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Parliamentary Standards Bill

I commend the spokesman for the Scottish National party, who, if I may say so at the risk of damaging his political career, played a very constructive part indeed. I am extremely grateful to him, along with his colleagues from Plaid Cymru and the parties in Northern Ireland. If I may correct myself, the leaders of the three largest parties in the House explicitly committed themselves to establishing a parliamentary standards authority. So, I believe, did the leaders of the other parties. Certainly, all parties co-operated actively in all-party talks, which I chaired with my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House. We had to do that from a standing start. It has been quite the most difficult piece of emergency legislation that I have ever had to deal with over many years, because we started from a blank sheet. I am not apologetic about the fact that the Bill has been changed on its way through the House. That has been the essence of the parliamentary process both here and in the other place. I would rightly have stood condemned had I sought to resist a series of changes that were urged on us as we pooled our collective wisdom from all sides of the House, at both ends of the building, to achieve a better Bill. We have achieved a very much better measure as a result, and I will take the House briefly through the principal changes.