No sooner did parliament return than it was embroiled in the latest instalment of the expenses saga. The scandal is, by now, wearily familiar — but it has lost none of its capacity to shock. It is understandable that MPs feel aggrieved by the retrospective rules applied by Sir Thomas Legg on how much can be claimed for cleaners and gardeners. But arbitrary justice is better than none. The House of Commons has squandered its moral authority, and having honourable members forced to repay a little taxpayers’ money is the least of it. This week, we learned that Damian Green’s now notorious arrest was at the behest of a Cabinet Office official who claimed — dubiously — that the leaks posed a ‘considerable damage to national security’. That the government invokes such powers is bad enough. That a civil servant thinks he can order police to arrest an opposition politician is worse. That the police actually comply is deplorable. And that Speaker Michael Martin agreed to the police search of Mr Green’s parliamentary office is unforgiveable. Yet Martin was not just forgiven but this week draped in ermine and sent to the Lords.
The outrage over the Damian Green affair was not widely shared by the public. The idea of parliament occupying a sacred place in the constitution is alien to the average voter, who views the institution with contempt. Just 19 per cent of the public think parliament is ‘working’, according to the Hansard Society, and only 24 per cent say they ‘trust’ it, according to a recent Europe-wide survey which showed Westminster to be one of the least trusted legislatures on the continent.
The contempt is, worryingly, shared not just by the police but by the judiciary. Carter Ruck, the law firm, succeeded this week in preventing a British newspaper reporting what was being raised in parliament. The gag may have been lifted within hours, but that it was granted at all points to the casual disregard with which our elected representatives and their institutions are now held.
It is becoming fashionable to say that this will soon change, given that the next election will bring a transfusion of new blood larger than that which followed the Great Reform Act of 1832. This is technically true — but moats and duck houses are not the sole cause of parliament’s woes. The stature of parliament had collapsed long before the Daily Telegraph acquired the computer disc containing the details of MPs’ expenses. Turnout in British elections has been falling for years. The appeal of the main political parties is collapsing and fringe groups like the British National Party are quickly gathering strength. Parliament is held in contempt now because it has never mattered less, having signed away much of its powers to Brussels and the Celtic fringe. It is tempting to blame Labour for the ills of the last 12 years, but the abject failure of parliamentary scrutiny is all too large a factor. Where was the Treasury Select Committee while the Bank of England was spewing out dangerously underpriced credit? If the Tory leadership was dysfunctional for so long, then where were the backbenchers? Keeping their heads down and their expenses up. For every Frank Field there seem to be three Nicholas Wintertons.
The sheer stench of sleaze does tend to overpower the stories of the genuinely inspirational men and women who work in Westminster: inquisitors, campaigners and game-changers. This magazine will honour them next month in our Parliamentarian of the Year awards. But overall, representative democracy in Britain remains in crisis — and the Tories must realise that this will not change once the men with the blue rosettes are running the system. A new Great Reform Act is long overdue.
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