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Parliamentary Standards Bill

There is an important distinction to be made between a perfectly dotty expenses system from which people can legally claim, albeit with a difference of morality, and doing things like—I am not quite sure if I am in order here—claiming interest on a mortgage that does not exist. Claiming interest on a mortgage that does not exist strikes me as falling exactly into the category to which my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern referred. We should and we must be careful to differentiate between a rotten expenses system that is open to serious difficulties and the criminal law. That is my only point.