Three cheers for the Party for setting the agenda on MP and MEP ethics (by which I mean primarily pay and expenses) today. Two major moves were made today. The Conservatives in Opposition time held a three hour debate on MP expenses, and a resulting Commons vote to end the "John Lewis List", to try to end the practice of billing furniture and other household goods to the taxpayer, and to seek to declare the nature of family members employed by MPs was held. The package was regrettably only partly accepted by the Government. The John Lewis List is going, but Labour has accepted no new requirements on family members, and furniture and goods rules stay for the time being.
After the debate, the Party has published under new internal "Right to Know" rules a listing for Conservative MPs and what they have claimed since the start of the year. The files can be seen here.
This has been a brave effort by those in charge. I was in a European Scrutiny Committee for most of the debate, but from what I gather most of the voices in the debate - including some from our own side - were opposed to David Cameron's proposals. Taking this up was never going to popular with some senior backbenchers who have grown accustomed to the status quo.
Nevertheless, I believe that David Cameron should go further. I echo much of what Mark Field MP said on the issue two weeks ago. To give just one example of where further progress would be welcome, it is certainly helpful to have the transparency we now have on family members who are employed and how much they are paid, but it does beg the question - why are family members allowed to be employed at all? Many other legislatures ban the practice, e.g. the German Bundestag. I don't believe it to be the practice anywhere in our local government, and I think most Conservative MPs would be outraged if, for example, civil servants or bosses of quangos were to employ their family members. Are we really saying that of the UK's 40 million or so labour pool, the person best qualified for the job just happened to be one of the half-dozen or so individuals most closely related to the employer, in this case a Member of Parliament? Also, should MPs benefit from capital gains (or suffer capital losses, for that matter) on residential properties funded by the taxpayer?
Overall, much progress is being made, and not before time. In the recent Crewe and Henley by-elections, I found it the issue cropping up most often on the doorstep. If we are serious in our aim to be the Party which is most careful with public finances, we need to get our own house in order first.
UPDATE, 21/07/2008: For the sake of clarity, I should add that it would be impractical, unfair and possibly illegal to make this apply to existing members of staff who are MPs' relatives. These should be 'grandfathered' (no pun intended), but in the future - say from the next General Election - no new family members should be allowed on MPs' payrolls. I beleive this was the practice when similar rules were introduced in the US Congress, see http://ethics.house.gov/Media/PDF/2008_House_Ethics_Manual.pdf
