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Parliamentary Standards Bill

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The entire proceedings on this Bill have been conducted in an extremely shabby manner. Indeed, some important statements have been made by some of the most distinguished officials in the House—and in the other place—and the reservations that have been expressed, for example by the House of Lords Constitution Committee, about the fast-tracking of this Bill are a matter of record. The problem is that because of the sovereignty of this House it is essential that we protect our supremacy with regard to the borderline between what we do here and what may be referred to the European Court of Justice or the European Court at Strasbourg. The wording that I originally proposed, and which was adopted by my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench a couple of weeks ago, contained the words that I now propose to reinsert. Unfortunately, the Bill was amended in the Lords so that the only words left were:""Nothing in this Act shall be construed by any court in the United Kingdom as affecting Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689."" The opening words were knocked out and excluded. I regard them as absolutely crucial to preserving the sovereignty of this House, and indeed of the electorate. They are as follows:""Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972, the European Convention of Human Rights or the Human Rights Act 1998"." Having made that reservation, I concur with the wording of Lords amendment 1, as I have just set out. Some distinguished lawyers took part in very learned discussions in the House of Lords. Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Howe of Aberavon both made a number of brief comments but they did not go into the merits of the proposals to any extent. They simply averred their own opinions in a few sentences, whereas the Attorney-General gave a lengthy dissertation on the questions of privilege and other matters that relate to the Bill. The fundamental question is as follows: if a disgruntled or aggrieved person raised an issue that ultimately led to judicial review, would a reference to the ECJ—or, to a slightly lesser extent, the European Court of Human Rights—override the jurisdiction of this House? The Attorney-General ruled out that possibility. In contrast, Lord Mackay, a former Lord Chancellor, said that although he did not think such a situation likely to arise, he could not rule it out. I have conferred on this matter with a number of eminent constitutional authorities—of such distinction that they are called on to give advice on matters in all the courts of law and in Parliament—and they agree with me that it is important that we retain in the Bill the words that my amendment proposes to reinsert. They accept that it would not be possible to assume that neither the ECJ nor the ECHR would not get their hands on a particular matter.