Labour policy u-turn #497
Dear Harriet Harman,
After the thoroughly pointless Queen’s Speech just a few weeks back, it seems that you have already changed your mind about how to crackdown on dodgy expenses claims from MPs. While the headlines today are all about belltowers, Sky TV, porn movies, domestic servants, garlic peelers, air beds and hamburger machines, the complete failure of the Government to stop this nonsense is worth reflecting on.
Yesterday, you announced new legislation to ’sharpen the teeth’ of the Commons parliamentary standards watchdog, enabling it to dock the allowances of MPs and bring members of the public on to parliamentary committees. This would expedite ideas recommended by Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the committee on standards in public life, who presented an overhaul of parliamentary allowances to MPs in November but saw his recommendations overlooked in the Queen’s speech. The revised allowances system is being drawn up by the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) but you announced that you will amend the parliamentary standards bill – emergency legislation drafted after the expenses scandal – to give it more power. In your opinion, MPs who abuse their expenses should have their allowances docked (they can already have their pay docked) and a new compliance officer at IPSA should investigate breaches of expenses rules with the power to impose civil penalties on MPs. Furthermore, IPSA will gain the power to set MPs’ pay and pensions from 2011-12, based on recommendations from the senior salaries review body, while the new legislation will allow three lay members to sit on the Speaker’s committee overseeing the running of IPSA and the responsibility for the register of financial interests and the code of conduct will be removed from IPSA and returned to the House of Commons.
Somewhat surprisingly, it sounds like a moment’s thought might have gone into this new legislation, although there are some rather important questions that you have deliberately sidestepped. Will MPs lose their “golden goodbye” (resetttlements of up to £65,000 for retiring or defeated MPs) if they fiddle their expenses? Why haven’t you just accepted Kelly’s recommendation to convert this ‘golden goodbye’ into a cheque for eight weeks’ pay to save the taxpayer a wodge of cash? How did some of the crooked MPs caught out in the first expenses scandal earlier in the year get away with screwing the system in the intervening months, such as Peter Hain continuing to claim for Sky TV even after new rules for the second homes allowance banned such practices? Are the MPs who abused the system in the past few years going to face punishment by IPSA, especially as many of them are refusing to cooperate with Sir Thomas Legg? Why were MP’s addresses completely blacked out in the latest release of receipts, when taxpayers surely have a right to know roughly what area an MP lives in?
In your desperation to appear vaguely competent, you said that the role of a new compliance officer had been originally contained in the legislation to set up IPSA but had been removed in the face of ‘opposition’. Yer, sure. It has nothing to do with your weakness in the face of adversity, your refusal to face down your own MPs or your inability to deal with the greatest political scandal in decades, naturally. Needless to say, the PM’s spokesman denied the government had performed a U-turn when it’s quite obvious that you have. Having ducked this issue in the Queen’s Speech, you are now trying to claw back some credibility but – like Quentin Davies and his pleas for mercy over his belltower expenses claim – it’s too little, too late.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
These poor MPs, facing the loss of their expense accounts.
Perhaps we need a Charity Appeal.
D
What, to raise money for their expenses or raise money to buy them one-way tickets back to their constituencies?
“Yesterday, you announced new legislation to ’sharpen the teeth’ of the Commons parliamentary standards watchdog, ”
Then why the blazes did you oust the very person who was trying to do just that 7 years ago?
LFAT,
I don’t know how much longer I can keep reading both this and the BoM blog.
Not for any lack of quality, but my sanity is beginning to be seriously affected by the actions of our so called leaders.
Election please, followed by treason trials for the majority of this corrupt Labour ‘government’.
~Former Labour Supporter~
PS, They’re starting to make Mugabe seem like a wise and benevolent ruler.
PG, a very very very very good question.
FLS, not sure whether to apologise or thank you!
They should both be mandatory reading!
I’ll just keep taking the pills
FLS – if you find pills that work, that can blot out the horrors of the last 6 dregsy months of this turgid mob shuffling gracelessly off the gangplank, let me know what they are!
Otherwise I’d suggest the pills that could work would be cyanide capsules delivered to the Cabinet with a frugal glass of tap water!
I wish that every time a Labour spokesperson comes on to the airwaves, the interviewer puts it directly to them that the whole lack of esteem which politicians find themselves held in, directly leads back to the disregard in which they have held parliament and its traditions. (Jill Pay as the Sergeant under speaker Martin, tell most of the story right there doesn’t it).
Then they should go on to hound that spokesperson for the vicious and disgusting campaign which was launched against Elizabeth Filkin.
I sometimes wonder if the Telegraph has missed the point in all its self aggrandising coverage.
Shaun – now thinking i’m not not sure if I can find pills strong enough, after you reminded me we have another 6 months of this, but i’d be willing to bypass the treason trial and move straight to implementation of your second idea!
Could Harriet appear even vaguely competent?