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Parliamentary Standards Bill

Very nice try, but it does not wash. As someone who has run organisations and set them up, I appreciate that the Secretary of State is quite right to say that the staff need some sort of continuity, but we are considering not just the staff but the significance of the legislation that we are passing. It is not the independent fees office that is in any way controversial—the Secretary of State is right; we all support that; it is all the surrounding implications for privilege and so on that matter, and they may well need revisiting. Doing so in no way threatens the stability of the independent fees office that the Bill sets up, and which should be the only thing it sets up.