The NEC must not fudge on reselecting expense abusing MPs

By Jessica Asato / @Jessica_Asato

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.