When Charles I came to the House of Commons to demand the arrest of the five members Mr Speaker Lenthall told him that he had 'no voice to speak save as directed by this House'. This remains the constitutional position: the speaker is the servant of the House and not its leader (that job and title, for good or ill, resides with Harriet Harman, Gordon Brown's deputy). So, I believe that anyone who is putting their faith for the reform of Parliament in the election of the new Speaker Bercow is barking up the wrong tree. The last speaker Michael Martin actually proposed a whole stack of reforms a year ago which are remarkably similar to what everyone has now agreed are necessary, but they were voted down. It wasn't the speaker that we lacked it was the political leadership: the Prime Minister didn't even turn up and vote and he allowed his ministers and whips openly to orchestrate the defeat of the reforms.
I am now deeply suspicious of the reform agenda. We know what went wrong: the rules were too lax and the system simply wasn't policed because it took no account of human nature. It assumed that MPs were saints who could be trusted. There may have been a golden age when our elected representatives had rather more moral fibre, but personally I am sceptical. When I first became interested in politics my MP was Robert Maxwell.
Now a whole raft of constitutional reforms are being proposed. I am in favour of many of them but utterly opposed to others. I am clear about one thing however: none of them have anything to do with the causes of our recent scandals. There is an enormous rush to make some sort of dramatic gesture to try and clear the air. I think this has much more to do with the electoral cycle than it has to do with the rational process of reform. I believe that the Prime Minister wants to give himself the opportunity of an autumn election (although he may not take that opportunity, as he didn't in October 2007, but he certainly wants to give himself the option) to be in that position he wants some form of 'closure' on the expenses scandal by having been seen to do something radical, far reaching and dramatic. Quite what this is, we have yet to discover, but rumours abound. Apparently a bill is to be presented to the Commons in the next few days and is to be raced through all its stages so as to be enacted into law by the time the House rises for the summer recess in mid July. This has all the potential of a disaster waiting to happen. First, the Prime Minister has already handed over the whole question of expenses to the Commission on Standards in Public Life and there will have been little point in having done so, if we legislate ourselves without even waiting to hear its findings. Second, rushed legislation is always bad legislation. I fear we will be looking at the Dangerous Dogs Act all over again, but this time for MPs. All sorts of ill thought through proposals are being touted, although we cannot yet know how many of them will make it onto the face of the bill. We must be very cautious about any reform which constrains the freedom of action of MPs, making them more subject to regulation or intrusion. The purpose of Parliament is to keep the government in check and to hold it to account. It cannot do this if the relationship is reversed, with MPs being accountable to government and punishable by it. Powers granted to clean up this parliament might well be used in future parliaments to crush dissent or to remove irritating and independent minded critics. This is a road to tyranny.
One widely touted reform is the banning of second sources of income. The argument is made that if one is elected to be a full time MP then you should do only that. I could not disagree more profoundly. I must begin, however, by declaring my interest: I have two other jobs: I am a serving officer in the TA and I earn £12,000 a year as a company director. I do not consider these commitments as a distraction from my parliamentary commitments. On the contrary, they are an important contribution to them. First, the very last thing we want is a parliament composed entirely of full time professional politicians, increasingly remote from the realities facing ordinary people and businesses that they are supposed to represent. Second, with independence of income comes independence of thought and action. A full time politician will be less able and less inclined to stand up and be counted on an important issue of principle or policy if it might cost him his career, his position, and his income. An MP, however, who has kept his professional and business interests and is able to support himself and his family, has a freedom of thought and action in the face of party whips. He can afford to tell them to get stuffed and to vote with his conscience.
I think it would be madness to allow this brouhaha about expenses to drive from Parliament those capable of earning their income, and to see those remaining become even more dependent upon the largesse of the taxpayer and the generous allowances to which they have become so accustomed. |
