what action to take against an MP remains with the House. It will be for the House to decide whether to punish a Member for not supplying information or for failing to comply with a direction, and it will be for the House to decide what to do with a recommendation from IPSA for other sanctions. We believe that concerns that the provisions are breaches of privilege are misplaced, because they have been carefully drafted precisely to preserve those privileges of the House. The alternatives would have been to make every breach of the rules on allowances or the registration of interests into a criminal offence, or to give IPSA itself a power to enforce its decisions. Both options would lead to giving a body outside Parliament far more of an incursion into the proceedings of the House, and would certainly be a breach of the principle of exclusive cognisance. Therefore, I urge the Committee to reject the amendment.