Sleaze watchdog reform plea

THE system that cleared two former foreign secretaries over a “cash-foraccess” scandal needs urgent reform, according to a former Westminster sleaze watchdog.

Sir Alistair Graham, the ex-chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said a committee that largely exonerated Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw should be changed to ensure it “genuinely represents the broader public interest”.

He also questioned why the Parlia- mentary Commissioner for Standards who investigated the MPs had not ruled that their actions brought the Commons into disrepute.

Sir Alistair recommended that several changes be made. He said: “If there was a clear majority of lay members and they were independently recruited in a way that it was clear that they did represent the wider public interest then I think that would be a significant improvement.

“They should be able to vote. If you

So that’s all right then. After his “long and distinguished career”, former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind can move on from what Number 10 now describes as “this distressing episode”. There is even talk of a peerage. One would think that the Downing Street spokesman was commiserating over some medical trauma that had temporarily laid Sir Malcolm low. In fact, the sympathy was over his exposure in a joint investigation by The Telegraph and Channel 4, when both he and Jack Straw were filmed offering to use their positions on behalf of a fictitious company. Both former foreign secretaries were cleared of misconduct last week by the parliamentary standard commissioner, Kathryn Hudson – a commissioner who, it turns out, was appointed on the recommendation of a panel on which Sir Malcolm sat.

Voters are understandably angered by the wrongdoing of those in power. But the charade of accountability to which we have been treated in the past seven days is even more infuriating. Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, is not alone when he says, as he does in today’s paper, that the system by which Miss Hudson scrutinises MPs’ conduct must be reformed. Sir Alistair calls for “lay members” to be appointed to the Commons Committee on Standards, whose chairman, Sir Kevin Barron, prefers to float the idea of circumscribing the powers of the press – presumably to avoid similar embarrassments in future. This goes to the heart of whether MPs can be trusted to police themselves. The suspicion is that they cannot. All the more need then, as Sir Alistair also acknowledges, for independent investigative journalism to do the job for them.