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House Committee

My Lords, I cannot share the view that there is some retrospective element here. It is not retrospective to apply the proposed suspension to noble Lords who were found to have claimed expenses without good cause, and in some cases such as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, in bad faith, and who were ordered to repay the relevant sums but who have failed to do so. That failure surely entitles the House now to decide what action it is appropriate to take against them. Paragraph 56 of the Privileges Committee report, which the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, read out, does not address, as I read it, what should happen if the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, fails to pay up. On the noble and learned Baroness’s second point, I do not understand this to be a permanent exclusion from the House. The suspension will apply on its terms only for the duration of this Parliament. It will be a matter for the next Parliament to decide whether it is appropriate then to suspend the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, or any other noble Lord in default if they still have not repaid the relevant sums. The answer to the point made by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Scott and Lord Lloyd, is surely this: it must be implicit in this report that the relevant committee will have a discretion not to take action if it is persuaded that the noble Lord in question does not have the means available to pay the sum. In my view, there is no unfairness whatever in what has been proposed by the committee.