Mr Speaker, with your permission I will make a statement on the Afghanistan conference that took place on 28 January and the Yemen meeting the previous day.

It is a grim but important feature of all discussion on Afghanistan that we remember the loss of life—coalition and Afghan—in the last eight years. As I saw for myself again two weeks ago in Kandahar, Lashkar Gah and Kabul, British troops are showing fortitude beyond measure, and their families support beyond compare, both of which deserve the recognition of the whole nation. The stakes are high not only for those serving in Afghanistan but for all the Afghan people, for the south Asian region, for the credibility of the NATO alliance, and, ultimately, for our national security.

As I explained when I spoke in this House on 14 January, 2010 will be a decisive year for Afghanistan. With a new Government, a refreshed counter-insurgency strategy, and a commitment to increase international troop numbers by some 60,000, the Afghans and their allies now have the chance to reverse the momentum of the insurgency, if the military and civilian effort is directed towards a durable political settlement in Afghanistan.

That was the impetus behind my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s decision to convene the London conference.

Where is he?

He is in Northern Ireland, actually.

Our aim was to mobilise international resources—military and civilian—behind a clear political strategy to help to deliver the ambitious agenda that President Karzai set out at his inauguration last November. Our goals are threefold: first, to win over the active support of more of the Afghan population; secondly, to split the insurgency; and, thirdly, to encourage Afghanistan’s neighbours to become part of the solution. Following my consultations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Washington, Istanbul and Brussels, representatives from more than 70 countries and international organisations travelled to London to attend the conference. The communiqué, which was agreed among all conference participants, provides the detail of what was agreed.

First, in respect of security, the focus was on the Afghan national security forces. The growth and development of the indigenous security forces are intended to give the Afghan population the confidence to resist Taliban intimidation and bribery. Afghanistan now has almost 200,000 soldiers and police, and they are already assuming greater responsibility for military operations, but the London conference agreed new, more ambitious targets to increase the Afghan national security forces by more than 50 per cent. by October 2011 by training 70,000 additional members of the Afghan national army and 38,000 more police.

The conference also marked the beginning of the transition process, by agreeing the necessary conditions under which we can begin, district by district and province by province, the process of transferring responsibility for security from international forces to Afghan forces. The intention is for some provinces to transition by late 2010 or early 2011, on the road to meeting President Karzai’s target that within three years Afghans should have taken the lead and be conducting the majority of operations in insecure areas. The additional troops—Afghan and international—will mean that the insurgency will come under increasing military pressure. President Karzai is launching a peace and reintegration programme for those who can be persuaded to switch sides; the rest will face growing military danger. It is essential that all the ethnic groups of Afghanistan are given a route back into Afghan society, as long as they respect the Afghan constitution and break links with al-Qaeda—we support all effort towards this goal. The Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund announced last Thursday is the vehicle through which the international community will provide financial assistance, and some $140 million has already been pledged for the first year.

Governance and development was the second priority for the London conference. Local and provincial government in Afghanistan is chronically weak; less than a quarter of Afghanistan’s 364 governors have electricity in their offices and some receive only $6 a month in expenses. That is why the conference agreed to provide additional support to train, over the next two years, 12,000 sub-national civil servants in core administrative functions vital to the exercise of local and provincial power. However, if the Afghan Government are to win the support of more of the population, they need to govern in the population’s interests, so the commitments that the Government made at the conference to take steps to end the culture of impunity are important. They have promised to do the following: first, to strengthen the independent High Office of Oversight in order to investigate and sanction corrupt officials; secondly, to bring their laws in line with the UN convention against corruption; and thirdly, to invite a group of Afghan and international experts to develop benchmarks for progress and report regularly against those benchmarks—their first visit will take place within the next three months.

Those promises must be translated into rapid action. The international community again pledged its support on Thursday, and for the first time it said that, once key conditions are met, it will increase the proportion of development assistance channelled through the Afghan Government, and will support the Government to meet those conditions.

Development assistance is important in its own right in Afghanistan, which is the fourth poorest country in the world, but it will also help to draw people away from the insurgency and the drugs trade. That is the significance of Thursday’s announcement that Afghanistan will receive up to $1.6 billion extra in debt relief from major creditors and that there will be a new International Monetary Fund programme from June 2010. The legal economy—notably agriculture—needs substantial support, and progress in reducing drug production is important in that respect, as well as in its own right.

The third element is relations between the countries of the region. The situation in Afghanistan threatens to destabilise the whole of south Asia: crime, drugs, terrorism and migration spill across borders. There is a growing awareness within the region that the status quo in Afghanistan benefits nobody. Afghanistan’s neighbours also increasingly accept that no country within the region, let alone the international community, will allow Afghanistan to become a client state.

In these twin changes—a recognition that a client state is out of reach for all and that an unstable state is damaging for all—is the seed of a shared interest. That shared interest should be the basis of greater regional co-operation. Each neighbour needs to know that their restraint and co-operation will be reciprocated, so they need reassurances about each other’s behaviour and intentions. That is why last Tuesday I attended the regional summit in Istanbul to discuss how Afghanistan’s neighbours can support stability in Afghanistan and enhance regional co-operation. At the London conference the Afghan Government requested that the relevant regional bodies develop a co-ordinated plan for Afghanistan’s regional engagement as soon as possible. The prize of regional co-operation is immense: Afghanistan’s neighbours will cut off the lines of funding, support and shelter that stretch across Afghanistan’s borders.

This political strategy and the agreements reached on Thursday need to be pursued with drive, determination and without delay. The Afghan Government will host a further conference in Kabul later this spring. By then, President Karzai will need to have made real progress on security, governance and development.

The international community also has an important role to play in ensuring effective implementation. That is why three new international appointments are being made: at the UN, where there is an upgraded Senior Representative; in NATO, where the NATO Secretary-General has created a new NATO Senior Civilian Representative to strengthen the co-ordination of development and governance work with the military effort—our ambassador in Kabul, Mark Sedwill, took up this role on Thursday—and in the EU to create greater unity of civilian command.

Afghanistan and Yemen are 2,000 miles apart. They have diverse histories, different cultures and are fighting different enemies, but there are common themes. In both cases the lack of development, weak governance and absence of security provide a vacuum for extremists who threaten our shores. In both cases, these underlying long-term causes must be addressed.

The purpose of the London meeting on Yemen on 27 January, as agreed with President Saleh of Yemen, was threefold: first, to forge international consensus about the challenges the country faces; secondly, to build impetus behind the economic and political reform agenda; and thirdly, to improve international co-ordination of support for the Yemeni people and Government.

The Government of Yemen were represented by Prime Minister Mujawar. The Foreign Ministers from the Gulf Co-operation Council countries and the key regional and international partner nations all participated alongside representatives of the EU, the UN, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international institutions. Prime Minister Mujawar gave an honest appraisal of the challenges his country faces—“brutally honest”, in the words of the US Secretary of State. The threat from al-Qaeda has put Yemen in the headlines but it has long been the poorest country in the Arab world, with a rapidly growing population, fast dwindling oil and water reserves, an armed conflict in the north and increasing civil instability in the south.

All present were clear that responsibility for tackling those challenges lay first and foremost with the Yemeni Government, but decisions were taken to upgrade international support in five important respects. First, all present committed to support the Government of Yemen in the fight against al-Qaeda. The meeting welcomed the recent UN sanctions committee decisions on designation and called on all states to enforce the terms of the designation under UN Security Council resolution 1267.

Secondly, the meeting agreed to engage in further helping Yemen to address its broader security challenges, including through increased international support for the Yemen coastguard. Thirdly, Prime Minister Mujawar confirmed that his Government would continue to pursue their reform agenda, notably on economic reform, and start discussion of an IMF programme. The director of the IMF made a compelling case for the way in which economic reform could be supported by the IMF. Fourthly, participants agreed concrete actions to improve the disbursement of aid, an issue that was raised when we discussed this matter in the House two weeks ago. The GCC Secretary-General called a meeting of Gulf and other international donors to share analysis of the barriers to effective aid disbursement and establish a joint dialogue with the Government of Yemen on their reform priorities. The meeting will take place in Riyadh on 27 and 28 February.

Finally, the 25 countries and organisations represented also agreed to establish a Friends of Yemen group to help the Government implement their national reform agenda. Two working groups on economy and governance and justice and law enforcement will report at the first Friends of Yemen meeting.

Conferences and meetings can seem—and are—a long way from the daily danger of improvised explosive devices in Lashkar Gah or the 40 per cent. unemployment rate in Yemen, but neither problem will be resolved without coherent plans confidently advanced by sovereign Governments with huge support from the international community. As a result of last week’s efforts, there is a new confidence and clarity. The test is to turn these words into deeds. That is what we are now committed to doing.

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement. Before turning to Afghanistan, may I ask a couple of questions about the meeting on Yemen? We welcome both that meeting and the creation of a Friends of Yemen group, but is he confident that the Government of Yemen will take the urgent and concrete action on political and economic reform that they pledged to take when they were at the meeting? Did he detect a willingness on the part of our European and other international allies to devote resources to the sort of specific initiatives that Britain and the United States have started in Yemen to buttress those efforts?

I join the Foreign Secretary in paying tribute to the men and women who are serving in Afghanistan, whose work I have also seen for myself in recent weeks. I also pay tribute to their families here in Britain and to the 251 service personnel who have given their lives. I agree with his description of 2010 as a “decisive year” for Afghanistan. We welcome the hosting of the conference in London, and we support its conclusions. Like the Government, we are committed to ensuring that there is sufficient stability in Afghanistan for Afghans to look after their own security without presenting a danger to the rest of the world. To that end, the strategy that has been adopted in recent months must be given time and support to succeed, and must be accompanied by a viable political process alongside our military efforts.

I want to ask about three main areas: the military strategy, the political strategy and the transition to Afghan control. On the military strategy, we welcome the decisions taken by other countries to commit additional manpower. Can the Foreign Secretary say how many of the 9,000 additional non-US forces that have been announced will be stationed in the south, where the heaviest fighting is? Will every effort be made to ensure that the use of those forces will not be hampered by restrictive rules of engagement? One new benchmark is the achievement of a total of 300,000 Afghan security forces by October next year. Can he tell us the projected cost of that expansion? Is he satisfied that the Afghan state will be able to meet the cost that that will entail over the long term? Can he assure the House that NATO trainers and mentors will be in place in sufficient numbers to achieve that target? The conference communiqué urges countries to provide more support for the reform of the Afghan national police. Can he say when the detail of that support will be fleshed out? Can he confirm that there is still no agreed national strategy for the reform of the police? When does he expect that finally to be in place? On the civilian aspects of the strategy, we welcome the appointment of a new NATO Civilian Representative and a new UN special representative. As it is also intended that there will be a new EU special representative with strengthened powers, what mechanism is being put in place to co-ordinate the work of those three officials to avoid the duplication that has happened in the past?

On the political strategy, does the Foreign Secretary agree that the fairness and credibility of the elections that are now scheduled for September are of huge importance, given what happened in the presidential elections? Does he think it is the true intention of the Afghan authorities to run a seriously improved electoral process? How will confidence be given to opposition parties that they will be given a fair chance to compete in those elections? Corruption is one of the key problems that needs to be addressed by the Karzai Government. The communiqué talks about

“empowering an independent High Office of Oversight”,

Can he shed some light on the composition and powers that are intended for that office?

As the Foreign Secretary has said, at the conference there was a major focus on the new Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund. Can he provide more detail about how the expenditure of that huge amount of money will be overseen? Who will be responsible for the distribution of the funds at a regional level, and how will oversight be ensured? Is he confident that the scheme will be designed to avoid creating perverse incentives for non-combatants to join the insurgency in order to benefit from the fund later?

In his evidence to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, the Foreign Secretary proposed “relocation and deradicalisation programmes” for former Taliban members. Can he say whether such programmes have now been agreed and, if so, where they will take place and whether any lead nation will take responsibility for them? It is well known that Taliban elements operate in Pakistan’s border area, posing a threat to both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Does he therefore envisage any of those funds being channelled to the Pakistani Government for the same purposes, or will we encourage that Government to make their own arrangements?

On the final issue—the handover—the conference said that a number of provinces, but an unspecified number, would be transferred to Afghan control by the end of this year or by the start of 2011. Can the Foreign Secretary say whether that timetable has slipped, given the Prime Minister’s specific commitment in November that five Afghan provinces needed to transferred by the end of 2010? The communiqué says that the goal is that Afghan forces take responsibility for physical security within five years, but President Karzai says that the training and equipping of Afghan security forces may take up to 10 years and that they will need outside assistance for up to 15 years. Does the Foreign Secretary share those assessments?

The goals set at the London conference are important and worth while in our view, but we must remember that many of the commitments made at the last London conference on Afghanistan in 2006 have never been met. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that this time around, as the British public wait to see whether progress can really be made and whether our military effort can succeed, delivery on the commitments that have been made is absolutely indispensable?

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his broad welcome for the strategies that have been developed in respect of Yemen and Afghanistan.

On confidence about the implementation of the plans agreed by the Government of Yemen, such confidence should be born of deeds rather than the words that have been used. It is obviously better for words to be used than not to be used, but in the end, one learns to look for actions, rather than words, to give real confidence. However, the depth of the problems that Yemen faces and the remarkable document that the Government of Yemen produced about those problems suggest that no one can accuse them of being in denial.

On the devotion of resources, notably by European countries, the right hon. Gentleman allowed, unusually for him, a degree of scepticism to emerge about what he thought other European countries might be doing. That would come rather amiss to the German and Dutch contributors to the development effort in Yemen. After all, their contributions are on a par with ours, and that commitment is welcome. So I am sorry to disappoint him, but there is no division in Europe on this issue or on its importance.

On Afghanistan, the right hon. Gentleman rightly raised the need for additional manpower and for caveats to be lifted. I therefore think that it is worth putting on record the fact that the German Government announced last week not only an extra 500 troops—rising, I think, to 900 for the elections—but the removal of their caveats. That is the sort of decision that we welcome and want to be taken much more widely.

The right hon. Gentleman is right to point out that there is no way in the immediate future that the budget of the Government of Afghanistan will be able to support a security force of some 200,000, never mind 300,000. In that context, the answer to his question about the Afghan budget is that, no, its Government will not be able to cover it. It will need to be covered from outside, but, obviously, the twin track of a military strategy and a civilian strategy, including an economic one, is very important. Certainly, current estimates are that we—at least, the international community—will have to support the Afghan security effort for some time to come.

In respect of NATO mentors and trainers, the most recent concern has been for Afghan troops to be delivered, mentored and trained. I am pleased about the way in which the NATO training effort is now working. The mentoring and partnering strategy takes us a long way forward.

In respect of the police, I will send the right hon. Gentleman the national strategy that was recently published by the Interior Ministry of the Government of Afghanistan. I commend the national strategy to him. He may have met Interior Minister Atmar—perhaps he has not—who has been responsible for the Afghan national police force for a year or 18 months and is doing an excellent job.

On EU representation, the proposal to replace two EU representatives, representing the Commission and the Council, with one is definitely a step forward of itself. On the relationship with the NATO and UN command, the right hon. Gentleman will know that the UN is superordinate in its role in any country—it is the apex of the international effort—but it will have a different role from that of the NATO Senior Civilian Representative, whose job is to combine military and civilian efforts.

On the elections, it is clear that, for reasons of both security and electoral reform, it was hard to see those elections taking place on 22 May, which was the first date suggested. Reform in the intervening months to September is essential. The Opposition parties want elections but those can take place only if progress is made on reform, and we are working on that.

On the peace and reintegration council, the right hon. Gentleman is right to point out that the detailed implementation of this policy will be critical to its effectiveness. The purposes of the fund, which are to provide employment, to provide security and to force the pace on the deradicalisation agenda, are the right outcomes. He asked who was the lead nation. The lead nation must be Afghanistan. The concept of lead nationhood was applied to G8 nations after the 2003 Bonn conference, but I think we have a much clearer method now of putting the Afghans in the lead and of ensuring the right balance between international and Afghan responsibility.

The right hon. Gentleman asked questions about the number of provinces that will be under Afghan security leadership. The timetable has not slipped. As the Prime Minister said in his speech on Thursday, he thinks that more progress will be made than people realise, but it is important that we do this on a conditions basis. The figure of five years that the right hon. Gentleman raised is President Karzai’s figure from his inauguration speech. It is he who said that within five years the whole of Afghanistan, every province, should have Afghan security leadership. That does not mean the end of an international support role, but it is a very different role.

Finally, it is clear that the efforts that were made in 2006 at the London conference need to be supplemented. The Kabul conference will be able to renew the London compact, but it will do so on the basis of a strategy that has not only far greater clarity and coherence, but far greater international support. That is something that we have to build on in this decisive year.

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement, and for his courtesy in providing an advance copy. He was right to begin with a tribute to our British troops and their families. The whole House stands together in admiration and gratitude for their courage and sacrifice.

Although the true success of the London conference on Afghanistan can be known only a few years hence, may I begin by welcoming the communiqué wholeheartedly? Liberal Democrats have long argued for a coherent political strategy to sit alongside the military strategy, and the conference appeared to mark the first internationally agreed attempt to define that political strategy in detail. Does the Foreign Secretary recognise that for many people, success for Britain’s involvement in this important mission rests crucially on deepening and strengthening this new political strategy as the only realistic way forward?

Given its significance, can the right hon. Gentleman say a little more about the international dimension of the political strategy, especially the engagement of all Afghanistan’s immediate and near neighbours in a comprehensive approach to regional peace? In what forums will this aspect be pursued? Can he say a little more about what was discussed and planned at the regional summit in Istanbul, especially in relation to Saudi Arabia and India/Pakistan relations?

On the national elements of the new political strategy, I welcome the breadth of the proposals to tackle corruption, while sounding a sceptical note on delivery. Was it made clear to President Karzai that neither the international community nor his own people are likely to believe that the Afghan Government are serious about corruption until some of the more powerful warlords and their placemen are ejected from the top table?

I especially welcome the proposals for the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund. The Foreign Secretary will know that Liberal Democrats were widely criticised for such ideas earlier last year, but I am delighted that he and his colleagues last week did not shy away from the controversy. Does he agree that planning the structure and implementation of any payments to former Taliban fighters is critical, to make sure not only that are there no perverse incentives, but that there is clear financial support for Afghans who did not co-operate with the Taliban? But does he also agree that it must make sense to hold out real prospects of employment and hope to insurgents who are often mercenaries and rarely Taliban ideologues?

Can the Foreign Secretary say what plans there are to provide the necessary security to former Taliban fighters—their families and villages—who decide to defect and switch sides? Given that some NGOs already report an upsurge in the assassination of local leaders whom the Taliban suspect of being ready to defect, does he accept that this is a pressing issue if the counter-insurgency strategy is to work?

On Yemen, I welcome what seems to have been a worthwhile exercise, especially in relation to domestic social, economic and political reform. The right hon. Gentleman reported to the House that the Gulf Co-operation Council is to meet later this month to review what aid can be given from countries in the region. Can he say a little more about the help and support that is being offered Yemen from across the Arab world, not just the Gulf, and whether the wealthy members of the Arab League have offered their support?

I find myself in agreement—non-violent, I hasten to say—with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of the political strategy. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) asked about Pakistan and international engagement, however, and I failed to answer him. He inquired about whether the reintegration fund would be available on the Pakistan side of the border, and the answer is no, because the situation involves Afghans who should be in the Afghan political system, not in the Pakistani political system.

The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) asked which forums would be used for international engagement, and the region is debating that issue. There are already four or five different regional organisations, including the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation and others, and there is an issue about co-ordination. There is also an issue, which the Afghan Government must address, about whether there should be a specific effort on Afghanistan. I think that there is a strong case for it.

The hon. Gentleman is right that corruption afflicts many levels of the Afghan system. In a recent BBC poll, 95 per cent. of Afghans complained of corruption in local policing and governance. The importance of that was made clear not just to President Karzai but to all his Ministers who were at the conference, and they replied that it was important for them, too. However, implementation will be a key point, as the hon. Gentleman said, and the oversight board and other committees will be important in that respect. On local corruption, local police wages are important, and the way in which security is offered on the routes between major cities is an absolutely key point, so the security effort and the anti-corruption effort go together.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the implementation of the peace and reconciliation effort. The money that is available does not exist as pots of money to be paid to individuals; it exists to provide for jobs, for deradicalisation and for the security of those who return to their communities. He is right to emphasise the importance of security, because the intimidation that the Taliban apply to the local population applies in spades to their former comrades. On that point, the security effort is the key.

On Yemen, the hon. Gentleman will know that the Gulf countries have pledged large sums of money; we do not suffer from an absence of pledges on Yemen. We need them to be turned into reality, because of those made in London in 2006, only 7 per cent. have been delivered, notably those from the Gulf countries. An important part of the Gulf Co-operation Council’s engagement will be not only Yemen’s road to GCC membership or labour market issues, but aid issues.

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement on Yemen. On Afghanistan, I particularly welcome the appointment of our ambassador, Mark Sedwill, to the important NATO co-ordination post.

My right hon. Friend referred to a proposal whereby, once the relevant conditions are met, the proportion of development assistance that is channelled through the Afghan Government will increase. Will he give the House more information about that proportion? Will it also apply, as a coalition of non-governmental organisations has called for it to apply, to money that is currently disbursed by the military—both through the provincial reconstruction teams and, directly, by the US military in Afghanistan?

The figure that was used in the communiqué was 50 per cent., and that is the aim once the conditions have been met.

I am grateful for what my hon. Friend said about the importance of Mark Sedwill’s upgraded role, and a vital part of his role will be to knit together the local counter-insurgency strategy with the local provincial reconstruction team effort. The transition to lead-security responsibility needs to be accompanied by political developments.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that you will permit me, while the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) is in his place, to correct something that I said earlier. I had been reliably informed that the Prime Minister was on his way to Belfast, but it now transpires that he is not—for various reasons that I shall not go into. I apologise for having got that wrong earlier.

rose—

Order. Fifteen further Members are seeking to catch my eye. I want as always to accommodate everybody, if at all possible, but there is a motion to follow and then the Committee stage of a very important Bill, so brief questions and brief answers are required.

The day before the Afghanistan conference, the Russian Foreign Minister said that his Government would consider an additional contribution to help the Afghan Government. Did the Russian Foreign Minister make any such announcement? What reasons did the Iranians give as to why, at the end of the day, they did not attend the conference?

The short answer is no, the Russian Prime Minister did not make such an announcement. He made a positive contribution to the conference about the Russian commitment to help in a range of ways, but he did not make a specific commitment. I am afraid that the Iranian authorities have not given any explanation, clear or otherwise, their non-attendance. Iran was the only country not to attend, despite repeated invitations and the extension of visas into Tehran, Istanbul and elsewhere. I made clear my regret to the Iranian Foreign Minister when I saw him in Davos on Friday.

I declare my interest on Yemen.

I thank the Foreign Secretary for holding the conference with the Prime Minister and for sending the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis), to Yemen tomorrow. As the Foreign Secretary has told the House, only 7 per cent. of the £3 billion pledged in 2006 has been paid over to Yemen, and that is the problem—promises and no delivery. There would be one easy win for the Government. We have today announced that body scanners are to be made available at Heathrow and Manchester. If Yemen had just one body scanner at Sana’a airport, it would be able to start its direct flights to London again. Such practical measures, to which I know my right hon. Friend is committed because he is a practical Foreign Secretary, can help that very poor country.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. He will know that a comprehensive assessment of the travel needs is taking place at Sana’a airport. Yemeni airlines decided to suspend their flights to London pending the conclusion of the efforts to improve security. I will ensure that the Transport Secretary is aware of his suggestion about body scanners, but I think that a rather more comprehensive approach will be needed at Sana’a airport.

I welcome this statement. In the past, Britain has been the lead nation on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan, with the Germans leading on the police and the Italians on the judiciary. That concept has never really worked—was it abandoned last week?

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the concept has not worked well. It was not formally buried at the meeting last week, but the emphasis that has been placed over the past two or three years on Afghan leadership and international support reflects a recognition of a different, and better, way of doing things.

Is it sensible to try to fight bribery with bribery or corruption with corruption, as history proves that paying danegeld means you never get rid of the Dane?

As I said today and last Thursday, comparing the effort that is being made to ensure that there is security and employment for former Taliban who come into the political system in Afghanistan with the rental that is paid by the Taliban to attack their own communities, never mind our forces, is a comparison that I do not recognise. Nor do I recognise my hon. Friend’s reference to corruption, certainly not—I am sure that he would not have been suggesting this—in respect of our own efforts. The equivalence that he seeks to suggest is one that I do not think is right.

I am sure that I do not have to persuade the Foreign Secretary that if al-Qaeda were to become established in Yemen, that would constitute a threat to the whole region, including some very important allies of this country. Does he therefore agree that if security in Yemen is to be enhanced, it will take something rather more than additional support for the Yemeni coastguard?

Yes. The communiqué issued after the meeting gave a rather wider range of factors. Obviously, the presence of al-Qaeda on the Arabian peninsula in Yemen is a recent sign that it is willing to launch attacks outside the region as within it, and that is very significant. However, I assure the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the security effort is not limited to coastal matters.

In view of the recently released video and the Foreign Secretary’s presence in the Chamber today, is there any more that he can say about attempts to secure the release of Paul and Rachel Chandler?

All Members will have felt heart-wrenched by the video that was released yesterday. As I said this morning, the political and diplomatic effort continues, in very close liaison with the family. That is the best thing to say at this stage. Everybody’s heart goes out to the Chandlers, and we all continue to make every effort to help to resolve this very distressing case.

As a member of the Defence Committee who recently visited Afghanistan, I can attest to the new sense of political, civil and military direction there. However, may I draw the Foreign Secretary’s attention to the fact that the Afghan national defence university cannot get off the ground for the lack of 15 British military officers whose presence would enable the United Kingdom to lead that hugely influential project? May I put that into his in-tray and ask him to look into it? It is worth lifting the military cap by just a few officers in order for us to be able to lead that enormously important project.

The hon. Gentleman has taken a long-standing interest in the Afghan conflict and he and I have had repeated and, I think, productive discussions about it. I will certainly take up his point. I know that there are Afghans at Sandhurst receiving training, and I will look into the return of officers to Afghanistan to make a difference at the national defence university.

The Speaker of the Afghan Parliament told me last week that there are 107 political parties in Afghanistan. Was there any discussion at the conference about consolidating that number to make it more manageable? Is that realistic?

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I saw Speaker Qanuni in Kabul two weeks ago. It is fair to say that the definition of a party in the Afghan context is pretty loose, and not the same as we might recognise in this country. However, the amount of fragmentation and splintering reflects the sort of tribal society that it is, and also emphasises the importance of the parliamentary elections. A presidential system, by definition, elects one person, whereas a parliamentary system allows a broader range of interests to be represented. We did not take it upon ourselves to try to reform the Afghan political party system last Thursday, but the civil society representatives who spoke at the conference were insistent about the need to open up the political process to more people from community groups and civil society more generally.

One thousand Scottish and Scottish-based service personnel are set to be deployed to Helmand in April. They and their families, to whom we all pay tribute, deserve to know when it is expected that violence will diminish and new deployments will not be necessary. When does the Foreign Secretary believe that military intervention will end?

The steps towards the shared goal of all parties in the House are: for the Afghans to take on lead security responsibility—a clear timetable has been set for that—and for a political settlement to take the place of the combat in which British troops from all parts of the UK have been engaged for the past eight years. The hon. Gentleman knows that the efforts of soldiers from Scotland are part of an effort to keep all citizens of this country safe, and therefore deserve all-party support.

Is the Foreign Secretary aware that, if we are to get out of this war, we must make bigger philosophical shifts than have been announced today? However, a few cautious sentences from him and others over the weekend indicate that maybe the political strategy is more important than continuing the war. With Northern Ireland, we had to make shabby compromises, let prisoners out and all the rest, which the media regarded as bad at the time. Yet that is now accepted as something that was right to do at the time. That is what we must do with Afghanistan. It may be that, in this thinly attended House, a few words have been said today that mark the end, and getting out of Afghanistan much sooner.

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s perspective. The military and civilian effort is in the service of a political strategy. A political settlement in Afghanistan involves three things: al-Qaeda being kept out, the tribes being kept on side, and the neighbours supporting stability. That is the sort of political settlement that my hon. Friend recognises, and that we are seeking.

Do not the peace and reintegration programme and the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund represent a dramatic shift in Government policy? Are we not attempting to buy some aspects of the enemy? Given that we have now reached that point, why did we not reach it earlier? How many British lives would have been saved if the Government had examined that option more closely earlier?

The hon. Gentleman will know from my speeches and those of the Prime Minister that the Government have advocated such a strategy for a long time. However, it is not right to say that it is only just being tried. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who speaks for the Opposition on such matters, referred to the 2006 attempts at reintegration and reconciliation, which were done in a way that included some of the perverse incentives to which the right hon. Gentleman referred and were not administered correctly. However, the unity of effort to achieve a political settlement is more coherent and clearer, and we welcome that. In that sense, last Thursday’s conference was a signal event for the international community, because it represented a clear recognition on the part of all countries there of the need for all parts of the Afghan effort to be directed towards the durable political settlement that is needed.

Does my right hon. Friend accept that there is growing impatience in this country with such a long-standing war—as he stated, it has been going on for eight years—when there is no sight of any kind of military victory in the recognisable sense? Therefore, is it not right to put as much emphasis as possible on a political settlement, which must involve, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) indicated, all insurgents? We must speak to the enemy at some stage—the sooner the better.

With the caveat that it must be led by the Afghan Government, we are in complete agreement on the need for an Afghan political settlement that separates those with political grievances from those who are determined to pursue global jihad. The latter group is a small minority who are currently attacking their own communities, never mind our own forces, so the Government adhere very strongly indeed to the commitment to a political strategy and a settlement of the sort my hon. Friend advocates.

Given that the Pakistani armed forces are configured for state-on-state conflict with India rather than counter-insurgency, what will be the strategy on the Pakistani side of the border with regard to the Taliban? Will it be the military strategy on which the Pakistanis have just embarked, or will they, too, change to a political tack?

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I think the Pakistani forces are being reconfigured to take care of what the Pakistani Government would call twin threats, but he is right to say that the sort of effort, training and structures that are needed for a counter-insurgency are quite different from those for traditional warfare. The evidence from Pakistan shows the folly of pursuing a political strategy on its own—a deal-making strategy will not work, and it has not worked in the federally administered tribal areas over the past two decades—but equally, a military strategy on its own will not work either. The absence of any sort of political process in the FATAs is as dangerous to their stability as the absence of any kind of security and order. The Pakistani experience shows the importance of combining military and civilian effort in the service of a durable political settlement. The fact that for, I think, the first time ever, that is happening on both sides of the Durand line, in a complementary fashion, is a significant change in the past year.

Other than the very welcome additional debt relief that my right hon. Friend mentioned in his statement, did any discussion take place during the conference about ways in which to enhance the alternative livelihoods programme in tackling the lethal narcotics trade? The alternative livelihoods programme is the only thing that has made any impact at all in halting the expansion of opium cultivation in Afghanistan.

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. He will know that the fall of some 22 per cent. in poppy production across the whole of Afghanistan last year—33 per cent. in Helmand province—reflects two things: first, the increasing efforts on security; but, secondly and vitally, higher wheat prices and the wheat seed distribution programme, which has been such an important part of the effort to get Afghan farmers on to legal production and away from illegal production. That is the sort of twin-track approach that will be absolutely essential. I am pleased to say that there was very widespread support for that. Significantly, American efforts on the agricultural side are being scaled up to unprecedented levels. The US Secretary of Agriculture was in Afghanistan two weeks ago to spearhead that effort.

Will the Secretary of State join me in paying tribute to the Royal Anglian Regiment, which is serving in Afghanistan so valiantly?

What confidence does the Foreign Secretary have that significant international focus is being placed on, and help and funding directed to, Pakistan and the border regions?

The honest answer is that I have more confidence than I had a year ago. The passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill—notwithstanding the controversy that that stirred up in Pakistan—represents a signal change in the American attitude towards its relationship with Pakistan, and a rebalancing away from military hardware towards comprehensive development. The exchange of letters between President Obama and President Zardari, which has now been publicised, needs to represent a further opening up of a dialogue between Pakistan and the US that leads to a completely different relationship between those two countries.

I beg to move,

That this House—

(1) approves the Seventh Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges (House of Commons Paper No. 310);

(2) endorses the recommendations in paragraph 22 of the Report; and

(3) accordingly resolves to withhold Resettlement Grant from the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead.

This motion has been tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House to facilitate the debate on the seventh report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges. I thank the Parliamentary Commissioner, Sir John Lyon; the Chairman of the Committee, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind); and the members of the Committee who worked on this report.

It is a substantial report, and its recommendations are laid out on page 8. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) made his apology to the House on Friday, and I ask the House to support the motion.

I contribute to this debate as Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee. The Committee’s report on the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) was published on 22 January. As the House has just heard, on Friday last the hon. Member made a personal statement in which he fully apologised to the House and accepted the recommendations of the Committee. I would like to echo what the Deputy Leader of the House said in congratulating the commissioner and those who helped him in the preparatory work needed for us to make our report to the House.

The background to this case, briefly, is that over a five-year period the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead had claimed additional costs allowance for his designated second home in his constituency, having identified his main home as a house in Colchester. It is very relevant in understanding the background to this case, and was a matter of agreement between the hon. Member and the Committee, that the hon. Member’s wife experienced a series of debilitating health-related incidents at frequent intervals from 2003, including a stroke in March 2004.

The hon. Member and his wife felt that they had to spend more time at their constituency home from 2003 in order that he could care for his wife while continuing to carry out his parliamentary duties and to make it easier for Mrs. Cohen to receive necessary medical treatment at a specialist hospital in north London. Unfortunately, Mrs. Cohen continued to experience bad health from time to time and she and her husband therefore continued to live mostly in the constituency in London, letting the Colchester house for periods, but always hoping to return there.

From early 2004 until August 2008, the hon. Member periodically let the Colchester house on six-month leases. That was not a secret arrangement. In 2001, he actually registered the fact that he owned and had received rental income from the Colchester property. He did not, however, subsequently declare any further income as he should have done. It was the hon. Member himself who drew this omission to the commissioner’s attention and non-registration did not form part of the original complaint.

The commissioner concluded that the hon. Member was in breach of the rules in relation to the registration of Members’ financial interests in not registering his Colchester house and the fact that he received substantial rental income from it in each year from 2004 to 2008. The hon. Member has apologised for that breach and has now made an appropriate entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

According to the best estimate that it has been possible to make in the absence of proper records, in 2002-03 the hon. Member spent 55 per cent. of nights in his designated main home in Colchester. The following year, he spent 45 per cent. of nights there. In 2005-06, the hon. Member did not stay in his designated main home at all. In other years, he spent well below half of nights there. For long periods, the hon. Member did not even have the option of using the house in Colchester because it was occupied by tenants.

The commissioner concluded, and the Committee agreed, that the hon. Member was in breach of the rules of the House in identifying for allowance purposes his house in Colchester as one of his two homes from April 2004 to August 2008, because his use of the property was in fact constrained by regular and substantial periods when it was let to others. The Committee has concluded that the hon. Member’s arrangements for his properties over the period of four and a half years represented a particularly serious breach of the rules.

The hon. Member sent us written evidence in which he stated his views. His main points were as follows. He had always regarded the house in Colchester as his main home. His circumstances were not normal because of his wife’s serious health problems, and it would be unfair to apply to his case the rule that a Member’s main home will normally be where he spends most nights.

During the four and a half years when the Colchester house was let for periods, the hon. Member said that there were also periods when it was not let, but used by him and his wife. He said that claiming the London supplement instead of the additional costs allowance would not have saved the taxpayer a penny, because he could also have claimed other expenses. He also claimed that it was not necessarily against the rules for a tenant for periods of time to occupy a house that was subject to claims for the additional costs allowance.

Although the Committee had great sympathy with the hon. Member’s difficulties arising out of his wife’s health, we had no hesitation in concluding that his house in Colchester could not be regarded as his home for the purposes of claiming parliamentary allowances during the time in question. For most of that time he was not living there and the house was let, so for long periods it was not even accessible to him. In our view the hon. Member is also wrong to argue that letting a home for extended temporary periods is in accordance with the rules.

It follows that the hon. Member’s constituency home in Leyton and Wanstead was his main home—and for long periods his only home—throughout the four and a half years when he was making little use of the house in Colchester. We entirely accept that he and his wife were continually hoping to move back to Colchester, but as the commissioner has pointed out, it should have been clear to the hon. Gentleman that that was not going to happen in the short term. The fact that the house was let and re-let on a six-month lease suggests that he understood that. We calculate that during the period when his Colchester house was let between 2004 and 2008, the hon. Gentleman claimed and received more than £70,000 in total from his additional costs allowance. Over the same period, as a Member for an outer London constituency with only one home, he could instead have claimed about £9,000 in the London supplement. Taking the latter sum from the former, the Committee concluded that he had received more than £60,000 from parliamentary allowances over those four years to which he was not entitled.

We have considerable sympathy with the hon. Member and Mrs. Cohen for the difficulties that they have faced in recent years. We believe that we understand their strong attachment to the house, to which they plan to retire. We certainly understand the pressures on the hon. Member, not only as a Member dealing with a heavy work load created by a busy constituency, but as one who has had to cope with considerable stress and demands on his time caused by the ill health of his partner. The House will wish to bear his personal situation very much in mind.

In our second report of the current Session, we responded to the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that the House should be prepared to withhold the resettlement grant from Members who commit serious breaches of the rules. We stated that we would regard a recommendation to withhold the resettlement grant as an option available to us in cases where it appeared to be the right sanction to apply in light of the breach that had occurred. We consider this to be just such a case. The hon. Member’s breach was particularly serious and involved a large sum of public money. Withholding of the resettlement grant is a severe sanction that will effectively recover from him a similarly large sum of public money. We understand that the resettlement grant payable to a Member with his length of service is about £65,000, which is the maximum. He has announced that he will stand down at the next general election, so implementation of the sanction will not be unduly delayed.

We recommended in our report that for committing a particularly serious breach of the rules on claiming parliamentary allowances the hon. Member be required to apologise by means of a personal statement on the Floor of the House. This he did last Friday. We further recommended that the full amount of the resettlement grant, which would be payable to him when he leaves the House, be withheld. I therefore commend the motion to the House.

As we have heard, the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) made a personal statement of apology to the House last Friday. In that statement he accepted the decision and ruling of the Standards and Privileges Committee “without proviso,” as he put it. That is to be welcomed. We have also heard that the Standards and Privileges Committee report says that the Committee had sympathy for his personal circumstances in recent years and that this, too, should be borne in mind when the House responds to that report. Although he did not draw on that paragraph in his statement last week, I am sure that all Members will have taken note of the Committee’s view and will sympathise with him for having to look after his wife, who is not well.

No one can doubt the severity of the sanction in this case—the withholding of the resettlement grant—due to the amount of money involved. The withholding of a Member’s resettlement grant in some cases was one of Sir Christopher Kelly’s recommendations. The Kelly proposals have yet to be implemented, but the fact that the sanction is already being used should send a clear message about how seriously the House takes all his proposals.

I thank the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, John Lyon, for carrying out a thorough investigation into this case. Thanks are also due to the Standards and Privileges Committee for all its work. I extend especial appreciation to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who has only recently stepped up to the plate as the Committee’s Chairman.

As a former member of the Standards and Privileges Committee, I know just how difficult that job is, so I also extend my gratitude to the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and his Committee for their work on this case and others. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has very properly set out the circumstances of this case. As he said, the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) has already made his apology to the House in accordance with the Committee’s recommendation. We all hope that Mrs. Cohen will quickly be restored to full health, but I think that further comment from Members of the House is probably otiose, as is often the case in such circumstances. We have a clear recommendation before us, and unless there are strong reasons to disagree with the view of the Standards and Privileges Committee, it is proper for the House to agree to its recommendation. That is certainly what I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to do.

Question put and agreed to.

I beg to move,

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, it is expedient to authorise—

(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of sums required by virtue of the Act to be paid out of money so provided into the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund;

(2) the payment out of the Consolidated Fund of—

(a) amounts required by virtue of the Act to be paid out of the Consolidated Fund in respect of transfer values paid into the Consolidated Fund,

(b) interest required by virtue of the Act to be paid on those amounts, and

(c) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of the Consolidated Fund by virtue of any other Act.

Colleagues will recall that there was a money resolution for the original Parliamentary Standards Bill, as there is for any Bill that cannot be implemented without the expenditure of money. This further money resolution is required because, in implementing the proposals of the Committee chaired by Sir Christopher Kelly, we are extending the powers and duties of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, not least to include responsibility for setting and administering the pensions of Members of Parliament and Ministers. For that reason and others, this further money resolution is required, and I commend it to the House.

I am happy to support the motion.

I concur.

Question put and agreed to.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government new clause 71—Parliamentary standards: Membership of Speaker’s Committee.

Government new clause 72—Parliamentary standards: Transparency etc.

Government new clause 73—Parliamentary standards: MPs’ salaries.

Government new clause 74—Parliamentary standards: MPs’ allowances scheme.

Government new clause 75—Parliamentary standards: Allowances claims.

Government new clause 76—Parliamentary standards: MPs’ code of conduct relating to financial interests.

Government new clause 77—Parliamentary standards: Investigations.

Government new clause 78—Parliamentary standards: Enforcement.

Government new clause 79—Parliamentary standards: Relationships with other bodies etc.

Government new clause 80—Parliamentary standards: Further functions of the IPSA and Commissioner.

Government new clause 81—Expiry of provisions of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009.

Government new clause 82—Parliamentary standards: Consequential amendments.

Government new clause 83—Resettlement grants for MEPs.

Government new clause 84—Parliamentary standards: Parliamentary pensions.

New clause 87—Duty to offer advice to Members on claims—

‘In section 6 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 after subsection (2) insert—

“(2A) There shall be a duty on the Chief Executive Officer of IPSA and his staff to offer advice to Members on claims prior to formal submission and to promote best practice.”’.

Government new schedule 6—Parliamentary Standards Act 2009: substituted Schedule 2.

Government new schedule 7—Parliamentary Standards Act 2009: new Schedule 4.

Government new schedule 8—Parliamentary standards: consequential amendments.

Government new schedule 9—Parliamentary and other pensions.

Amendment (a) thereto, in paragraph 1(3), after ‘Service’, insert

‘and persons the IPSA considers to represent those likely to be affected by the scheme.’.

Government amendment 133.

There are a lot of new clauses and new schedules in this group, but on this occasion I have a better explanation for that than is often the case, and it is as follows. The Committee will recall—in technicolour—how important it was for us to reach agreement before the summer on what became the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, in order that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority established under that Act could be in place and operating from the beginning of the forthcoming financial year, which starts on 1 April. Meanwhile, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, under Sir Christopher Kelly, was meeting, and as I explained in my evidence to Sir Christopher and his colleagues, we accepted that the committee might well make some recommendations that would require amendments to be made to the 2009 Act. That has, indeed, happened. Members will also recall that the leaders of all three main parties—indeed, effectively, of all the parties represented in the House—said they wished Sir Christopher’s report to be implemented in full. These new clauses and new schedules seek to do exactly that.

Before I come on to discuss briefly the details of these many new measures, let me also say that the major part of the recommendations made by Sir Christopher Kelly will be implemented not so much by legislation, but by the powers and duties of IPSA. Sir Ian Kennedy and his IPSA members have already got a consultation under way on the form of allowances, and much else besides. I know that they are making themselves available for such consultation and that many Members have attended the open meetings that Sir Ian has held, but I urge Members who wish to make a response to do so by the close of the consultation on 11 February.

The report contained 10 recommendations requiring further primary legislation, as they relate to the structure and functions of IPSA, which are governed by the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. I shall now go through the recommendations, discussing first those relating to the status and enforcement powers of the compliance officer and then dealing with those relating to the new arrangements for determining Members’ pay and pensions. A great debate took place—the shadow Leader of the House will recall it, because he was a participant—both in this Chamber and literally below it, in the cross-party consultations that were held downstairs, about where the investigator of complaints against the schemes that were to be enforced by IPSA would be situated. The debate was about whether the investigator would be part of IPSA, whether his role would be separate from it but alongside it—detached from Parliament—or whether he would be within the House.

I shall not go back over the rather tortuous debate that took place, but I can tell hon. Members that we ended up with a Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations who, in a way, straddled both the House and IPSA. The 2009 Act also made provision for the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards—currently Sir John Lyon—to be double-hatted, if the House wished, with the commissioner appointed under the original Act. Sir Christopher and his colleagues said that they wanted there to be a separation; they proposed that decisions on the financial code of conduct should be returned to the Commons so that that would become entirely a Commons matter, while compliance in respect of the system that they proposed should be operated by IPSA which would be separate and removed from the House.

That is what we are proposing. There will be a compliance officer, but we then need to consider who appoints the compliance officer. One of the reasons for the length of the provisions before us is that, as the Committee will readily recognise, it is often one thing to describe in prose what one wants to do—as Sir Christopher and his colleagues did—but it is an often more complicated matter to set it out in legislation that can be enduring and clear. For that reason, some of the new clauses and new schedules are extensive.

The Justice Secretary has explained that the compliance officer will work with IPSA. Those of us who are not up-to-date with all this would understand from what he said that we will also have a parliamentary commissioner who will deal with non-pay, non-money and non-allowance matters. If that is so, what are the limits to what the parliamentary commissioner might take a look at?

The role of the parliamentary commissioner is to enforce the various codes—Standing Orders—that the House has established to deal with, for example, declarations of interest. That is the most obvious example, but included in that would also be examples of advocacy in the House—cases where somebody has been taking money from a particular organisation or individual to advocate a cause and has then failed to disclose that—and many other matters. The enforcement of the rules about allowances, for example in respect of office costs, travel and accommodation, is plainly a matter for IPSA and therefore would fall to the compliance officer.

We have separated the two roles, as set out in the group of amendments. The Committee will note that new clause 70 provides for the appointment of a compliance officer and that one of new schedules sets out in more detail how that officer would be appointed and how he or she could be removed.

Further to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley), will the terms of reference of the Standards and Privileges Committee and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards then be constrained, so that it will not be possible to refer the matters to which my hon. Friend referred to them?

It is subject to any advice that we get from those at the Table, but the responsibilities of the John Lyon figure and the Standards and Privileges Committee are entirely a matter for the House, full stop. These changes do not deal with that. What is in the tin will be on the tin. This is about the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and its responsibilities to establish and administer schemes for the payment of pay, pensions and allowances and to ensure that there is proper compliance with those schemes not only by Members of this House but by the chief executive officer and staff of the authority. So, there is a separation.

Somebody has to appoint the compliance officer. It was implicit and partially explicit that since the compliance officer had to be separate from the House, the appointment of the compliance officer could not be made by it. The question was then, “Who else could appoint the compliance officer?”

rose—

I will give way in one second.

Various suggestions were made informally, including that we could perhaps ask the Judicial Appointments Commission to appoint the compliance officer. I should say, given that I am responsible at arm’s length for the Judicial Appointments Commission and have a role in the appointment of members of the judiciary, too, that we did consider that option seriously but decided that it was not appropriate to give the JAC an one-off responsibility for a position that, although it has to follow principles of natural justice, is, at best, quasi-judicial rather than judicial.

The solution on which we landed was that the IPSA board would appoint the compliance officer. There is nothing unusual about that, and Sir Christopher Kelly explicitly drew a parallel between the compliance officers of the Department for Work and Pensions who deal with benefits and those of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs who deal with tax. Those departmental compliance officers are certainly not subject to any sort of elaborate arm’s length appointment procedure, as in this case, but, as we all know when we take up complaints about benefits, they can still operate at arm’s length from those who are responsible for the day-to-day administration of the benefits system.

We also pointed out to Sir Christopher—it was, frankly, merely an omission from his scheme—that, these days, if there is an appeal against a decision by a compliance officer in DWP or HMRC, it goes to a first-tier tribunal. Appeals on tax used to go to the commissioners, but they now go to a first-tier tribunal. They can then proceed up to the appeals tribunal and, if there is a serious point of law, to the senior courts. We are proposing exactly that arrangement for decisions reached by the compliance officer in terms of parliamentary standards. I think that must be right.

The schedule sets out how the compliance officer will be appointed and the powers to remove him or her from office are very tightly constrained. Once appointed, the compliance officer will be an independent office holder who will not be accountable to IPSA for the decisions that he or she might take. Kelly, whose recommendations we are seeking faithfully to implement, did not want an arrangement by which the compliance officer was appointed by some other third party. I commend to the Committee where we have landed on that point.

In new clause 87 tabled by the right hon. Member for Hampshire North-East, one issue—

North-West. It was a 50:50 chance.

I did not do badly. The right hon. Gentleman used to represent Ealing; that is the problem.

Ealing, Acton.

I am not quite as old as the right hon. Gentleman, but I am getting on that way.

The terms of new clause 87 are linked to concerns about how even-handed the compliance officer and the appeal system will be. Many colleagues have raised questions informally with me, as I am sure they have with other Members of the House, about what will happen if a Member runs into difficulty not because of any malfeasance or failure on their part but because of maladministration by IPSA, its chief executive or staff. The answer is that the compliance officer will be able to investigate complaints not only against individual Members, but against the authority and its offices.

I am still slightly unclear about something, perhaps because I have not picked up some of the nuances of earlier interventions. Will there still be an overlap between what the compliance officer does and the work of the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges? Or is it envisaged that issues that are directly within IPSA’s ambit will be matters entirely for the compliance officer, and that the Committee will therefore deal only with other issues? A failure to create such a separation will lead to overlap and ever more confusion, which will not be very helpful and will be very expensive for the taxpayer.

Day by day, those responsibilities will not overlap, but there must be the overlap that I am describing. I think that the Committee accepts that. Without that overlap, the system could be subject to outrageous abuse. That is unlikely, given what the House and Members, whether they have transgressed or not, have been through in the past year, but one can ever be surprised. If there were such an abuse—a serious fraud, which might involve police prosecution—the case would go to the compliance officer and a civil sanction might be imposed, as might a requirement to repay money. However, if the abuse were particularly outrageous, the compliance officer might decide to refer the case to the Standards and Privileges Committee, with a view to the relevant person being expelled or suspended from the House. There is no rule here, any more than there is a rule in real life, that says that if one transgresses criminal law or a statutory code, the only consequences that will follow will be those related directly to the transgression of that law or code. If one transgresses criminal law and the case is serious enough, one might go to prison, but one might also lose one’s job. Police officers who transgress the criminal law and the disciplinary code may lose not only their liberty and their job, but, in extreme circumstances, their pension as well. When I was the Home Secretary, I had to take decisions on such matters. The measures I am outlining will run parallel to such systems. I hope that that satisfies the hon. Gentleman. We do not propose that there should be second-guessing, or two parallel systems of enforcement.

No one would claim that these are easy things. It seems clear from what the Secretary of State has just said that nothing in today’s proceedings on the Bill will alter the parliamentary commissioner’s responsibilities in any way. If some of the things that the parliamentary commissioner is now responsible for will fall to the compliance officer, there is clearly an opportunity for overlap or double dealing. I suspect that we can expect the compliance officer and the parliamentary commissioner to ensure that that does not happen; they will reach an agreement.

Another issue that the Secretary of State has just raised relates to crime. A provision in new clause 79, which appears on page 662 of the amendment paper and is entitled “Parliamentary Standards: Relationships with other bodies etc”, states:

“The powers conferred by sections 9 to 9B (and Schedule 4) may be exercised…even if…the member is or has been the subject of criminal proceedings in relation to that conduct…whether or not convicted.”

I hope that he will explain at some stage how the two things can go along together. I do not object to that, but it should be done explicitly.

Colleagues will know—it is a well-trodden path—that if someone was convicted of a serious offence, they would normally come within the automatic disqualification. Let us say that the penalty imposed by the criminal courts was less than the 12 months in prison that would require automatic disqualification. Let us say that someone was acquitted in a criminal court but the facts had been admitted and the acquittal rested on a technical matter, or that the facts had been admitted but the extent of the mens rea—the individual’s guilt—was challenged and the jury decided on balance to acquit them. The jurors are saying that the person is not guilty, according to the criminal standard of proof; they are not saying that the person is innocent.

They are not saying that the person is guilty either.

No, they are saying that the person is not guilty, according to the criminal law. As happens very often in employment law, an acquittal will not exempt the individual from appropriate proceedings under employment legislation and the contract of their employment, because the standard of proof is lower, as everyone who has ever employed anyone knows. However, I do not anticipate that this will be a huge problem in practice.

Under new clause 75, an MP who is dissatisfied with IPSA’s decision to refuse a claim can ask the compliance officer to conduct a review, having first given IPSA reasonable opportunity to conduct its own review. There could be an appeal against that decision as well. So the Member could go all the way and appeal against a refusal by the authority. I hope that, in practice, such appeals will be few and far between.

Under new clause 87, which appears on page 665 of the amendment paper, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) wishes to add a new subsection to section 6 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 that states:

“There shall be a duty on the Chief Executive Officer of IPSA and his staff to offer advice to Members on claims prior to formal submission and to promote best practice.”

Aside from the inevitable drafting problems, which can always be resolved, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not push that new clause to a vote, given the undertakings that I am providing. I understand exactly what he wants to achieve.

Ultimately, this is a matter for the House, but we are concerned to ensure that, if possible, the members of IPSA embrace what we are attempting to achieve and that it is practical in terms of their administration. They will certainly offer guidance in any event. I can think of cases from my own experience—they are nothing whatever to do with questionable expenses, but with straightforward matters that relate to the running of my office—where I have phoned someone in the Department and said, “Is this in line with the rules? I can’t find it anywhere in particular,” and they have said, “Yes,” and then paid it, or they have paid it for a number of years and then said, “We don’t think that it should be paid anymore,” at which point I say, “I’m now in a slight difficulty. Do you think that you could think again, and by the way, here is the paper trail?” There is no fiddle; we must know where we are. Contrary to what is often thought outside, we do not have our own compliance officers. Assiduous Members of Parliament are busy, and we are trying to run what amount to small businesses, while abiding by what will be increasingly complicated, as well as very public, rules.