John Bercow wrote the following to Nick Clegg in response to the Lib Dem leader’s request to expand the audit into MPs expenses. ‘What concerned the MEC most was that your proposal would require a major exercise in gathering evidence, since the evidence needed is not within the records of the Department of Resources. Indeed, investigating the payment of CGT would go well beyond the responsibilities of the Department of Resources, which does not have authority over member’s tax affairs. Agreeing to your proposal would therefore considerably lengthen the timescale of the review, and the MEC did not feel it could support this.’
MEC stands for Members Estimates Committee and CGT stands for Capital Gains Tax. Ignoring the fact that MPs are not willing to be honest with themselves and the public ( The MEC is made up of MPs ) and putting aside the expenses scandal what is most alarming is this poorly acted political pantomime and its attempt to convince the people and taxpayers of the integrity of our leadership. Nothing has changed. Indeed if Bercow’s letter proves anything it is that any convoluted language will be used to conceal and deflect from the undiagnosed rot that perniciously erodes our Parliament.
There was an article in ‘The Spectator’ this July by a man named David Selbourne in which he made the following statement. ‘There is no movement, moral or political, and whether of left or right, which is strong enough to purge the British body politic of its foulness.’
A few months after the expenses crisis and his claim is still terrible in its relevance. Those unhappy revelations and the unconvincing and distracting measures put in place to allegedly remove the unashamed greed from the middle of our land are only part of the problem.
It is the idea of our fragile nation unconvinced by and untrusting of the main parties that makes the spectre of the BNP more concerning yet worryingly easier to understand. There is undeniably a problem with immigration but there is a greater problem with trust. We do not trust our representatives because we know that some of them have proved that their own financial interests are more important that serving the people. That is professional adultery and has to be removed.
Critically the Parliamentary Standards Bill does not deal with the murky relationship between big business and Parliament. How many working in the lobby industry are Parliamentary candidates for the likely incoming Tory government? It was the Labour Lords at the beginning of the year that proved willing to table changes to legislation in return for money. The link between our legislators in both houses and the business that seeks to influence them is perhaps more sinister than the expenses scandal and may have even in part prompted it. It is the abolition of people entering Parliament to benefit in this way or succumbing to these values once inside that forms the backbone to the Battersea4Britain campaign. Abolition was a powerful movement a few hundred years ago. Let it become so again.
I would very much like to thank Timesign in Wandsworth and Corporate Image of London in Earlsfield for supporting us through signage and branded clothing for our campaign. THANY YOU BILL, SUE AND FIONA.
