MPs’ rules risk new scandal
PARLIAMENT risks being plunged into a new scandal as rules to govern MPs’ behaviour “lag behind” other workplaces, a retiring member of its standards watchdog warns today.
Sharon Darcy says the rules have not kept up with public expectations while MPs have “limited appetite for change”, which leaves many reluctant to join the committee to hold colleagues to account.
Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph Ms Darcy, one of seven lay members of the committee, says the rules focus on MPs’ finances and miss “wider questions of conflicts of interest” that can be “equally corrosive”. She also accuses
MPs of viewing those who do not work in Westminster as “strangers that don’t understand”, leading them to be less open about how Parliament works.
Ms Darcy is one of three lay members stepping down to allow new people to join the committee, which also has seven places for elected MPs.
It has been criticised for failing to uphold the standards expected of public servants after a series of high-profile transgressions were dismissed or not punished harshly enough. And Kevin Barron, the committee’s chairman, was recently forced to step aside while he was investigated.
Mr Barron’s peers concluded that he himself had breached rules by accepting payment via charity donation for an event that was hosted in Parliament. However, he was not dismissed or disciplined as the breach was “minor” and “inadvertent”, his colleagues ruled.
That decision prompted Sir Alistair Graham, the former committee chair, to warn that its members should be “whiter than white”.
All of which must be seen in the light of the expenses scandal, revealed by The
Daily Telegraph in 2009, which led to major reforms in how MPs claim for hotels, meals and accommodation.
However, writing in this paper, Ms Darcy warns there is much more to do to avoid another scandal. She says: “The standards system in the Commons lags behind that found in the professions and other walks of life. It has not kept up with changing public expectations and ways of doing things.”
‘The standards system in the Commons lags behind that found in the professions and other walks of life’