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British politics stares into the abyss

By Krishnan Guru-Murthy

Updated on 14 May 2009

A former Labour minister is suspended for siphoning off £16,000 of taxpayers' money, a Tory aide loses his job for an "unacceptable" expenses claim and a parliamentary inquiry finds two peers guilty of misconduct. Channel 4 News brings together politicians, commentators and ordinary people to debate whether recent events signal a breakdown in trust between the people and its politicians.

Parliament (Getty)

During the studio discussion Channel 4 News viewer Michael Howard said MPs were fiddling their expenses, which at the very least showed they were incompetent.

Kate Hoey MP stressed that no-one could condone what had happened. It was up to the three political parties and parliament to sort this out. "The will is probably there now."

Richard Reeve, from the Demos think tank, said the only defence MPs had was that they worked within the rules. He suggested that we could call parliament "institutionally idiotic". "This reminds me of the debate about banks," he said.  “First the banks, now parliament. It seems to me our institutions are broken, not society."

Conservative MP Peter Bottomley recalled that when Martin Bell and he were on the standards committee, they had tried to get things done and failed. But he believed MPs could improve things a great deal. If MPs’ claims were in public, he said, then most of the problems would go away.

Chris Huhne MP agreed that voters should not have to pay for his trouser press – and that was why had paid back the money he had claimed. But he said the expense was legitimate because he was expected to look smart when turning up at civic events. And he repeated his claim that he was 580th out of 620 MPs outside London in the size of his claims. "My claims are among the lowest in parliament," he stressed.

Matthew Taylor suggested that the programme was trying to create a hysterical climate, "turning Channel 4 News into Kilroy". He said he knew MPs who worked long hours and who had taken big pay cuts to become members of parliament. The allowances system was to reconcile what MPs thought they were worth with the public’s low view of them.

Sir Paul Judge, founder of the Jury Team political movement, noted that burglars aren’t acquitted for burgling – and that this standard should be applied to MPs.

Baroness Warnock, academic and philosopher, said the answer was fairly apparent: the rules had to be changed. MPs living out of London needed a second house, but they should not have their dogfood and swimming pools subsidised. What was needed was a change because recent events had made politicians feel "frightful fools".

Pollster Peter Kellner said he thought parliament itself needed a leader, in the form of the speaker, who commanded public support – and the present incumbent, Michael Martin, did not do so. Kate Hoey agreed – the speaker, she said, had lost the confidence of most MPs. But Peter Bottomley said it was too easy to blame the speaker for what MPs had done.

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