Britannia Radio

From The Times

June 25, 2009

Set a thief to catch a thief

Proposals to clean up Parliament are an Establishment stitch-up

THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2009

Guido Fawkes

The Government introduced a Bill this week that is supposed to clean up Parliament. It proposes creating an “Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority” (Ipsa) and an officer known as the “Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations”.

We don't need another quango or committee to get in the way between voters and MPs. This regulatory approach, just like previous attempts, will fail spectacularly. It does, however, allow the Prime Minister to be seen to be doing something immediately, generating headlines that promise that expense fiddling MPs will face up to a year in jail. The Fraud Act, however, already provides for sentences of up to ten years in jail and the common law offence of malfeasance in public office can bring a life sentence.

The Bill specifies that the five members of Ipsa must include a judge, an auditor and a former MP. They will be appointed “only with the agreement of the Speaker” and “approved by a Speaker's committee”. Its members will be removable by Parliament. The commissioner will be appointed the same way.

Do you see the somewhat glaring flaw in this “independent” authority and commissioner? Members will be drawn from the Establishment and their selection approved by the Speaker's appointees. Would we permit criminal suspects to choose their own judge and jury? Do we really need a former MP on the authority? Perhaps it's set a thief to catch a thief. More likely, it's to make sure that the authority understands why things are done the way they are, old boy.

BACKGROUND

• MPs will regret hasty reforms on expenses

• MPs to face prison for fiddling expenses

• MPs face draconian sanctions on expenses

• Tory grandee purged over £30,000 garden bill

This is a political stitch-up by the parliamentary Establishment. We already have an Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, which is the servant of Parliament, and it failed; a former commissioner was driven from office for being too effective and the evidence is now abundant that the latest commissioner has not succeeded in holding MPs to the standards set down in the Green Book. We do not need more self-selected regulators.

What we need is root-and-branch reform of the expenses system, together with clarity, transparency and enforcement of the rules.

In a democracy, voters are the ultimate regulators - if they are informed, they will kick crooked MPs out of office. We need only to empower the public with enough information to determine the truth about those who seek to represent them. That means losing the black ink and letting the sunlight in on the workings of Parliament so that the voters can see.

Paul Staines blogs as Guido Fawkes at order-order.com

• HAVE YOUR SAY

Im glad people have woken up to the fact that MP's fiddling their expenses are already subject to the Laws of the land most of which carry far stiffer sentences than the poultry 1 year in prison being proposed by this non event . More window dressing by a discredited Government.

steve, Glasgow,

Seems about as sensible as the UN hiring Robert Mugabe to head up a democracy taskforce.........whilst moonlighting at the IMF as a consultant suggesting solutions for controlling inflation.......

Rhys Jaggar, Leeds, UK

I am glad that someone else has noticed that the much publicised 1 year penalty for an MP fiddling his expenses is a mere tenth of that faced by us common folk. 

Haven't heard in on the BBC though.

Richard, Grays Essex, England