Should MPs be given a free vote on Kelly’s reforms?
David Blackburn 5:52pm
No, was Harriet Harman’s answer. With a very peculiar turn of phrase, the Leader of the House said that MPs would “have their say” without having a free vote, which is perhaps a recognition that there will be much chuntering in the bar after the whipped vote.
With an eye on gentrification, Harman recently abolished ‘the stocks’ and invented the ‘Court of Public Opinion’. The public will, reasonably, be up in arms if freeloading MPs are seen to wriggle out of new proscriptions. Additionally, the argument that ‘normal employees do not control the terms of their employment, why should MPs?’ is powerful.
A free vote is a risk the government will not but should take, as should the other parties. A Politics Home poll of insiders finds that 73 per cent think MPs should be given a free vote. A free vote, a vote of conscience, gives the opportunity for MPs to justify their views to voters. This would offer voters a degree of post-expenses catharsis or a pretext to vote against their MP. Most MPs would be well advised to accept Sir Christopher Kelly’s proposals, but, as last week’s unravelling of the Legg Commission proved, MPs might have legitimate grievances. If Westminster, not party whips, is to be the author of its own reconstruction, then members must express their support or opposition before the Court of Public Opinion.
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Martin
October 29th, 2009 6:03pm Report this commentBit odd to focus this exclusively on harman and the government. Is it not up to the conservatives to decide whether they are having a free vote on their side as well?
2trueblue
October 29th, 2009 6:41pm Report this commentAt what point have the MPs earned the right to vote at all on their situation re their pay or expenses? I fail to find one, so NO.
We have spent years waiting for them to reveal their details, they turned up in their droves,(never seen the house so full) to vote against us having that right, they spent hundreds of thousands of our money fighting to prevent us from having the info.
They voted in a man as speaker who has refused to broaden the scope of the investigation to include the 'flippers', who bought houses on a rising market with our money and pocketed the uplift we had paid for. (there are multiple flippers, i.e. those who flipped several times!) Whether they paid tax or not I don't care, (that is a matter for the tax office), it wasn't theirs to have. Added to which they gave us no vote on the Lisbon Treaty.
What part of it do they not get? A white wash is not acceptable, a few paying small amounts is not what we are after. Clean it up and no holes barred.
Whinging that 'at the stroke of a pen' their situation has changed. Welcome to the real world. Accept that you have had a great run with our money and now you might join the real world. But I doubt it.
Barbara
October 29th, 2009 7:07pm Report this commentNo, they should not be allowed to make anymore decisions we have seen the way they use things for their own ends, they should all accept the new rules with good faith and be thankful the nation is not calling for blood, ie, prosecutions.
Michael Booth
October 29th, 2009 7:42pm Report this commentBarbara,
Well, I for one am calling for prosecutions. I listen to McNulty this afternoon apologising to the House, and though I thought there was a smidgen more contrition in his voice than there was in Jacqui Smith's mealy-mouthed mumblings it still boils down to this: one rule for politicians, one rule for the rest of us. Now that we have a Supreme Court, let's use it. Tumbrils, anyone?
jon dee
October 29th, 2009 9:23pm Report this commentBoth Smith and McNulty might well have held two fingers in the air as they went through their unapologetic pantomimes.
Smith's smugness and McNulty's sneering were clearly the messages, with the words issued only to satisfy Hansard.
They seem symptomatic of many MP's who look and sound like aggrieved children.
Accepting Kelly - I'll believe it when I see it.
Simon too
October 29th, 2009 9:25pm Report this commentMPs exist to scrutinise legislation and to hold the executive to account. If they accept a whipped vote, they will have turned their backs on their duty to scrutinise legislation, and they will have become the lackeys of the executive. The time will have come to abolish the House of Commons.
Already the executive has introduced a number of measures to corrupt the role of MPs and reduce them towards the displacement activity of constituency social workers. It is in the interests of any party leadership with a hope of forming an administration to have mere lobby fodder in the House of Commons. The executive and the opposition leadership will not, cannot, be the source of reform.
The employee point is fatuous. Whoever's employees they are, should they be employees, MPs are not and must not become the employees of the executive.
Reform must come from the MPs themselves. And if it is not good enough, there is a general election around the corner to heave them out.
Do we trust them? Think hard - just who can we trust more to deliver reform?
Any Colour but Brown
October 29th, 2009 9:32pm Report this commentShould a thief decide what constitutes theft?
2trueblue
October 30th, 2009 12:14am Report this commentMichael Booth, totally agree with you. Having watched Question Time, nothing will happen. They are all in it and there will a few sacrificial lambs prosecuted, at most. All MPs knew that the system was abused and were too weak to do anything.
When good men so nothing......
Smith was so barefaced tonight, Lemsip supportive, and can't remember who the tory was, but they are all culpubable. There will be no justice for the public and that maddens me as it makes me disengage from politics and politicians. They are not worth my vote.
Will no one stand up and tell it how it really is, and why is it they do not have to pay back the huge amounts that has been taken from the public purse?
The public are truely disillusioned by the lack of reality and honesty amongst our law makers.
Please will one of you do the right thing?
Amadeus Plonquer
October 30th, 2009 1:18am Report this commentG'day from down under. Can I please ask you poms to stop using the word 'flipper' to describe your crooked MPs. This is offensive to my pet dolphin and could be construed as 'fishist'.
Strewth.
TomTom
October 30th, 2009 3:41am Report this commentHow did Jacqui Smith survive her Inquisition on Question Time with its hostile audience and biased Chairman ? No doubt she was seated opposite the Establishment politicians and her answers interrupted.....I cannot find any depictions of the witch in the newspapers this morning after her burning.
Will journalists be telling us about the evil Labour Party and its pilfering of public funds encouraged by G Brown....McNulty and Smith etc etc ? Or are journalists all paid up members of the Larcenist Labour Party ?
Fergus Pickering
October 30th, 2009 4:01am Report this commentWell, it isn't QUITE one rule for politicians and another for the rest of us. It's really one law for the rich and another for the poor, and that's been true since Adam delved and Eve span. Are politicians worse than bankers? Could they possibly be? Isn't their cheating and lying quite small beer beside the likes of Fred Goodwin? And if you want REAL money you don't become an MP, do you now? Though heading up a few Quangos could do it. What is that Leather female worth?
Chris Rose
October 30th, 2009 6:16am Report this commentIf MPs permit the Government to deny them a vote, they will be forfeiting all right to respect. Parliament is supreme and must not permit itself to become to the poodle of the Executive.
Michael Booth
October 30th, 2009 9:04am Report this commentI watched Question Time too. actually, compared with the nick Griffin fiasco of the other week, I thought Jacqui Smith got off lightly. Expenses were the key issue but the elephant in the room (apart from Ms Smith) was the damage done to our constitution, legislature, judiciary, police service etc by New Labour and Common Purpose. What they've been doing is little short of treasonable - and I choose my word carefully.
Lola
October 30th, 2009 12:39pm Report this commentEveryone seems to be forgetting one crucial point. Parliament is Sovereign. That is the people are Sovereign. Theer can be no higher court than Parliament. No bureaucratic 'regulator' can be placed in authority over Parliament. Trouble is many MPs have forgottent this too. Or perhaps it has been whipped out of them under the Blair/Brown bureaucratisation of life. Give back the power to MPs and they will rise to meet it. Tell them that you trust them to do the 'right thing' and they will. For Parliament to accept a regulator offends me as a voter. I do not want any shabby little bureaucrat to have any authority at all over my reprsentatives, and by association me.
2trueblue
October 30th, 2009 7:15pm Report this commentLola, they have the power and have abused it. They were asked to do the right thing and they have not. So where does it go from here. They have behaved dishohourably, they have not lived up to the expectation of the norm, we can't all be wrong. But then we are only the people who put them there to represent us. They have forgotten that they are there by our gift.
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