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Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker). He, like other hon. Members and, obviously, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) on the Front Bench, will have been taken by surprise by the motion suddenly appearing on the Order Paper today. This meant that the only opportunity to table an amendment that would add my hon. Friend's name in place of somebody else's was behind the Speaker's Chair last night, when today's proceedings became apparent. That is odd, because the way in which the matter has been dealt with is in stark contrast to, for example, the motions on the Order Paper relating to membership of Select Committees, when a lot of notice about proposed members is normally given and people have the opportunity to object or to table amendments. Indeed, I can remember, as can my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire, the appointment of members of the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill Joint Committee. I objected repeatedly to that motion, and then in the end found myself being appointed to the Joint Committee, which was a great privilege. Like the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), I think that it is unhealthy, in principle, that these appointments should be made by collusion between the Front Benches. Why can appointments not be made more openly by election? That has been a very successful process in relation to the Committee on Reform of the House of Commons, which I hope will bring forward important recommendations at the beginning of the new Session.