Terminology | 2010.03.29
MPs stuck in the lobbyist mire | Peter Preston
It is 16 years since the MPs\' cash-for-questions scandal but standards in public life still fall short
It is 16 years since the Guardian uncovered cash for questions and a group of Conservative MPs prepared to go lobbying on demand; 16 years since a Sunday Times sting found too many "honour- able members" ready to put their hands in the cookie jar; 16 years since an embattled John Major set up the Committee on Standards in Public Life to make our democracy a purer, more ordered thing. And here we go again. Another sting: another stench.
Try examining yesterday\'s Channel 4/Sunday Times exercise in the kindliest light. Not all of the MPs approached by a phoney PR company took the bait. Nobody did anything illegal. Some responses were more pathetic than menacing. Margaret Moran – on her way out after the expenses debacle – offered to ring up a "girls\' gang" of MPs to push an appropriate cause. Geoff Hoon confessed wanly: "I\'ve got two children at university, so I\'ve got to get a job."
The top name on this lousy list, Stephen Byers, made an ass of himself: "I\'m like a cab for hire – at £5,000 a day." Maybe the stuff about pushing Lord Adonis to go easy on National Express was merely more promotional blah – though his claims there, filmed and recorded before being hastily withdrawn, ought to be investigated.
In a sense, the details revealed are less important than the general impression confirmed. Sixteen years ago, it was Conservative MPs who were stuck in the lobbying mire. Now it\'s Labour MPs, and ostensibly sentient ex-ministers to boot. What on earth is Patricia Hewitt, former warrior for Age Concern, former chief of the National Council for Civil Liberties that turned into Liberty, doing meeting with supposed PR companies, let alone offering to help them fix this or that?
Cash for questions 1994 was a savage blow to voters who held parliament in unquestioning esteem. The expenses shambles 2009 brought Commons and Lords lower than low. The wriggling since spells continuing dismay. Party political funding drifts in a Sargasso Sea somewhere between Unite Beach and the Cape of Good Ashcroft . Add Byers and Co for complete despair.
Whatever happened to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, you ask? Where, 11 commodious reports later, did all the purity go? In fact, there\'s a reasonable story to tell on behalf of the committee. There wouldn\'t be an Electoral Commission, stronger rules on lobbyists or better standards in many areas without it. You can use a checklist to make sure that expense regimes in the next parliament don\'t ooze away. You can expect something better than the slop of self-serving regulation. You can hope that the prime minister doesn\'t cover up for colleagues in a jam.
But there is one question without an answer, one problem that stinky stings underline. Where – after all those 16 years – are the committee\'s own Seven Principles of Public Life, the bedrock that Lord Nolan first carved? Selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership? Ideas and ideals, not just words. And there, in its latest annual report , the committee seems to shrug, a Sysiphus pleading exhaustion.
"Codes of practice achieve very little if they are not supported by effective governance," it says. Expanding the rulebook to deal with every fresh scandal isn\'t a sustainable approach. We have to ensure that the Seven Principles "are embedded in the culture of our public service institutions and translated into personal values, reinforced in everyday behaviour by systems and processes".
Remember that today as Brown and Cameron compete to offer more and more rules. Remember that in the wasteland of dodgy dossiers and non-dom debate. "Getting it" isn\'t a quick fix, any more than a letter from the pope. We won\'t get better – unless we get better. We won\'t begin to believe again – unless we see something worth believing in.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]-scandal-cash-questions-public
