Denis MacShane: A Parliament of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich
Kelly means we’ll never have MPs like John Smith or Ken Clarke again
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Independent Minds
Our offshore newspaper proprietors have won. Parliament will now be of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. For the millionaires in David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet there is nothing to fear from the Kelly proposals. They can afford homes in London and their constituencies and the chance to see their children grew up, which Kelly now denies to those who have only a parliamentary salary to live on.
Evelyn Waugh famously complained that it was no fun living under a Tory government as they never turned the clock back on anything. He should be alive now as Kelly takes us back to a Commons in which private wealth is needed if a normal family life is to be sustained for an MP.
Of course, MPs will adjust. The supreme privilege and, if truth be told, the high pleasure of being an MP will continue to attract men and women of calibre. If Labour MPs have to stay in boarding houses while Tory MPs retire to their Notting Hill homes, so be it. In his entertaining memoirs, Paddy Ashdown recalls sharing his office as a new MP with a fellow Liberal from Cornwall. Captain Paddy convened breakfast meetings only to find his colleague was still in his sleeping bag on the floor as there was no allowance then to live in London.
Now all MPs have their own office so, with a bit of juggling of chair cushions, it should be possible to make a bed. There are three showers and one bath for 650 MPs, so things might get a bit pongy in the chamber but if that assuages Kelly, so be it.
Other changes will follow. The report is deeply misogynist with its demand that women MPs of all ages who live within a 60-minute train journey from London should leave the Commons after late-night votes to travel home to arrive at one in the morning to unstaffed, unlit stations on a cold night in November. Thanks, Sir Christopher.
Of course, that problem can be solved by the political parties making sure that all our Home Counties MPs are men. Evelyn Waugh wasn't keen on women politicians either, but it has taken one of the finest products of Whitehall to tell women that they really shouldn't bother thinking of a parliamentary career.
The Whitehall mandarin mentality of the Kelly recommendation is on display in his insistence that MPs' staff should stop political activity. If that means David Cameron's and Nick Clegg's employees cease putting out partisan press releases attacking Gordon Brown I suppose I should welcome Kelly. Actually I will be sorry to see disappear the thousands of earnest young men and women clogging up the cafeterias of the Commons as they plot and plan politics for their MP bosses. What Whitehall wants is politics-free politicians, and thanks to the stupidity and cupidity of some MPs who abused the allowances and expenses system, we are well on our way to achieving this.
Until 30 years ago, it was accepted that MPs would be London-based and, as with Denis Healey or Keith Joseph, would just make occasional fleeting visits to their constituencies. Something changed, and from 1980 onwards it became impossible to be selected as an MP without having a home in the constituency as well as in London.
In the 19th and much of the 20th century, the Commons met only six months a year. Now we expect our MPs to do a five-day week and be in their constituencies most weekends, and constituents want instant replies to their emails 365 days a year.
Kelly – or rather the mass panic of party leaderships trying to outbid each other in sanctimoniousness – will make it impossible for a John Smith or a Ken Clarke to be both a QC and and MP. Farewell to future Roy Hattersleys making a handsome living as a journalist while also being a stellar Labour politician. No more the likes of Roy Jenkins and Michael Heseltine, whose outside earnings dwarfed their MP's pay.
For centuries, British citizens have chosen highly individual men and women to represent them in Parliament. Unlike civil servants or the professional classes, MPs have not been obliged to fit into a mould decided from above. Some are good, a few are great, others are sad, mad, bad and boring or dangerous to know. That is the glory of the Commons.
For five years, an MP is accountable to his or her constituents and to no one else. Whips may bully. The ambitious may toe the line. But there are plenty of MPs who can plough their own furrows and speak their own minds. Now, thanks to Kelly, Legg, and a new standards body which will control much of what MPs can say and do and write, we are inventing a new Parliament.
Will it be a better, purer Commons firmly under control thanks to new rules and supervisory bodies? We shall see.
Denis MacShane is the Labour MP for Rotherham
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Comments
Denis McShame should be in jail.
125,000 claimed for a broken-down garage, which he claimed was his "office"??
Why does the Indy give this revolting crook column-space???
What Mr McShane is saying in effect is: For goodness sake don't make we MPs live like we make the rest of you live.
Only if the whole damn lot of you are replaced by people who actually make policies for the people they are elected to represent.
Your whining article about how tough it will be for MP's not born with a silver spoon in thier mouth is a disgrace. You're not in the job for expenses or second homes, and just as we are told to accept our hard earned money is to be used to prop up lazy good for nothing banks, you need to accept that being an MP has a few hardships involved. As you so smugly say yourself "Of course, MPs will adjust. The supreme privilege and, if truth be told, the high pleasure of being an MP will continue to attract men and women of calibre." Be a man of calibre then, shut up and get on with the job or give it to someone who can.
I recall your last piece on there got a less that rapturous reception from the bloggers.
One seemed to think articles for The Guardian got in the way of your constituency duties, but I could not possibly know the truth of that.
But I do wonder how many people in Rotherham have turned to the BNP in despair, now that New Labour is the party of the rich, just like the other bunch across the floor of the house.
Quite a few, as in neighbouring Barnsley. And it's entirely the Labour party's fault.
If you don't like the fact that your mortgage payments have been taken away (though you'll still get rent I see) then you brought it on yourselves when people started using the system to make a profit for themselves with the help of the public purse or claimed for phantom mortgages.
If you don't like the fact that there's no allowance if you live an hour from parliament, you brought that on yourselves when Ministers began claiming for homes 3 miles from parliament when they only lived 12 miles away in the first place.
If you don't like the fact that there's to be a ban on employing family members, you brought it on yourselves when tens of thousands of pounds was paid out to relatives for non-existent work.
Most of you should count yourselves lucky you're not being charged with fraud. Frankly, it's only the fact that you wrote the rules yourselves that has spared you. Even then, many of you managed to completely and utterly abuse the 'spirit' if not the letter of those rules. While some MPs may be possessed of shreds of honesty and integrity that so many appear to lack, it has been proven that you cannot be trusted with any set of rules which involves fuzzy grey areas and you need it written in stark black and white. The idea that an MPs word is their bond has proved to be utterly hollow.
Although it's galling to think we can't get rid of any of you, seemingly no matter that you do (Derek Conway is still there after all) I am relieved that many of you will be gone just over 6 months from now (claiming the relocation allowance that you would not have been entitled to had you fallen on your swords and triggered a by-election). Still, it will be scant relief as I have little faith that the replacements will prove themselves an improvement in the long run...
You've tried patronising the less well off by attacking the rich on more than one occasion recently and no one has bought it. You must think that everyone who reads your desperate articles sweep floors for a living and would like nothing more than to see 'The Toffs' swinging from lamposts. But times have changed Den, even those of with modest incomes won't be taken in by your hypocrisy.
'For centuries, British citizens have chosen highly individual men and women to represent them in Parliament' A day or two after the European Convention irreversibly swindles its way into our lives cutting British citizens off from its rulers you have to take the piss don't you.
And then, having boosted their power and their egos, you too were arrogant enough to make yourselves sitting targets and think that it wouldn't come out, or that if it did, you'd still be untouchable - even after you passed the FOI Act.
Some of your analysis may be accurate, and some of your predictions may come to pass. There may well be negative consequences, as you warn.
But you and your colleagues are solely responsible for the situation which you're now in. The words of the appalling Thatcher boom back at you lot, Tory and Labour alike, from past years: "There Is No Alternative" ... !
McShane doesn't seem to mind letting the facts getting in the way of this hysterical rant. He waffle on about sleeping on office floors, ignoring the fact that most MPs will be allowed to rent homes in London or get hotel rooms on expenses.
As for arriving at unmanned stations in the early morning (something the rest of us have to risk) - why doesn't he try living in the 21st century?
Instead of filling their mornings sitting in on meetings, why not start the parliamentary day at 9am, and finish at a reasonable hour. Local MPs can then make their way home, and use tele and video conferencing for the meetings.
Believe me, once they are using their own time, these meetings will become very brief, very quickly
I'm sure there are a few male MPs with the same reservation; luckily enough being in parliment they are actually in a position to do something about safety on our streets.
I suggest you do the same as the rest of us and stick your hand in your pocket and get a taxi; how you get to and from work is your problem just as how I get to work is mine; there isn't a person in this country (outside of westminister) that doesn't have a clause in their contract about doing the hours the job requires.
Name one ?
It attracts mostly clowns, failed lawyers and crooks,(the crooks have their own agendas normally).
Decent people do not want to do it.
There are three kinds of people in this world.
1.People with a lot of skill and no ambition.
2.People with a lot of ambition and no skill.
3.People with a lot of skill and a lot of ambition ,(rare).
Most politicos are in the No. 2 group ,(note the use of, "No 2").
You 've been peddling this line about the impending death of parliamentary accountability now, with no sense of irony for weeks.
"The ambitious may toe the line. But there are plenty of MPs who can plough their own furrows and speak their own minds."
Denis, you really are truly Shameless. Given that your voting record shows you voted most in common with two successive PMs (99.5% in common with Gordon Brown and 95.5% in common with Blair), the only furrow you have been ploughing in your Parliamentary career was up the nether parts of said Primeministers. Your reference to Lincolns Gettysburg address beggars belief: Nulabors executive record is that of governing by the party leadership, for the party leadership and by the party leadership.
"Our offshore newspaper proprietors have won. Parliament will now be of the rich, by the rich, for the rich."
Given that you and your party have been fawning over Murdoch for over a decade that’s a bit rich in itself. Speaking of rich, it was your government that continued Thatcherite deregulation of the City and encouraged the public to keep spending to support retail when that sector stuttered - all the way to the point of a national private debt of over a trillion sterling now, that roughly equates to our sovereign debt. After the crash, you excused it on the following basis in another of your masterly agitprops: it was all the FSAs fault and MPs can't do maths. A bit too much like "the dog ate my homework sir" for me. I think the public have managed to grasp that MPs can't do maths from the Kredit Krunch and the mess the economy is now in, but as MPs still run the country, via the executive, I strongly recommend they do gain some degree of numeracy quickly before we suffer another casino caused recession. And its your FSA by the way; Nulabor set the FSA up as regulator of the banking sector - including the risk taking banks.
As your Parliamentary record shows an all the independence of a tapeworm, we suspect an ulterior motive because conscience and holding the executive to account never bothered you when voting so strongly against inquiries into Iraq for example.
The real problem , Denis, is you still don't get it and you are not alone in the political class, you are in fact in a large majority. The issue is not expenses. They are merely a touchstone issue that is focussing public discontent through the prism of a global financial crisis, in which far more members of the public are suffering far more, financially, than you and the rest of the political elite are. That's why the expenses issue inflames. But what people are angry about is nearly three decades now of increasingly authoritarian government under two different parties, with executive hubris leading to removal of more and more accountability to the point where Parliament no longer holds the executive to proper account. That failure of accountability has led to a failure of political representation which is undermining our democracy. Your government has gone as far as to undermine habeus corpus: your argument was a Hobbesian one for surrender of liberty to minimise threat to life. We had that debate four centuries ago and Locke won; before that we had a civil war and displaced a king to establish the principle that authority is not above the law. Did you reflect on that when you voted against an inquiry into Iraq?
We have a crisis in our democracy and a crisis of political representation, to which the corrosive agents of spin and erosion of check and balance were deliberately added by politicians - by your professional class. How well fares accountability and thereafter democracy when politicians trade more in lie than truth? Our democracy is in crisis because it needs not just restoration, but extension, of democratic prnciples including accountability. Which is why, given your voting record and the stalking horse of accountability you use to defer public outrage away from being held to account, is why your defence of the political class is so cynical.
If you want to reinvigorate our political system and restore respect for the political class, I recommend Denis,that you and the rest of your profession pay heed to and strengthen the following:
Equality, Liberty, Justice , Democracy.
Just how much sympathy do you think MPs deserve? Millions of people in this country earn a fraction of your salary and endure much worse working and travelling conditions than any MP, either now or in the future. Do you not realise that in the view of much of the population of this country £67K plus expenses makes you rich?
I don't mind paying reasonable expenses for MPs, but I don't see why you lot think you deserve more than anybody else. Some of you, from all parties, have milked the system to your advantage and rigged your conditions such that they are the envy of any other public servant (I am one) and many private employees, and yet now that you have collectively been caught out you are making the sort of excuse for which any convicted benefit fraudster would be reviled. You stand shoulder to Shoulder with Alan Duncan.
How many times do we have to say to MPs that you just don't get it, do you? If you think Kelly is tough, just think yourself lucky. You said yourself that an MP is accountable to his/her constituents, but if they were accountable to constituents for their past expenses, many of you would all be in serious trouble.
We want MPs with brains and integrity. As a group you fail on both tests because you knew this abuse went on, but none of you stopped it.
We live in the country that you lot create, so now you lot can live in the mess that you created for yourselves. Or at least you may have to for a couple of years until you give yourselves the huge payrise that you all think you deserve.
You have no idea.