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Parliamentary Standards Bill

I do not accept that the sanctions are not tough—but there is the issue of how that is achieved. As for the paid advocacy, or "cash for questions", offence, the Bribery Bill proposals, which I commend, and which include a carve-out on article 9 of the Bill of Rights—proposals that have yet to go through the House formally, but which have received approbation from Members on both sides of the House—will do that job. There was controversy about the other two offences. Speaking for Members on both sides of the House—and it was I who urged one of the offences on the House—this was not a question of people going soft. It was about deciding what was the appropriate mechanism. The provision on making a false declaration remains in the Bill. The final Lords amendment to which I wish to draw attention is the so-called sunset clause, which provides not that the Bill would automatically cease to have effect after two years, but that after two years, if clauses 5 to 9 of the Bill that left the Commons were to continue, they would have to be extended by an affirmative order, which would give the House a chance to draw breath and review the operation of the authority after, in practice, it has been in force for at least a year. Now let me deal briefly with the proposal by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), which would add at line 3:""Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972, the European Convention of Human Rights or the Human Rights Act 1998"." I urge Members who support that amendment to reflect on the matter and not to put it to a vote. If they do, I urge the House to vote against it. The arguments against the suggestion in the amendment were well spelt out by Members from all parts of the House of Lords yesterday. There are two aspects to this: whether it is necessary, and if it is, whether it is possible to exclude the operation of, first, the European Court of Justice in respect of the European Union, and secondly, the European convention on human rights, as regards this authority and this House. On the EU and its institutions, my noble Friend the Attorney-General said that she did not believe that the Bill had any effect on matters within the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, and she spelt out why. I think that it was the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) who said that the Attorney-General also used the words, "it is very unlikely," but as we are talking about the future, I must say that very few things are absolutely certain. I would, however, make a very large wager, which I am very happy to take in public as well as in private, that the prospect, first, of British judges in a British court deciding to refer to the ECJ is—