Asking Members to consider repaying money paid out in expenses claims or have the Conservative whip withdrawn is one thing. The Member can do it or not and choose losing the whip or not.
Having the NEC set up a committee of the Labour Party before which Labour Members are required to 'appear' to answer 'accusations' on their expenses claims, and are told that they are to announce that they are standing down if those claims are ruled unacceptable is quite another.
The Evening Standard reports that 'Commons officials are to be asked by police for an explanation of the rules governing MPs' expenses. The move is part of an exercise to help Scotland Yard's fraud squad decide on whether to launch a full-scale inquiry.'
If Members have broken the law, and the step by the police seems to be very sensible in deciding whether there is something to be investigated, then any expense-taking that falls under the police remit is not for essentially private bodies to be judging or exacting responses. There are laws governing employment and its terms and conditions too which need to be observed. Many Members have stated that expenses claims were guided by the Commons Fees Office and, in the Labour Members' case, that they were encouraged to claim the maximum by Party whips. If claims are not illegal, which is what is being determined by the police, there can hardly be grounds for internal disciplinary action leading to loss of employment because they are politically inconvenient.
Labour acted late and badly over all this. And acted after putting pressure on every level of parliamentary politician up to and including the Speaker to prevent its revelation. When they were forced to act they acted wrongly. Deselection by central Party directive is very different from withdrawal of the whip.
Manipulating the press narrative towards discussion of Conservative behaviour that is politically unattractive does not hide the continued and typically authoritarian Labour behaviour towards those it clearly regards as its 'employees' that might well be offensive in more ways than one.
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5 comments:
it's all a sham anyway - they need to be *voted* out.
and when we have an election, they will be
So, if the MP's have that excuse to fall back on, regardless of the "Codes of Conduct".
I am talking specifically of "Holders of public office are accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office", which to me is a DO NOT PASS THE BUCK CLAUSE...then the powers that be at the Fees Office are accountable?
Someone has to be.
Are they holders of public office, Sue? No wonder the police are trying to determine their status and the Fees Office' status and their relationships with their Parties' discipline systems.
What is the status of the money they are paid? Is it from us directly or are they employees of others? Not the ministers, they're reasonably straight forward, but the others. I'm sure it's improper for the Labour party to be conducting its own 'courts' as the members represent everyone in a constituency they are elected for, not just one party and surely should answer to us? That's why removing the whip, ie stating 'not in our 'Conservative' name' seems all right, but not what Labour is doing. That seems to make them employees of the Labour party subject to Labour rules of employment. Which can't be correct, not least because their terms and conditions are being retrospectively imposed and/or altered.
It is all part of the Labour party not being a democratic institution at all and yet acting in a democratic environment. It's an inappropriate party to hold office in a capitalist, pluralist democracy like ours. And goodness doesn't it show itself up up right now.
Labour needs more than voting out Botogol. It needs dismantling and putting back together in democratic form. There isn't anything the matter with our Constitution. What is the matter is that the biggest grouping of the centre left in the UK requires complete reform.
It's like having indigestible lumps of realised socialist statism warping the system; and that is made worse by having the state health system and the state education system modelled on realised socialism squatting in the midst of our society.
We need our Transition too, just as the former communist countries did.
This government have taken us into the realms of communism. I suppose we should feel ourselves lucky that we've managed to pull away just at the brink of losing our democracy altogether.
It didn't occur to me that there wouldn't be classed a "Public Servants", but you're right, they shouldn't be conducting their own investigations behind closed doors.
So much for transparency... even now Brown is hanging on for dear life when he knows the party is over. The party elite have gone into hiding.
This will go down in history as the worst government we've ever had, another "dark age".
We so need an election and we need to sort out our relationship with the EU.
If anyone wishes to represent their area, at whatever level of governance, let them stand for election, and earn their own living.
We are paying for Members of Parliament; and we are giving them their position; but they are not answerable to us, as Labour's kangaroo courts demonstrate. These Brownian kangaroo courts are a sop to our outrage at troughing, and an insult to any sense of justice and the rule of law. They ride rough shod over any notion of parliamentary representation of all in a constituency and impose the model of the Party employer/employee which negates any idea of democracy.
And then it is dressed up as:
'the right thing to do'.
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