Relaxing The Rules: Swinegate Returns

The good citizens of Wales must be very afraid.

On the very day the government re-announced the last government's "Equality Strategy", Ann Clwyd, MP for Cynon Valley, apparently rose to her hind legs and said this in support of relaxing the rules recently passed by MPs to curb expenses abuse:

"During my election campaign, someone came up to me and shouted 'Thief!' and if I had been a man I would have run after him and punched him in the face.”

So Ann clearly reckons it would have been okay for ex-MP David Chaytor to lamp his outraged constituents - at least, presumably before this week's guilty plea - and now the Equality Strategy means there's nothing to stop her 'aving a go...

I empathise with MPs who say they are struggling with legislation that they misconceived in their haste to get re-elected. Really I do. Because you could say that about an awful lot of their output, including their appalling attack on the digital economy in the course of the infamous "wash-up".

But we soldier on without being entitled to run people down in the street and punch them in the face, and so must our MPs - male or female.

There must be limits to the extent MPs can relax the rules for themselves.

Those Squealing MPs Are Back!

Isn't it reassuring to see the piggies back from yet more holiday, fighting every effort to have their snouts hauled out of the trough?

My personal favourite is the one squealing about 'subjective judgements' in the legal review of her own expense claims, but not the subjective judgements made in how she actually filed them. As a chief architect of the Nanny State she should've known better. Experience how subjectively angry this makes you feel, by staring at the defiant face below for 30 seconds. Then exercise your own subjective judgement at Power 2010.

Lessig: How Money Affects Political Trust

Some prescient remarks, made in the context of political donations, which apply more directly to the cash-for-amendments scandal but also suggest the reason for our concern over MPs' attitudes to expenses:

Hat-tip to Paul Miller.

Swinegate and Consitutional Reform

I've just seen some patronising rubbish in the Spectator about concern over MP's expenses being overkill and somehow bad for the British democratic process.

Swinegate is just the straw that broke the camel's back. At different times, on different issues that each of us cares about, we have all felt that politicians are up to no good in their various machinations. Now we've all caught them, red-handed, pulling the same stunt at the same time. It does not matter that we have merely caught a crowd of them failing to do something as basic as filling out an expense form with diligence and propriety. The panic-stricken response right across the political spectrum is clear evidence that the politicians now know that we know just how opaque and unaccountable Parliament is generally.

The great news is that this has alerted a wider community of people to consider what goes on in Westminster. But these are still early days in this process of awakening. So it's way too early to constrain debate by saying that constitutional reform is not the answer, for example. Let's get the whole sorry parliamentary institution laid out on the table and then figure out how to reform it.

More light, please! We have work to do...

Travels in the Blogosphere

It's been a mad week, with my spare time absorbed by an article on the behavioural targeting of internet advertising and responding to a cascade of blogs. Highlights being:

• commenting on Dave's report on SEPA's 50 year plan;



• observing the link between the "Bauman-esque negotiation between moral ideals and the problems and needs of everyday life" and sustainable capitalism;



• debunking the notion of "mass personalisation", which is about as oxymoronic as you can get;



• cheering the Tories' promise to make legislation more accessible, and wondering what on earth the recently re-labelled "Digital Engagement Team" at the Cabinet Office has been doing;



• pushing for publication of MPs and Peers' expenses at mySociety, writing to my MP and wondering what on earth the recently re-labelled "Digital Engagement Team" at the Cabinet Office has been doing;



• and of course eagerly awaiting Blawg Review #214.

I've also updated my own posts on:

• Swinegate;



• Something Decent to Read; and



• Coping with the risk of a spike in mortgage rates.

I suspect that's enough havoc for one week, but I reckon there's more to come...

WE Are The Parliamentary Standards Authority!

How smug and complacent it is for MPs to suggest that a politically manageable Quango act as the arbiter of their "standards". This is simply further evidence that they just don't understand the depths to which they have sunk in our esteem. Expense claims are at the tip of an iceberg.

So let's be clear with them. I suggest a missive be sent to each MP and Peer to the following effect:

We, the citizens of the UK, are your so-called Parliamentary Standards Authority. You work for us. We pay you. It is best that you act in a way that inspires our trust and confidence in you, otherwise you will be thrown out of Parliament. As a guide, we have some standards we want you to abide by. These include, but shall not be limited to the following:

1. You must stop using the title "Right Honourable", because we do not believe that either term applies to you, any more than it does to anyone else.

2. You will abide by the most draconian expense policy that applies to middle managers in a FTSE 100 company from time to time.

3. You will publish your expense claims on your parliamentary web page within 7 days after the end of each calendar month.

4. You must not submit an expense claim that does not comply with the expense policy and is not supported by a valid VAT receipt.

etc - e.g. more transparent declarations of 'outside' interests and income, prohibition on taking cushy consulting roles with industries you are supposed to have been supervising.

We can amend this charter at any time in our sole and absolute discretion. Be good. We are watching you.

And the first job for the so-called "Digital Engagement Team" at the Cabinet Office should be to ensure a public datafeed of MPs' and Peers' expenses so that taxpayers can use the various analytical tools that have already sprung up to determine whether their legislators' interests are aligned with citizens' or with the lining of their own pockets.

PS: Also worth getting involved with the MySociety intiative on this. I wrote to my MP, Andy Slaughter, and he's promised to publish his expenses online. However, we need them all to publish in a format that can be readily analysed.

The (Further) Shaming of Westminster

It's a feeble institution that allows itself to come to this.

MPs: Please Pay More To Vet Our Expense Claims

Surprise, surprise: the MPs' suggestion for keeping their own noses out of the trough is to create another Quango (number 191). They estimate this will cost the taxpayer £600,000 a year to run.

So, in addition to excessive expenses paid to date, we're now asked to pay even more, just to keep MP's honest.

These people aren't really in it for us, are they?

The Commons Fees Office is already "overseen" by a committee made up of MPs (WTF?) which is in turn "overseen" by the National Audit Office. One might flippantly observe that with so much 'oversight' it's easy to see how Swinegate happened. But seriously, where is the explanation by the alleged oversight committee of how it allowed Swinegate to happen on its watch? Where are the NAO's audit reports on the subject? I see that the NAO was called in to look at expenses abuse in 1995 by the Nolan Committee into "standards in public life". But clearly whatever action was taken only encouraged MPs in their audacity. It also seems from the report of its investigation into a blow-out in MP's expenses in 2005-06 that the NAO doesn't audit the exercise of the Commons Fees Office's discretion in approving accounts, merely the tally of those approvals against budget estimates (see House of Commons Members Resource Accounts). Does this mean there is no compliance audit function?

For the answers to these and other questions, one can always file a Freedom of Information Request on WhatDoTheyKnow.com.

Swinegate's Feeble Whistleblower?

For every scandal there seems to be an heroic whistleblower working tirelessly to expose the thing, ignored by all in authority. For the MPs' expenses saga - "Swinegate" seems apt - we can only look to Andrew Walker, who is said to have signed off MP's expense claims in his role at the Commons Fees Office. Apparently, he "told Speaker Michael Martin more than five years ago that he must act to curb excessive claims. But Westminster sources say the Speaker told him not to meddle, and 'punished' him by refusing to speak to him for weeks at a time." Ah, the poor, poor man.

Just as the revelation of Paul Moore's unheeded warnings to the HBOS board were enough to hole Sir James Crosby's career at the FSA below the waterline, so should Andrew Walker's warnings do for the Speaker - not to mention all the little piggies to the left and right who had their snouts in the trough.

But hang on. Five years ago?! You mean Mr Walker has spent 5 more years signing off the sort of expense claims that he once found unacceptable. You mean that, unlike Mr Moore, he did not continue to make himself a thorn in the side of those he was supposed to be reining in? If that's true, then sorry, Mr Walker, you too have to hit the road. No pay-off. No pension.

"Another soure" is quoted as saying:

"A while back it looked as if Andrew might lose his job and you can't blame him for thinking that he might as well keep his head down. Why should he sacrifice his career for the sake of others?"

This feeble rhetorical question sums up what Westminster is all about. To change that, we need an answer, and it has to be: if you stop doing your job properly, you are sacrificing your career.