Part of Royal Assent – in the House of Commons at 12:49 pm on 19 July 2018.
As the right hon. Lady knows, we have agreed on nearly everything in the report. On this issue, however, I wish to put on record that I did not agree with the position of the group, which was to say that we did not want the amendment tabled by the Committee on Standards. Consistency is not the most important issue, and the optics of this House rolling back transparency are deeply worrying. I would far rather live with a bit of inconsistency, particularly since it essentially means that—quite rightly—MPs are under more of a spotlight. That to me is a much lesser concern than the fact that it looks to the outside world—indeed, to some extent it is true—that we are rolling back transparency at exactly the time we should be expanding it.