A shameful spectacle

✒ LAST week we saw the shameful spectacle of Conservative MPs voting to scrap Parliament’s Standards system and safeguards in favour of a new regime they proposed to design.

Their aim was to get one of their own number – Owen Paterson – off the hook and weaken a Standards system that they seem to find uncomfortably independent at a time when our hapless government and its members seem ever more prone to losing sight of simple concepts like integrity and the difference between right and wrong.

The startling U-turn that followed was all the more woeful for being prompted by critical headlines and the furious public backlash, rather than any pretence of pangs of conscience or sudden discovery of principle.

A strong, independent Standards regime is essential in preventing toxic sleaze and corruption in Parliament, and in maintaining public trust. MPs should not try to weaken

safeguards or ‘mark their own homework’ in this way.

Our local MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, had a starring role in the whole sorry affair. As the government’s representative, he broadcast the message that it’s fine to break the rules, because the rules can just be changed.

Local constituents deserve better than this. It drags our politics through the mud and is something you’d expect to see in Putin’s Russia rather than the home of parliamentary democracy.

We know Mr Rees-Mogg loves obscure words, so (with thanks to Susie Dent) here is a new one for him to consider: ‘malversation’ which is defined as ‘the corrupt administration of power.’

Cllr Alastair Singleton Councillor, Saltford Ward