We have a new Speaker to restore public confidence and ‘clean up’ their act…
And the person chosen for the post? John Bercow. A man:
- who did the second home flipping thing when he sold two houses within one year, but who has said he will repay the equivalent of Capital Gains Tax on one of them despite denying he did anything wrong.
So that’s all right then. Not.
It remains hard to fathom why MPs think that the ‘I didn’t break the rules’ excuse cuts any ice. It’s irrelevant. More than that, it reinforces opinion about the deep-rooted dishonesty of MPs.
Regardless of what the rules say, it is clearly wrong to switch the designation of main and secondary home. Either a place is your main home or it isn’t. It isn’t something that changes depending on which of the properties needs refurbishment (with taxpayer money) or which you intend to sell (while avoiding CGT).
It is simply impossible to believe that MPs cannot see this as clearly as voters can see it. They must know they have done wrong, in which case the only conclusion is that they are lying when they say ‘I didn’t do anything wrong’. So why should we have any trust in them or their genuine commitment to reform the system? Why should we believe that they will be any less inventive in breaking the spirit of any new rules and greedily using them to their financial advantage?
- who has switched his political views to a remarkable extent.
In the mid-80s Bercow was chairman of the pro-apartheid Federation of Conservative Students before swerving deftly to the left to the point where there were rumours he might switch to the Labour party when Gordon Brown became leader. Critics accuse him of opportunism and of adjusting his views to fit the prevailing political trend.
- who has never hidden his ambition to be Speaker – in fact, critics suspect that the switching of his political views was because he realised he would only get the Speaker job with Labour support.
At 46 he is one of the youngest speakers and, although saying he will only hold the post for nine years, could therefore have a long and lucrative career at the (current) annual salary of £141,866, entitlement to first-class travel and luxury hotels (including taking his wife abroad at taxpayers’ expense), a chauffer-driven car and first-class train travel to and from his constituency, and a handsome pension worth half the Speaker’s salary for life, regardless of length of service.
And, of course, lavish grace and favour apartments. Mind you, he has said that he will not claim his second home allowance while in office.
That’s good of him.
- who believes MPs should get a substantial pay rise to put them alongside other professionals, such as GPs, who earn around £100,000 a year.
Words fail me.
…and we have a new set of rules
The Parliamentary Standards Bill will introduce new offences to prevent MPs stealing our money by false claims for allowances, punishable by up to a year in prison, as well as various other measures to ensure they comply with rules governing their behaviour.
Oh goody. More rules. More bureaucracy. More time and money spent on keeping our representatives honest.
We don’t need more rules. We don’t want MPs who are honest because increasingly specific rules spell out how they must be honest. Rules will never be tight enough to prevent all possible abuses.
What will prevent that, and what we want, are MPs who are inherently honest. Who know what is right and what is wrong. Who fully understand the import of both words in the description ‘public servant’. Who are there because they genuinely want to serve the country and its people, and not to get rich with a nice salary topped up with expenses and making a pile out of property bought, run and refurbished by the taxpayer.