PARTHURBLOG

It’s a hell of a recipe; troughsful of deception, gallons of ‘oversight’, lashings of open-mouthed incredulity, all simmered until angry, then topped with lashings of Whitehall farce.

Still, the expenses scandal has given the nation a common thread for the week, in the same way Diana’s death – or at least the response to Diana’s death – gave us a unifying theme and made us feel connected.

Perhaps we owe the dishonourable members a psychological vote of thanks? It’s been a long time since I have heard so many spontaneous conversations between strangers.

Of course, if we’re honest with ourselves – when we’re not exchanging moat, dry-rot or lightbulb anecdotes – we may detect a hint of collective responsibility underpinning our indignation. When our active participation in the political process can be summed up as tutting at newspaper headlines on the train and shouting at the TV during “Question Time” (mea culpa), perhaps we now have an inkling that it was always going to come to this.

We are like the parents who have left their off-spring home alone for the weekend: on our return, we are outraged what the flashmob has done with the sofa, the flatscreen TV, the kitchen appliances, the carpets and the garden. But in truth, we know that we are at least partially responsible.

People – especially in groups – will always push boundaries as far as they can until they hit the wall that defines the limits of the acceptable.

“GO TO YOUR ROOM”

Nevertheless, the miscreants do bear the lion’s share of the blame, and like the children who have been grounded indefinitely, they’re desperately trying to work out how to get back into our good books.

Here are my suggestions for them, if they want to come downstairs again:

Reinstate Elizabeth Filkin: as Commissioner for Standards, she shone a light into the affairs of Keith Vaz, John Reid, Geoffrey Robinson and Peter Mandelson. Indeed, she was so thorough that The Guardian and The Daily Mail managed to agree that she was hounded out in 2002 for (in the words of Martin Bell) “doing her job too well.”

Bring her back. If the House of Commons could swallow THAT pill, then we might start to think it was serious about cleaning up its act.

Pass the Hat Round: have you ever given thought to the implications of the phrase ‘there have been calls for an Public Inquiry’? Simply, it means costs to the public purse – whether it’s lawyers or civil servants or commercial auditors, there are fees to be paid. Very, very large fees to be paid.

If there is to be an Independent Inquiry into a mess that Members created by defining their own rules, then they might want to consider personally paying for the clean up. Divide the total bill between the 646 of them; better still, pro-rata the individual payments in direct proportion to the claims made over the past five years.

Use Public Property: stop playing the popular parlour game of “I currently live…

…with my sister
…with my parents
…with my partner-in-our-Southampton-hideaway
…with my MP spouse in my/her/his/our 1st/2nd residence
…in my family home
…in my London flat (11 minutes from my family home)
…in my CGT-free 2nd/3rd/4th home ”

As an alternative to the current ‘get-rich-using-other-people’s-money’ set-up, MPs should be provided with accommodation near the House of Commons, owned by the Crown.

There’s a very nice development coming on the market in a couple of years which would just fit the bill: The Olympic Village. It’s now being funded by the public purse, so we might as well get use of it.

And as for security concerns – well, it might encourage residents of the Westminster village to spend more time with their constituents.

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