The Guardian view on MPs’ integrity: culture change needed at the top
If Boris Johnson had not ordered his MPs to offer a reprieve to Owen Paterson, the former member for North Shropshire would probably still be a parliamentarian while serving out an uneventful suspension from the House of Commons. Politics might have moved on to other issues. Instead, Westminster is mired deep in debate over lobbying and MPs’ second jobs.
Mr Johnson sounded contrite before a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, or rather appeared sincerely to regret starting a process that is running beyond his control. In a bid to seize the initiative, Downing Street has proposed new rules that would curtail MPs’ activities outside parliament.
It is easier to assert that MPs should focus on the work they have been elected to do than to stipulate what should be forbidden. “Paid advocacy” is already against the rules – hence Mr Paterson’s fate. Few begrudge parliamentarians doubling as doctors or army reservists. It has been argued, with some merit, that outside interests create a richer pool of experience to inform MPs’ judgment. But often that defence is disingenuous.
Politicians who charge consultancy fees to investment funds, for example, are lining their pockets without necessarily broadening their horizons. In the case of someone like Sir Geoffrey Cox, lavishly remunerated for work in the Caribbean, it is unclear which of his jobs should even be counted as the second one.
There is a smell test to such things – an intuitive public sense of decency. But smells are hard to describe in law. The attempt to draw clean lines around some activities and ban others risks creating anomalies at the margins. Trickier still would be enforcing the government’s proposal that MPs’ outside work “should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties”. Would the test be hours spent away from the Commons or the constituency? Those are not reliable metrics of how well an MP is performing, given the complexity of the role.
The second jobs quandary is really subsidiary to the problem of conflicts of interest. MPs topping up their salaries looks toxic because of the implied transaction. For what are they being paid? How does service rendered to a private client compete with a duty to the electorate? It is the same problem that arises with opaque political donations and with public procurement tenders channelled through a “VIP fast lane”. Regardless of whether a contract was deserved, the perception of queue-barging and the absence of transparency bring the whole process into disrepute.
The government on Wednesday said it was unable to find any minutes of a ministerial call with Randox, the company that paid Mr Paterson as a consultant, and was also awarded hundreds of millions of pounds in Covid testing contracts. The company has said the two things are not connected.
This whole area would ideally be self-policed by a natural sense of constitutional propriety. For many decent MPs, those cultural guard rails still stand. But once public doubt about all politicians’ motives takes hold and the benefit of the doubt is withdrawn, there is not much use relying on the operation of some collective Westminster conscience to restore confidence. Bans will have to be imposed on second jobs, with minimal caveats.
However, Mr Johnson cannot be allowed to declare that the end of the matter. He is only now interested in dressing a wound that he inflicted on himself and his party. His first instinct in the Paterson case is the more reliable guide to his motives and his ethics. While parliament can begin to repair its reputation by acting now, the change in culture that is required to restore probity will ultimately require a change of government.