Over the past few days multiple pundits have referred casually to the House of Commons Commission and the Members’ Estimate Committee without bothering to explain what it is they do, or more importantly who they are. The first is in charge of the regulation of the House; the second’s in charge of MPs remuneration and expenses and was accused of bias from the start:
A review of MPs’ perks and expenses has been condemned as a stitch-up.
The panel picked by Commons Speaker Michael Martin to carry out the investigation is dominated by politicians tainted by sleaze or who have campaigned to keep allowances secret.
So I thought I should take a look at who’s currently on this committee and who, if any of those tasked with keeping their fellow members honest has got clean (ish) hands themselves.
The score? Not good: only 3 out of 5:
Rt Hon Michael J Martin MP (Labour ): The Speaker’s been spending hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to stop the details of the expenses claims being published: he spent £1,400 on chauffeurs to drive him to his constituency job centre in Glasgow (60% of children in his area live in “workless householdsâ€) and to Celtic football stadium; he employed his wife and daughter both on the payroll for an extra bite at the cherry:
On top of his £137,000 salary, he has a pension estimated to be worth £1.4m, and the best rent-free apartment in London. His wife was earning £25,000 a year in the first years of his speakership, and his daughter until very recently worked as his constituency secretary. His son, Paul, eased gently into the Scottish parliament, earns £50,000 a year. And, even though he has a primary home fully paid for by the taxpayer, Michael Martin claimed £17,166 last year in housing allowance on his home outside Glasgow, which is mortgage-free.
Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC (Lab) : Clean so far as is known apart from that one dodgy donation.and a few pesky clerical errors. But that’s largely due to an accident of geography rather than innate rectitude. Harriet’s answer to accusations of corruption? Blame Derek Conway. To be fair, she has voted for pay and expenses reform. But then she can afford to, on over 140 grand a year plus expenses (Which she helps to set the level of. Neat.).
Sir Stuart Bell (Lab): Sweeper-under-carpet-in-chief and Church Commissioner. Fought disclosure of expenses tooth and nail; currently trying to have the administration of MP’s expenses and pay privatised, so as to exempt it from the Freedom of Information Act so we can’t see how completely lax he’s been and string him up.
Rt Hon Nick Harvey (Lib Dem): In 2008, Harvey told his fellow MPs: “The public believe—quite erroneously, in my view—that our allowances are excessive, that there are irregularities in the way in which Members claim those allowances and that the systems in this place are lax. I repeat that those are not my views”
Then why did he say this?
But even the three committee members with (currently) clean hands themselves. McClean, Harman and Harvey, don’t think they or their greedy colleagues have done anything wrong; they’re either tribally loyal to party, like allegedly bipartisan Leader of the House Harman and Tory Chief Whip McClean, or complacent, like lone Lib Dem Harvey. It’s not MPs, it’s the system, they cry.
But they control that system: they could have stopped it. They didn’t. Better to kick it into the long grass and hope it goes away. It hasn’t.
I was always taught as a good churchgoing girl that tempt somebody to sin was a worse sin than the one incited. Harman, Martin, McClean, Harvey and Bell allowed their colleagues steal from the public. They turned a blind eye; they even participated. They’re just as guilty as their greedier colleagues, if not more so.