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Yesterday, David Cameron and Gordon Brown competed for the title of 'least convincing apology from a party leader'. Moreover, both of them were apologising for the behaviour of all MPs; in David Cameron's case, that's clearer from watching the interview with him than from reading the report of what he said. Gordon Brown apologised "on behalf of politicians, on behalf of all parties, for what has happened in the events of the last few days" - as Prime Minister, he's a lot better placed to issue this general apology that David Cameron is, but I'm still not sure he's really in a position to apologise on behalf of the Liberal Democrats.
For one thing, as various commentators have pointed out, he seems to be apologising only for the events of the last few days. What happened in the last few days isn't that a lot of MPs claimed some outrageous expenses; what happened is that the public finally found out the details about them. And not because Parliament published them openly, but because they were leaked or sold to The Daily Telegraph. That is not the fault of the Liberal Democrats, who have consistently argued for these expenses to be published, and opposed the exemption of MPs from the Freedom of Information act.
The best summary I can find of this saga, which has run for over two years now, is on the Richmond Liberal Democrats' web site, which might be considered biased, but Hansard's report on the May 18, 2007 debate is here, and it's worth looking at the second page of that to see how MPs voted. Hansard doesn't list party affiliations, but for the record the majority of those voting against the bill are Liberal Democrats (there are both Labour and Tory MPs in that group too), and no Liberal Democrats voted for it.
The other problem with Gordon Brown and David Cameron's apologies is that they seek to diffuse the blame. That's not surprising. While I'm not bothered about some of the Telegraph's revelations - I don't like Jack Straw much, but I don't have even a small problem with him making a mistake when he submitted his expenses which he then repaid - there are some pretty outrageous examples of individual MPs breakign the sprit of the rules to their own personal gain. But if you can convince the public that blame for these outrageous claims lies not with the individual MPs but is spread across all 600 MPs in Parliament, the blame looks smaller. And if you can paint this as 'something inherent in the system somehow' rather than 'decisions made by individuals' then you may even be able to remove responsibility from the individual MPs altogether.
It won't wash. Collective responsibility makes no sense here, when these expense claims weren't something agreed by Parliament as a whole but instead submitted by individual people and subject to no general scrutiny. Also, although we've seen some high-profile cases of MPs behaving badly, so far it seems as though there are a huge number of MPs from all parties who ave behaved with honesty and integrity, just as the public want them to. Many of them (again, from all parties) have also campaigned for more openness in the system, and for the rules to be changed where they thought the rules in question were wrong. Those MPs are ill-served by David Cameron and Gordon Brown dragging them in by association to their group wearing of sackcloth and ashes.
They're also ill-served by the press commentators and members of the public who are keen to write off all MPs as corrupt. In fact I think there needs to be more acceptance of the fact that if we demand detailed expenses of our MPs, those expenses are going to contain mistakes. I want my MPs to be honest; I don't demand that they're infallible, especially concerning something as notoriously complex as expenses. As long as the mistakes are recognised and corrected, I don't have a problem with it. This requires a sense of proportion when scrutinising expenses, and restraint of the usual public appetite for scandal; both of these have been unfortunately lacking over the past few days. But I think it's the price we need to pay to be allowed access to this sort of detailed information. I feel, along with pretty much all Liberal Democrats, that we should have access to this information, and I hope that the current feeding frenzy is simply the result of getting access to it for the first time.
I'm not saying that none of the revelations are damaging, or indicative of behaviour we should condemn; I think plenty of the are, not least those MPs who switch which home is their 'second' one depending on whether they're claiming tax relief or expenses. What concerns me is the general perception that all revelations are equally damaging and, what's more, apply to all MPs.
So far, The Daily Telegraph hasn't published any revelations about Liberal Democrat MPs, but it's too much to hope that there are none. Nick Clegg has, of course, already published (less detailed) expenses, and apparently the Liberal Democrat front bench has too (if anyone has a link for this, I'd appreciate it). So there are hopefully limits to how surprising the information can be. It's also worth remembering that The Daily Telegraph hasn't published revelations about a huge number of Conservative and Labour MPs, because there are huge numbers of Conservative and Labour MPs who aren't (as far as I can tell) fiddling the system. I don't think this is a problem inherent to any particular party.
However, I do think the Liberal Democrats have consistently taken the lead in advocating openness in MPs' expenses, while David Cameron and Gordon Brown have been officially neutral on the subject. I think we should take credit for that. I also think that Nick Clegg's proposals for expenses reform are good, and recognise that the system isn't inherently broken, (as both David Cameron and Gordon Brown seem to claim it is in an apparent knee-jerk reaction to public opinion), but needs more clarity and simplification.
For one thing, as various commentators have pointed out, he seems to be apologising only for the events of the last few days. What happened in the last few days isn't that a lot of MPs claimed some outrageous expenses; what happened is that the public finally found out the details about them. And not because Parliament published them openly, but because they were leaked or sold to The Daily Telegraph. That is not the fault of the Liberal Democrats, who have consistently argued for these expenses to be published, and opposed the exemption of MPs from the Freedom of Information act.
The best summary I can find of this saga, which has run for over two years now, is on the Richmond Liberal Democrats' web site, which might be considered biased, but Hansard's report on the May 18, 2007 debate is here, and it's worth looking at the second page of that to see how MPs voted. Hansard doesn't list party affiliations, but for the record the majority of those voting against the bill are Liberal Democrats (there are both Labour and Tory MPs in that group too), and no Liberal Democrats voted for it.
The other problem with Gordon Brown and David Cameron's apologies is that they seek to diffuse the blame. That's not surprising. While I'm not bothered about some of the Telegraph's revelations - I don't like Jack Straw much, but I don't have even a small problem with him making a mistake when he submitted his expenses which he then repaid - there are some pretty outrageous examples of individual MPs breakign the sprit of the rules to their own personal gain. But if you can convince the public that blame for these outrageous claims lies not with the individual MPs but is spread across all 600 MPs in Parliament, the blame looks smaller. And if you can paint this as 'something inherent in the system somehow' rather than 'decisions made by individuals' then you may even be able to remove responsibility from the individual MPs altogether.
It won't wash. Collective responsibility makes no sense here, when these expense claims weren't something agreed by Parliament as a whole but instead submitted by individual people and subject to no general scrutiny. Also, although we've seen some high-profile cases of MPs behaving badly, so far it seems as though there are a huge number of MPs from all parties who ave behaved with honesty and integrity, just as the public want them to. Many of them (again, from all parties) have also campaigned for more openness in the system, and for the rules to be changed where they thought the rules in question were wrong. Those MPs are ill-served by David Cameron and Gordon Brown dragging them in by association to their group wearing of sackcloth and ashes.
They're also ill-served by the press commentators and members of the public who are keen to write off all MPs as corrupt. In fact I think there needs to be more acceptance of the fact that if we demand detailed expenses of our MPs, those expenses are going to contain mistakes. I want my MPs to be honest; I don't demand that they're infallible, especially concerning something as notoriously complex as expenses. As long as the mistakes are recognised and corrected, I don't have a problem with it. This requires a sense of proportion when scrutinising expenses, and restraint of the usual public appetite for scandal; both of these have been unfortunately lacking over the past few days. But I think it's the price we need to pay to be allowed access to this sort of detailed information. I feel, along with pretty much all Liberal Democrats, that we should have access to this information, and I hope that the current feeding frenzy is simply the result of getting access to it for the first time.
I'm not saying that none of the revelations are damaging, or indicative of behaviour we should condemn; I think plenty of the are, not least those MPs who switch which home is their 'second' one depending on whether they're claiming tax relief or expenses. What concerns me is the general perception that all revelations are equally damaging and, what's more, apply to all MPs.
So far, The Daily Telegraph hasn't published any revelations about Liberal Democrat MPs, but it's too much to hope that there are none. Nick Clegg has, of course, already published (less detailed) expenses, and apparently the Liberal Democrat front bench has too (if anyone has a link for this, I'd appreciate it). So there are hopefully limits to how surprising the information can be. It's also worth remembering that The Daily Telegraph hasn't published revelations about a huge number of Conservative and Labour MPs, because there are huge numbers of Conservative and Labour MPs who aren't (as far as I can tell) fiddling the system. I don't think this is a problem inherent to any particular party.
However, I do think the Liberal Democrats have consistently taken the lead in advocating openness in MPs' expenses, while David Cameron and Gordon Brown have been officially neutral on the subject. I think we should take credit for that. I also think that Nick Clegg's proposals for expenses reform are good, and recognise that the system isn't inherently broken, (as both David Cameron and Gordon Brown seem to claim it is in an apparent knee-jerk reaction to public opinion), but needs more clarity and simplification.