Today the reputation of Parliament, of MPs, perhaps even of our democratic system itself, is in tatters. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, along comes another battering headline.
Politicians have never been a popular breed but never in my 20 years in politics have I seen the public as angry as they are today, and, frankly, who can blame them?
It doesn’t help that stories of MPs using their expenses to buy plasma TVs at one end and bath plugs at the other, comes at a time of recession, with people losing their jobs and the fear of worse to come.
Little did I know, when I submitted a Freedom of Information request back in 2005, what a Pandora’s Box was opening up. That modest request, simply asking for a breakdown of MPs’ travel costs by mode of transport, was fought tooth and nail by the senior MPs who comprise the House of Commons Commission. To my horror, they used thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money to try to stop disclosure, employing the best legal brains your money could buy.
And when they were eventually forced to concede defeat more than two years later, there was then a disgraceful attempt to move the goalposts by exempting MPs from the Freedom of Information Act entirely.
I watched in disbelief as Minister after Minister was wheeled out on a Friday, normally the graveyard day for Westminster, to push that odious Bill through. But the Bill was so toxic that not one member of the House of Lords would touch it, and so it fell.
Yet still MPs would not see the writing on the wall, and when a sensible package of reform proposals finally came before the Commons last summer, what did the majority do? They voted to keep the bits that were financially positive for them, while throwing out the measures that would have gone some way to deal with the abuses.
So the flood of damaging headlines we have seen in recent days has been, I am afraid, all too predictable, if dispiriting nonetheless. The basic problem is this: claims for expenses should reflect expenditure legitimately and necessarily incurred by a Member of Parliament as part of his or her duties – no more, no less. Instead, they have been used by too many MPs as an alternative income stream, as a way of bumping up their salary without having to vote through an embarrassing increase.
It is totally wrong that MPs should be taking out mortgages with money provided by the taxpayer, then pocketing the capital gain when the property is sold. It is even worse when they chop and change the designation of their second home on a regular basis in order to maximise the income they can generate through the allowance system.
May 11, 2009
