Tomorrow, the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee will meet
to discuss arguably one of the most important issues to determine the
future of the Labour Party since the decision to go to war with Iraq. Signals have been sent over the weekend that Labour’s leaders are prepared to discuss the possibility that
Labour MPs should face automatic reselection meetings if they are found
guilty of breaching House of Commons rules by the Parliamentary
Commissioner for Standards. But if agreed, this would represent yet
another fudge in a long line of fudges over the last few weeks. This is
because it is unlikely that the Parliamentary Commissioner will find
anyone, except the worst offenders, guilty of breaching the rules. And
isn’t that precisely why we are in this terrible mess in the first
place?

Unbelievably, scores of
Parliamentarians still deny that they have done anything wrong. They
will admit that the public are “rightly angry” but fail to acknowledge
what they have a right to be angry about. So many of our MPs cannot see
that it doesn’t matter whether they played within the rules of the
House of Commons, or whether the fees office gave them ten gold stars
for claiming non-existent mortgage payments. What matters is whether
claiming for flat screen TVs and for dry rot, even if it was within the
rules agreed, was a morally appropriate use of public money.

This is against natural justice, cry our MPs! This may be
true, but in public office a representative’s first duty should not be
to themselves, but to taxpayers who are led to expect that their money
will not be used to further their representative’s personal gain except
for what might be reasonably necessary in fulfilling their role as an
MP.

In fact, this is exactly what the Green Book states: “Claims must only be made for expenditure that it was necessary
for a Member to incur to ensure that he or she could properly perform
his or her parliamentary duties.” It also states that “Members must
ensure that claims do not give rise to, or give the appearance of
giving rise to, an improper personal financial benefit to themselves or
anyone else.” I cannot see how most of the claims highlighted by the
Telegraph would escape this criteria – they all look pretty improper
and very few of them could be said to be essential to the performance
of an MPs role. MPs will fall back, however, on the get-out clause that
the fees office said they could go ahead and claim. As Menzies Campbell
said on Question Time last week: “the rules weren’t enforced”. (So
could I say that because I know I have only a 20% chance that my tax
return will be scrutinised in full detail by HMRC, I can get away with
claiming stuff I shouldn’t?) But this does mean it will be hard for the
Parliamentary Commissioner to find anyone who has really breached the
rules except for those MPs who deliberately misled the Fees Office.

This
is why, when the NEC meets tomorrow, they should allow Constituency
Labour Parties to decide whether their MPs should go through a
reselection process. The worry from NEC members about this option is
that party members will use the process to deselect decent MPs who
haven’t done anything wrong, or will come under media pressure to get
rid of their MP when they don’t want to. Labour Party members aren’t
stupid – there’s no point in deselecting a Labour MP who has been
frugal with their expenses and has never claimed for a second home.
They are the biggest electoral asset we have. Neither do members have
much truck with the forces of the media – we’d do anything to be able
to throw it back in their face sometimes.

But given that it will be Labour party members who will be expected
to go out and take the flak on the doorstep over the next year or so
until the general election, I don’t think it’s asking that much to be
able to go through a process where we are given the opportunity to look
our MPs in the eye and decide whether they deserve to be our candidates
at the next general election, or whether they are an electoral
liability which puts the party’s future at risk.

I think that
such a move would not only help to quell public anger, it could also
help to unite local parties around their MPs and help us to celebrate
those who have stuck by their own moral compass. Where MPs are
deselected, we will be able to select new candidates untainted by this
disgraceful episode. Yes, we will lose some hard-working MPs who made
an error of judgment. But it was a big error in the scheme of things
and we need a new era of clean politics, made up of people who can see
the difference between the rules on paper, and the rules we expect them
to follow in their heads.

This article was first published on LabourList

There is, of course, an element of huge hypocrisy about the expenses furore. Yes, it’s a disgrace and should never have happened, etc etc. But quite apart from the fact that the journalists and broadcasting pundits leading the charge are the biggest abusers of the system (Ian Jack’s excellent article in Saturday’s Guardian ‘We never found ourselves despicable‘ refers), we all know that they’re not alone in stretching their claims and perks to the limit.

Oh, the MP business is different, I hear you say. In their case it’s the poor old taxpayer who is footing the bill. Well yes, but who loses out when we gingerly accept a cheaper bid on a (wink) cash-only basis or employ accountants to seek out ways to avoid paying tax? To be sure the latter, at least, can be done entirely “within the rules” but if we apply the same moral criteria to this practice as we have done to certain MP expenses, shouldn’t we be demanding the return of these monies to the Exchequer as well? We might then even be able to pay MPs an appropriate salary, without the need for those shameful top-ups.

Let’s face it, what’s to blame here, is not just a discredited allowance system but the whole money-grabbing culture of the society we have created for ourselves. Too many of us (whatever our party affiliations) have bought into a self-orientated, greedy way of life where what we own becomes more important than what we are. Not only is such gross materialism morally degrading and incompatible with genuine contentment but it’s also threatening our economy and the very existence of human life on this planet.

The expenses crisis should therefore be seen as part and parcel of this much greater crisis. Unless we get to grips with the underlying causes of both (as shown in my earlier piece, Beyond the Treadmill Society) we will indeed be going to hell in a handcart. And deservedly so.