Member News
The procedure committee has called for two lay members to be appointed to the committee on standards.
The current committee on stanadards and privileges should be split in two, with outside members sitting on the standards committee only.
MPs will be asked to decide if lay members should have voting rights or whether they should be appointed with more limited rights, protected by rules on quorum and publication of their opinion or advice.
"It would of course be open to the House to reject both options," the procedure committee said.
"In the case that the advantages in terms of credibility and the increased contribution suitably qualified lay members could make are deemed sufficient to justify full membership of the committee, we recommend that the government bring forward legislation to put beyond reasonable doubt any question of whether parliamentary privilege applies to the committee on standards where it has an element of lay membership."
Procedure committee chair Greg Knight MP said:
"Our report contains a range of recommendations which clearly illustrates how the question of adding lay members to a parliamentary committee has both far-reaching implications for parliamentary privilege and a much less weighty but still significant impact on parliamentary expenditure and facilities.
"We consider that it is essential that the House take this path only in full awareness of the arguments set out in our report.
"Only once the House has weighed those arguments can an informed decision be taken on whether to appoint lay members to the committee responsible for disciplining Members of Parliament for breaches of the code of conduct and what safeguards need to be put in place if such appointments are to be made to ensure that the committee can continue to work confident in the protection of parliamentary privilege.
"The House has an important decision to take.
"We hope that our report will help ensure that it takes that decision in an informed way."
The committee recommends that lay members be appointed to and dismissed from the committee on standards only by resolution of the House and they be appointed for a single non-renewable term of five years.
The committee said that lay members should not have served as parliamentarians either at Westminster or in the devolved assemblies.
The report says the appointment of lay members should not create "new opportunities for 'the great and the good'".
"Those appointed will need to exercise judgment and discretion in a challenging environment.
"They will need to be at ease in that environment, while maintaining a degree of separation from it.
"Although they will, in a sense, be representatives of the public, they will need to bring their independent judgment to bear on some complex questions and they will need to be sufficiently resilient to deal with pressure both from the media and, indeed, from members of the political classes."
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