The Spectator's Notes

4 July 2009

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

Except for the great William Rees-Mogg, no commentator seems to have noticed that Gordon Brown’s Bill to ‘clean up politics’ is about to remove the liberty of Parliament. ‘Res ipsa loquitur’ is the old legal tag: ‘the thing itself speaks’. Under the new Bill, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is created. When IPSA speaks, its word will be law. It will tell Parliament what its allowances will be and MPs will not be allowed to vote this down. As David Heathcoat-Amory said in the debate in the Commons on Monday, it is ‘the final achievement of the quango state’ to create a quango which will tell Parliament what to do. So the people we have elected to make our laws will be ruled by people no one has elected.

The Clerk of the House of Commons, Malcolm Jack, found himself last week reluctantly speaking up against the Bill’s constitutional impropriety. The Leader of the House, Harriet Harman, said that ‘the issue of parliamentary privilege is not an issue in [the] Bill’. But Mr Jack thought otherwise. He wrote to the Standards Committee on Friday to say that the Parliamentary Standards Bill would take away freedom of speech in Parliament. Mr Jack said that ‘the words of Members’ spoken in the House could, under this Bill, ‘be admitted as evidence in criminal proceedings’. So could evidence given by non-parliamentary witnesses to Commons committees, and advice given to MPs by Commons officials. This change is being introduced in the name of enforcing high standards, but its effect, said Mr Jack, will be to ‘chill’ parliamentary debate. Article IX of the Bill of Rights protects ‘proceedings’ in Parliament from legal assault. It does so because it has until now been understood that, without such privilege for Parliament, other bodies — above all, the executive — could frighten MPs into biting their lips, and punish them if they fail to do so. Yet Clause 10 of this Bill specifically overrides the Bill of Rights. IPSA loquitur, and liberty falls silent.

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ian skidmore

July 2nd, 2009 12:39pm Report this comment

If only the bulls would vote to ban Gervais and Ross

Oxon

July 2nd, 2009 5:17pm Report this comment

Why not ban bullfighting? I tell you what, have the prat in the fancy garb go in without a weapon and see if he can last 10 minutes (no leaping out the boundary allowed), and at the end the man proves some survival skills and the bull is allowed to survive.

Helen

July 4th, 2009 10:02am Report this comment

I kind of agree with Oxon. I reckon they ought to take up the ancient Cretan idea of Bull dancing; that would be worth watching. People pitting their strength and agility against the bull. And they and the bull get to live afterwards (if they're fast enough). Were I twenty years younger I'd have a go.

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