Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): They don't get it, do they? The chairman of the committee that punished Derek Conway MP for flagrant embezzlement of public funds tells us that being being suspended for a few days from the Commons and being required to repay a portion of the misused cash is a harsher punishment than it seems. Cronies complain that he is the victim of a 'witch-hunt'. And the Speaker, who hasn't a stainless record himself, announces that he is setting up an inquiry into the employment by MPs of family members by the Commons estimates commitee - a very narrow response to wider public concerns and a patent move to retain MPs' flawed system of self-regulation of their conduct.
Who knows, the 19th century club ethic built on trust of 'honourable' and 'right honourable' members might or might not have worked then, but it is is plainly obsolete and ineffective in a Parliament of professional politicians. Modern democracy demands transparency and MPs will sooner or later have to come to terms with that. The question is, will they do so before they do irreparable damage to public trust in them and politics in general. We are told that many MPs are very angry with Conway for his outrageous behaviour. I wonder how many of these same MPs were determined to preserve the self-regulation and loose rules that make it impossible properly to know how they spend the public money with which they are entrusted. I wonder how many were also very angry with Elizabeth Filkin, the first commissioner for MPs' standards, who was drummed out of her post for taking the new rule-book more seriously than many senior MPs and for exposing dubious Spanish practices. They can't have it both ways - they should bite the bullet and accept independent oversight of their conduct and precise rules on disclosure and receipts.
Way back in 1995, and then again in 2000, ICM asked the public how the rules governing MPs' conduct should be enforced. Broadly two thirds of people believed that the rules of conduct should be made law and supervised and overseen independently of Parliament by a special commission or the civil courts; and nearly a third on both occasions said that breaches of the rules should be made a criminal offence investigated by the police and punishable in the criminal courts. I thought then there was a case for allowing MPs to supervise the process. I don't now. Come in Inspector Knacker.
