Leading article: The pursuit of MPs is becoming a witch-hunt
The abuse of expenses is serious, but we need a sense of perspective
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
Another week of revelations of MPs' expenses, another seven days of humiliation for the mother of parliaments. A welter of juicy details involving ornamental duck houses and tree consultants has tumbled forth to join what we already know about massage chairs, moats and bathplugs. The scandal has claimed the scalp of Michael Martin, who becomes the first House of Commons Speaker in three centuries to be ejected from office.
Yet, after a fortnight of bloodshed on the green benches of Westminster, the public reaction to this matter is in danger of getting out of hand. The tone of the debate has become hysterical. What began as a justified critique of MPs' behaviour has degenerated into crude bullying. And the row is now in danger of eroding the democratic health of the nation.
No one disputes that The Daily Telegraph had a marvellous story on its hands when it acquired details of every expense claim made by MPs going back four years. And the newspaper had every right to expose questionable conduct from our parliamentarians. Our democracy functions best when our politicians are kept under close scrutiny by the media. Yet the manner in which this newspaper has been delivering these revelations, day after day, is in danger of doing more harm than good to our body politic.
A drawn-out scandal
The damage the drawn-out nature of the scandal is inflicting in Westminster should not be underestimated. It is right that Mr Martin announced his resignation this week. The Speaker had been at the forefront of efforts to prevent the disclosure of MPs' expenses and was far too compromised a figure to preside over the reforms the Commons so evidently needs.
But elsewhere the impact of the scandal has been far from just. Party leaders have been panicked into imposing summary justice on those MPs fingered by The Daily Telegraph. Worse, as Lord Tebbit pointed out yesterday, there is a perception that the Labour and Tory leaderships are protecting their allies, while throwing the rest to the wolves.
The result is that some of the guilty appear to have been let off the hook, while others have been unfairly punished. The events of recent weeks have left many decent MPs disillusioned with politics. In our rush to shame those MPs who have raided the public purse, we risk demoralising the majority who have done nothing wrong. Let us be clear. Where fraud has been committed it should be met with the full force of the law. And the expenses padding practised by many other MPs have, without a doubt, been deplorable. A number of MPs have treated expenses as allowances, to be claimed in any way possible, rather than funds to help them to carry out their parliamentary duties. But there is a big difference between fraud and the milking of a laxly policed expenses system. Claiming for a mortgage that does not exist cannot reasonably be put in the same category of offence as kitting out a second home with furniture from John Lewis.
Not only unjust, but corrosive
The problem is that the public – along with many in the media – is reacting as if all expense claims are indicative of dishonesty. This is not only unjust, but corrosive. If we expect MPs to divide their work between two distant parts of the country, we have to pay for them to do it. Two reasonable people might disagree about how it should be constituted, but some residential allowance system is necessary. Equally, if we expect MPs to do their job of representing their constituents and holding the Government to account, they need to be given public resources to employ researchers and staff. This costs money. Without these allowances only the independently wealthy will be able to afford to enter Parliament. Those who howl about the corruption of the present system should consider the desirability of returning to the days when politics was the exclusive preserve of the wealthy.
Some have identified a silver lining in this affair: at least the public is now "engaged" in politics. This is naive. The public is engaged with the pillorying of MPs. A public flogging will always attract an audience. But this is not the same as being engaged with politics. MPs' gardening arrangements have certainly fired the public's imagination, but who is debating the issues that are the substance of politics? In fact, the expenses row is squeezing out any debate about serious and pressing issues such as the Government's policies to combat the recession and efforts to curtail runaway climate change.
The hysteria we are witnessing is, in fact, a symptom of the disconnection many feel from the political process. The plans announced by the various party leaders for cleaning up the MPs expenses system – such as preventing second home "flipping" and limiting the range of expenses that can be claimed for – are generally sensible. But the public has regarded this as an exercise in shutting the stable door after the horse's departure. It carries little credibility among those who feel that the political classes will always be a law unto themselves.
Clearly, there remains a considerable job of rebuilding trust in Parliament and our political system. Proponents of constitutional reform have been pressing their case in recent days, urging reform of the House of Lords, a new Bill of Rights and, somewhat counterintuitively, more powers for MPs. Other ideas also worth exploring are fixed-term Parliaments and two term limits for Prime Ministers. But we need to think carefully about the roots of this crisis when considering what reforms are needed. One of the lessons of the past decade is that large majorities tend to encourage a feeling of entitlement among MPs. Electoral reform would help to dispel this mentality; a more proportional voting system would tend to result in tighter Parliaments.
Furthermore, one of the striking features of the public response to this crisis is the vocal support for those who have indicated their willingness to stand as independent candidates at the next election. There is a palpable sense of dissatisfaction with the present choice on offer, a feeling from the public that its ability to register its voice is impeded. A more proportional voting system would relieve some of this pressure. Interestingly, the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, mentioned the 1998 Jenkins review on electoral reform in an interview with this newspaper earlier this week as something that could reconnect politics with the public.
The attraction of the Jenkins proposals is that they would retain the constituency link for MPs while also making the composition of the Commons more representative of how the public votes. With the backing of thoughtful politicians such as Mr Johnson, the Jenkins plan might yet have its day.
The reckoning we need
But we have to realistic. An overhaul of the voting system is not going to be implemented in the coming months, however desirable that would be. And in the absence of such a reform, a general election, in which the public can vote out those MPs who it feels have betrayed its trust, is the next best thing.
While we wait for that reckoning, we ought, collectively, to take a deep breath and rediscover a sense of perspective on recent revelations. Those MPs that have milked the expenses system have, without question, behaved appallingly. But by overreacting to what has taken place, we risk doing our democratic system a double disservice.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
Voters are not 'hysterical', we are genuinely angry that many of those to whom we delegate responsibility for the nation's stability and future are not only incompetent but greedy and duplicitous. We are tired of hearing, "I did it because it was the right thing to do" and we certainly don't want to hear that old standby, "I think it's time we drew a line under this, lessons have been learned, now we need to put it behind us and move on." It won't work any more. What we desperately want and need is a zero-bullshit team, a coalition if necessary, who will drop party lines, talk in plain English and get back to genuine governance where the public are the beneficiaries, not a perceived enemy.
In this case, the public, having lost jobs, businesses, homes, savings and pensions in the economic crisis are deemed to be 'hysterical' because they dared to hold MPs accountable to their own rules and standards, 'The Green Book" and the MP's "Code of Conduct"
They public dared to want to see the law of the land applied equally, to all citizens, and that includes MP's. If they have committed an offence, why should they not be subject to a police or Revenue inspection?
Does anyone recall the "If you've got nothing to fear, then you have nothing to hide" line bought out as our civil liberties were stripped from us?
How sad that this newspaper has adopted the 'move on, it's all over' approach to the current situation.
The only way we will ever get a proper democracy is by removing the MPs and starting again. Like Mark Anthony, we come not to praise MPs, but to bury them. Only that way can we be thoroughly cleansed, and only that way can we begin to build the democracy that we have so far never had.
Over the last 150 years the only thing not to have modernised and improved is Parliament. It is archaic, tribal, false, undemocratic, corrupt and in need of total change. Start by banning tribalism (political parties) and support a system of open debate.
I'd like to see the focus switch to the worse corruption known as the revolving door.
They said that this expenses system had been in place since the 1960's and that 'we all knew about it - including the media'. So we let them get away with it for 50 years. However, since 1997, they (MPs and Government) have exploited us, the taxpayer and started a war on our individual liberty, our individual rights and our privacy in complete contravention of what we want. So it is only fair and proper that they lose all their earlier 'rights' of their allowances/expenses and all their rights to privacy.
The pursuit of fairness between the governors and the governed must never stop, as this is the only way the MPs will understand the bigger picture.
There has been no more mention of the corporate sector in recent weeks and the trillions of pounds that went down the plug hole with the greed and incompetence that accompanied it.
The Telegraph is not interested in the common good but in creating a smoke screen for their own kind as well as obviously selling more papers.
Meanwhile our Parliament of Parliaments is slowly being eroded and looks like it will be taken over by extreme elements whose mortally and democratic principles is highly questionable.
The Telegraph have whipped up the populace and created a monster that could erode the very fabric of our democratic society.
So it isn't just about expenses is it ? :-)
AT LAST THE TRUTH IS COMING OUT
PEOPLE ARE SEEING WHAT IT'S ABOUT
INDEPENDENT IS THE WAY TO GO
GREED AND CORRUPTION IS OUR FOE
VOTE OUT EVERY SINGLE MP
AND BRITAIN WILL CHANGE AS YOU WILL SEE
WE NEED HONESTY TO UK REIGN
AND MAKE BRITAIN PROUD AND SAFE AGAIN
The anger we are directing at them is a common psychological trick the brain plays on itself when its owner is guilty of something, find the same in others, particularly authority figures and blame them for it.
Public, we need to improve ourselves too, we are the seeds of the politicians and the rich we criticise.
Just recently I read a report that the amount of personal debt we owe as a whole is still rising and is above the GBP 8 Billion mark, now whose fault is that?
Of course we can always blame others or the rules, or the banks, or circumstance, they make me do it...
So please, yes indeed a sense of perspective is sorely needed...
I acknowledge the Independent for this article who acts as a counter-poise for some of the irresponsible and very worrying reporting of other tabloid newspapers, such as Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph (yes I count Telegraph as a g u t t e r newspaper now).
Are you speaking as a psychologist? No? Then perhaps you would accept a more plausible explanation from one who has a psychology degree?
Try this time-honoured observation: When people are consistently denigrated, disempowered and manipulated by arrogant leaders who impose and intimidate their wishes on them, they try to make their feelings heard. If this fails and they are further subjected to fear and intimidation, they tend to fall into a state of "learned helplessness". During this phase they become quiet, and either walk away or hide. They feel lost and depressed.
However, if they are then afforded the opportunity to bring their oppressors to a reckoning, they rediscover their anger, and fight strongly for their once-lost rights. In the process, much anger over other injuries and insults can also surface, which I believe is what this "witch-hunt" article is hinting at without quite having the gumption to admit.
The argument seems to hinge on why the public is so angry on "mere" expenses. A floating duck house, for God's sake? Why should that matter? Do I really care about a bath plug? Yes I do, because they tried to HIDE it all - by trying to alter a fair law, like it was none of our business, when they knew WE had paid for it all, in more ways than one. The anger is not guilt, nabil, it is rage.
If you want to see such processes in other times, look at the post-Vichy France, or the toppling of Bulgaria's Ceauşescu, or any other time when the forces of arrogance, oppression and the aggregation of too much power finally ran out of excuses.
Within the public anger is a true, real and timely democratic process, that, if allowed to flow naturally, will wash many nasty, corrupt, despotic and secretive poisons out of these creaky Aegean stables. And then, when this is done, we have to be mature, wise and forward-thinking, to make the best of a time of transition. That is the task - and risk - of the electorate, to be the change they want to see.
Fools if you think this is about expenses alone. And even more foolish to try to claim that, after years of being gagged by spin and over three thousand new ways to be criminalised, the public has no right to be incensed by this duplicity.
We don't get the leaders we deserve: that's the whole problem! We are not the seeds of the politicians (as you claim) - the system does not represent us as it should, and this has been amply shown. We the people have been seen as the problem, to be managed, criminalised, avoided. Money as God gives leaves us nothing but debt, fear and greed.
Time for change. How many ways to explain until they get it? Time's running out.
As for the issue of an election, I would far rather wait for all the information about every MP to be published and fully investigated. All the information will be in the public domain and voters can access them once the hysteria has calmed down. Another advantage of waiting is that the current Parliament know how raw this issue is and will be far keener to get on and reform the current system. Any new Government would feel once elected that the election has given them enough credibility, so any major reforms can be kicked into the long grass and ignored.
Perhaps not, however a referundum could be included at the next general election that provided the voters with options to choose from that they would like to see implemented as reform measures. With all three main parties agreeing to abide by the majority public vote. Understand that failure to implement the proposed changes would not be an option for the MP's that win.
Announcing this would go a long way to diffusing the current anger and it would ensure that just about every single eligible UK citizen voted in the next general election.
As others have pointed out. The justified anger at the moment is not just about expenses. The expenses scandal has just been the last straw for a general public whose views have been marginalized and downright ignored by government for decades.
This cannot just be swept under the carpet. The public needs to believe that real change is going to take place and more importantly, that our vote actually counts for something.
And you certainly won't engage voting without asking what we want, either! I think people are heartily sick of the present horse and pony show. And we know what UK Gov plc is afraid of: the BNP. So they had better get it right!
Load of tosh! If the DT had released ithe story all on one day it would have been forgotten within a week. We would not have had the time to digest the details or the scale of MPs honest mistakes. Rather than moaning about witch hunts, the Independent should be demanding to on what basis the miscreant claimers are being allowed to step down at the next election - and can keep their pensions -rather than being sacked from their jobs immediately, as would happen to anyone of the public who fiddles their expense claims.
They are trying to create a passive malleable society of docile and supine Sheep, if the people vote Labour back in at the next election, this country will turn into a Police State.
So keep it up Telegraph, keep showing us what these bastards have been up to and have tried so desperately to hide.
Or is its real desire simply that the lid be put on, so that business may resume as usual...with, of course, a few symbolic heads already gone.
It is amusing though tiring, to watch the "watchdog press" turn from bark to whimper, as soon as the citadel of corruption appears likely to be well and truly stormed by the nasty commoners. Ah, a sigh for the pre-revelation days, when matters were tidy, moats cleaned, and...the faux liberal press spared from having to merely echo the revelations of their competitors. Hmm?
Yes they have had to sift through a lot of raw data, that takes time and requires skill so, it was never going to be a one day scoop and I am a Telegraph reader but something caught my eye and I followed it through but it started with the Andrew Mackay saga. This man and his MP wife should certainly be kicked on the grounds of being totally thick, they cannot even fiddle their expenses properly !
I then looked at the Bill Wiggin saga and this is where it all started to unravel because what he did was put the wrong address on his claim form now whilst stupid he certainly was not claiming for a phantom mortgage and even the DT admitted that he had to show the Fees Office the mortgage paperwork for the London flat he was claiming for. But the DT kept banging on about this as if it were a big story.
Personally I am all for naming, shaming and if appropriate, prosecute people but, I also want to see some fairness applied and common decency, this trial by the media is fundamentally wrong. As many people have already commented, the public uproar is not just about expenses, that is what lit the fuse. The sight of the ever chippy and smug Blears caught with her hand in the till is too delicious a moment to have missed. Yes we are angry about a whole range of things to do with our personal economic prospects and our grandchildren s too , these Labour Governments have turned out to be the "Lords of Misrule".
But the point is now made and the first thing we need is a proper and formal examination of this expenses data, if necessary by the Police, we don't want a lynch mob mentality, we want due process and a cool and public debate about the changes that need to be made to the way Parliament works so that it works better for us. There is a very good Charles Moore article in today's Telegraph, I don't entirely agree with him either but it is time to move forward.
This Big Brother,tax-grabbing,oppressive,turning-j
The expenses scandal is merely the catylist which made the public's rumbling volcano finally blow its top!
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla
Given that we are on the verge of national bankruptcy, it looks like there will be nobody with any credibility to defend the status quo.
Hopefully when the people sweep away this corrupt regime they will choose freedom and not tyranny, but we'll soon find out.
It is the manner in which the 'expenses' rules were interpreted so freely that irks Joe Public. They are meant to cover the costs involved with accommodation whilst attending Parliament. Just how does a duck island and pruning trees constitute a reasonable expense. Theses people are thieves, pure and simple. Hunt them and do what we do best with witches!
The letters columns of newspapers, the television programmes such as Newsnight or Question Time do not show mob rule, rather a measured, often dignified, response to the revelations about their elected representatives.
Their may very well be evidence of anger, disgust or frustration, but the general tone is not a cry for 'rough justice' but for MP's to be held to account in the proper fashion. This means the rule of law and their own Green Book and Code of Conduct.
Bankers misjudged the public mood, politicians came next, is is now the turn of the press to not "get it"?
The press have not covered themselves in glory over the last decade, these very revelations did not result from journalistic work but a theft of confidential information and its subsequent sale to The Daily Telegraph. The press could be the next group to fall into disfavour with the public?
The press has a very important job during times of repression and change, and cosying up to the establishment is a dereliction of their duty. Sorry to tell you your job, folks, but if you hear and see the responses of the public - which are made clearly and forthrightly - how can you misunderstand what is being said?
Perhaps you should allow a group of citizens to actually articulate their opinions as articles in your newspaper? That may be more balanced reporting than to have professional hacks opining about "the public mood". No offence, and I appreciate what work has been (belatedly) by your paper, but it would stand the paper in greater credit than their present pronouncement.
Think it over, "Independent" newspaper staff. It could work well.