January 2008 was something of a funny month in Westminster, albeit very much of the ‘bizarre’ – as opposed to ‘humorous’ – variety. We’d hardly made it through one week of the new year when an exposé in The Guardian set in motion a chain reaction which eventually prompted Peter Hain’s resignation from his Cabinet jobs as a result of financial wrongdoing. The smug grin adorning David Cameron’s visage was soon replaced by a decidedly Gordon Brown-esque scowl when a hitherto-anonymous Tory MP, Derek Conway of the Old Bexley and Sidcup constituency, found himself in the dock for misuse of parliamentary funds. Conway’s indiscretion earned him a ten-day ban from the Commons and he has already announced his intention to stand down from Parliament at the next general election, delivering a cruel blow to the Conservative leader at a time when Cameron must surely have been hoping to capitalise upon his foil’s continued ill-fortune.

In addition to the above, we’ve also seen Harriet Harman and Wendy Alexander face allegations of fiscal misconduct, resulting in ongoing inquiries, while Conway’s situation may worsen further still if the investigation undertaken by the Metropolitan Police concludes that he is guilty of fraud. Alastair Darling’s first Budget has been given a firm date of March 12 and will surely receive a surfeit of media attention as New Labour seek to move beyond the ongoing Northern Rock saga; a government welfare adviser has claimed that up to two million British citizens are illegitimately claiming incapacity benefit; and a controversial counter-terrorism bill has drawn fire from human rights campaigners due to its suggestion that home secretaries may be allowed to remove juries from inquests and replace coroners with their own appointees in the future.

Meanwhile, the reactions of Brown and Cameron to the Hain and Conway debacles have drawn both criticism and praise in roughly equal measure. (The Liberal Democrats, now under the leadership of Nick Clegg, remain as anonymous as ever, at least insofar as column inches are concerned; this could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending upon one’s perspective, but one suspects that, given the current climate, ‘No news’ does indeed equate to ‘Good news’, for the time being at least.)

Phew!

So, what exactly are the key issues at stake here? First and foremost, there’s the question of leadership. Brown and Cameron took diametrically-opposed approaches towards dealing with their respective miscreants, with the former sitting on his hands and delegating responsibility to the Electoral Commission while the latter acted swiftly and ruthlessly. Both tactics undoubtedly had their drawbacks – the PM was accused of dithering, while Cameron’s detractors queried his apparent lack of team spirit – but there can be little doubt that the Tory man’s strategy was markedly more effective and, just as crucially, more impressive in the eyes of the general public. The speed with which he withdrew the whip from Conway, serving to isolate the beleaguered MP as well as unsubtly distancing his party from the melee, contrasted sharply with Brown’s procrastination and made the Prime Minister look indecisive, weak and ineffectual by comparison.

Secondly, the ugly spectre of opaque financial dealings reared its ugly head in Westminster once more, just six months after the ‘Cash-for-Honours’ scandal almost brought Tony Blair’s premiership to a premature conclusion. Back then, Brown, in his role as PM-elect, had attempted to seize the agenda for himself by promising a complete overhaul of the campaign finance system and, ultimately, increased transparency throughout Westminster. If his reaction to the Hain situation was indicative of his fondness for buck-passing, the very fact that the conundrum was allowed to exist in the first place must surely call into question his suitability for the top job in British politics. He has, after all, had ample time in which to initiate his promised revamp and has failed to make one iota of progress in this regard.

Thirdly, if a broader theme is desired then perhaps one can be found among Conway’s post-downfall remarks. On February 2, he gave an interview to the Daily Mail in which the issue of MPs’ wages was raised:

"People say, 'Why can't an MP be treated like anyone else?' MPs would not have a problem with that if they were given the salary for the job. An MP is paid less than the sous chef at the Commons. Many people may think 60 grand is the right level for an MP – most MPs would not.”

When asked what salary he thought MPs ought to be paid, Conway candidly replied "80 to 100 grand", i.e. a raise of up to £40,000 per year.

If Conway was really inferring that at least some of the cash-related chicanery which goes on in Parliament can be attributed to the low nature of politicians’ wages, then the situation must surely be worse than we’d heretofore realised.

Every time one of our elected representatives is caught with his or her hand in the proverbial cookie-jar, the Powers-That-Be try to assure us that the guilty party was a solitary bad apple and decry any suggestion that the rest of the bunch ought to be damned along with the wrongdoer; however, an alarmist interpretation of Conway’s outburst would leave one with the impression that more MPs are ‘on the take’ than we could possibly have guessed. Of course, this is highly unlikely to be the case, and I don’t believe for a second that this is what he actually meant, but the fact remains that, if dissatisfaction with the level of parliamentary remuneration is in any way rife, then we need to reassess our elected officials’ salaries as a matter of some urgency. Should the reassessment conclude that they are indeed being paid too little for the work they do, it seems only sensible to increase the size of their pay-packets accordingly.

Perhaps most farcically of all, we now have a situation in which House of Commons authorities are claiming that more stringent transparency requirements could potentially deter would-be MPs from seeking to enter Parliament. Andrew Walker, the Director General of the Resources Department, caused controversy when he made a comment to this effect, insinuating that “further intrusion into members' private lives” may prove off-putting for aspiring politicians, while barrister Eleanor Grey – acting in her capacity as a Commons representative – spoke out in favour of maintaining the current status quo in order to strike a balance between the public’s best interests and those of our elected representatives.

Walker soon went further still, telling a Freedom of Information tribunal – brought by The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph and Heather Brooke, an information campaigner, seeking extra details about MPs’ use of their allowances – that he thinks some MPs are willing to abuse the system for their own benefit. Nevertheless, he spoke out against changing the present system on the same spurious grounds as before, even trying to claim that politicians are held accountable for their actions at the ballot-boxes. Seemingly, the opaque nature of the arrangement Walker supports so fulsomely, which means that the electorate is in no position to judge their MPs accurately, much less mete out justice at the polling stations every few years, has passed him by.

Meanwhile, February itself has held more than its fair share of Westminster-based malefactions. Derek Conway returned to the headlines on the 15th when, adding insult to injury, he was unceremoniously stripped of his place on the Chairmen’s Panel, a group of senior MPs which oversees all five general standing committees. In addition to the loss of prestige (and, of course, the arrival of yet more humiliation) caused by this latest demotion, he found himself £13,000 less well-off as a result of the move since he was forced to forfeit the monetary stipend given to panel members.

It’s also important to note that Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons, is currently under investigation by a parliamentary watchdog for allegedly misusing officially-accrued air-miles for the benefit of his family, a transgression which, if accurately-reported, is not much different to that perpetuated by Conway. Martin’s official spokesman, Mike Granatt, resigned on the 23rd, having apparently been misled by Commons bigwigs, a fact which further added to the Speaker’s woes; by all accounts, the aide did not appreciate being placed in a position whereby he (unwittingly) passed inaccurate details to the Mail on Sunday newspaper, and blamed unnamed colleagues in the Speaker’s office for bringing about this state of affairs. (The story in question concerned some £4,000 in taxi expenses, which had been incurred by Martin’s wife during shopping expeditions while the bills had been inexplicably footed by the nation’s taxpayers.)

Like Conway before him, Martin’s notional ‘stone’ of misbehaviour soon began to accumulate more than its fair share of moss. On February 24, The Sunday Times published a story which detailed claims totalling “thousands of pounds” which were supposed to “cover costs for [Martin’s] home in Glasgow” when, by all accounts, “the property does not have a mortgage”; the total sum, according to the newspaper, was £17,166, and, making matters murkier still, “[h]e is also using his Scottish home as an office – a practice from which MPs are discouraged – claiming £7,595 last year for running costs.”

These new revelations prompted further public calls for Martin’s resignation; however most mainstream MPs, led by Brown, Cameron and Clegg, adhered to a long-standing parliamentary tradition of refusing to criticise an incumbent speaker. Independent MP Martin Bell was inclined to observe no such niceties, however, and his comments pertaining to “widespread disquiet on both sides of the House” led many onlookers to assume that criticism of Martin was indeed rife, albeit firmly behind closed doors. This view was supported by Labour MP David Winnick and Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the Committee for Standards in Public Life, both of whom broke ranks by urging the embattled Speaker to hasten his investigation and hand control thereof to an independent body, respectively. When rabble-rousing Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker began to call for a full-bore inquiry into the circumstances behind Granatt’s resignation, speculation over Martin’s future reached fever-pitch.

At the time of writing, it remains to be seen whether or not Martin will successfully weather this storm. His fate now lies in the hands of John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and – as always – all we can do is wait and see what transpires.

As with the intertwining storylines of Quentin Tarantino’s epic, Pulp Fiction, many of these sorry tales can be seen to converge as we approach the end of February. Conway’s misdeeds prompted the rapid announcement of a wide-ranging inquiry into all aspects of MPs' expenses, led by the Commons Members Estimates Committee. Can you guess who chairs the body in question? Why, none other than Mr. Martin! The grotesque irony inherent in Martin overseeing such an inquest, at a time when he himself is under heavy scrutiny for related misdeeds, surely cannot have escaped the attention of Westminster’s Powers-That-Be. Martin was even the man responsible for firing Conway from the Chairmen’s Panel, a move which now seems to smack of ill-disguised hypocrisy on the Speaker’s part.

Furthermore, although the Speaker officially has no party affiliations, Martin is a Labour man through-and-through. This fact serves to tie him to the Government – more specifically, to Gordon Brown – and his ongoing troubles are, therefore, undoubtedly contributing towards the pressure which continues to mount atop the PM’s shoulders. Many column inches have recently been dedicated to analysing Brown’s harried appearance, while speculation about sleepless nights has combined with his weak performances during Prime Minister’s Questions to leave the distinct impression of a man who’s struggling to cope with the intense pressures of his job.

The end of the month brought with it further upheaval in Westminster, capping an extremely turbulent eight-week period for people all across the House of Commons. First, an Electoral Commission report revealed that the UK’s political parties had received a staggering £16.7m in donations in the final quarter of 2007, the third highest amount ever. The debate over party funding was predictably reignited, while several high-profile figures, including Conservative mayoral candidate Boris Johnson and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, found their knuckles being firmly rapped for failing to disclose all their donations in time. All told, 22 MPs were reprimanded for late disclosure, the very same crime which had previously cost Peter Hain his job.

Secondly, the aforementioned Freedom of Information campaign was resolved in the applicants’ favour, dealing a body-blow to Andrew Walker’s dubious protestations and simultaneously providing pro-transparency campaigners with a reason to celebrate. As BBC News Online reported on the 26th:

“[T]he tribunal ruled in favour of Freedom of Information campaigner Heather Brooke, the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times, and ordered the Commons to release the information on 14 MPs – including Tony Blair, David Cameron and Gordon Brown – within 28 days.”

The body also damned the existing rules governing MPs’ allowances as “lax”, “incomplete”, “lacking clarity” and “deeply unsatisfactory”, adding that they “constitute a recipe for confusion, inconsistency and the risk of misuse." Although the Members' Estimates Committee said that it was taking legal advice over the tribunal’s ruling, some form of serious reform is surely all but inevitable now. We can also expect yet more drama, at least in the short-term, as the FoI ruling is likely to blow further holes in the already colander-like walls of Parliament. First up are the minutes of two Cabinet meetings, held in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and kept under wraps until now, which could bring New Labour even closer to its knees if the Government’s appeal against the ruling does not succeed.

Two months down, ten more to go. If 2008 continues in this vein, we’ll be lucky if the House is still standing by Xmas; let’s hope that, for the sake of coherence and stability in these troubled times, some semblance of order is restored in Westminster before too much more time elapses. The current circus-like atmosphere simply cannot be allowed to continue.

 

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS INFORMATION OFFICE.