Act II in the Expenses Saga

Enter Stage Right…  Keir Starmer QC, head of the CPS, who on Friday charged 4 Parliamentarians – 3 Labour MPs and a Tory Peer – under the Theft Act 1968 over their expenses.  Not since Lloyd George was slapped in the 1920s for selling peerages and knighthoods has there been such a huge scandal over our elected representatives.

The three Labour MPs have threatened to use “Parliamentary privilege” – introduced in the 1689 Bill of Rights to allow Parliamentarians to say what they like without fear of being arrested by the monarch of the day – as a defence.  The CPS wants this tested in a court, all of which has caused uproar.

You can see why these three MPs probably feel they’ve had the short end of the wedge, given other MPs were paid £30k+ for phantom second homes yet don’t seem to have been charged.  But perception is reality.

Expect whoever wins the General Election to embark on the biggest clean-up of politics, starting with Cameron’s plans for a Parliamentary Privilege Act to “clarify the rules of Parliamentary privilege, to make clear that they cannot be used by MPs to evade justice”…

By Ben Pickering