The honest seekers of truth and justice shouldn’t be made to carry the can for a few rotten parliamentarians

The latest lobbying scandal follows barely three years from the last one. Then, three former Ministers, Geoff Hoon, Stephen Byers and Patricia Hewitt were caught out by journalists claiming to represent lobbying companies. Exactly the same tactics were used to ensnare the Conservative MP, Patrick Mercer and three peers, including former Labour Minister, Jack Cunningham three years on. Foolishness, and sheer greed, have once again combined in combustible form.

It is of course now up to the Parliamentary Ombudsman to decide whether any of these parliamentarians have been in breach of the rules. Each of the peers implicated by the BBC Panorama and the Sunday Times immediately referred themselves to the Ombudsman while claiming that they weren’t in breach of any rules. If that is proved to be the case, then clearly the rules governing the House of Lords are wanting in the extreme.

However, if promising or asking to table potentially commercially motivated questions for cash isn’t a very clear conflict of interest and a morally reprehensible act, then it is difficult to see what is. Lord Jack Cunningham as a former Labour Minister, by very publically asking for £12k to £14k a month from a fictitious lobbyist purporting to act for an energy company, has not only let the Labour Party down, he has let all of his colleagues in the Lords and the Commons, who slog away, day after day, trying to show the public that not all Parliamentarians are in it for themselves.

Clearly the time for a statutory register for commercial lobbyists is now well overdue, as are much tighter rules to govern the House of Lords. But what of the All Party Parliamentary Groups, most of whom have an important role to play, but who have been compromised by a public perception that many are there to organise expensive junkets for MPs?

I was recently reading about some of the work being undertaken by those involved in the APPG on the Chagos Islands (British Indian Ocean Territory). There is no question that any of the MPs or peers will likely receive a paid-for junket to visit these islands, largely because the United States and the UK have more or less declared them off-limits to the rest of the World. None of those involved will receive any thanks of help from the Government or Foreign office which seems as determined as previous administrations to prevent the islanders deported by Britain to make way for the military airbase on Diego Garcia, form ever returning. There is, as with many other APPGs, absolutely nothing in it for these parliamentarians except the knowledge that they are on the side of justice and right. That should be enough surely?

So when Patrick Mercer, a Tory MP, with a record of making deeply offensive remarks that many deem racist, approaches, as he did, Labour MPs to ask if they will join an APPG on Fiji, shouldn’t the first question have been; ‘why is he doing this?’ Following from that, all the MPs in question needed to do – if they did not know, that Fiji is currently suspended from the Commonwealth, and that democracy has been subverted in that country on racial grounds – was to carry out some very basic research.

According to press reports, the Speaker has now revoked a whole series of parliamentary passes held by many who are working for APPGs. This is probably both overdue and very necessary. But we must hope that it is not the honest seekers of truth and justice who are also made to carry the can for the sins of a few rotten parliamentarians.