Subverting transparency

The government's plans to shelve the Members of Parliament (Pecuniary Interests) Bill and replace it with a system under the Standing Orders smacks of "mates justice" and an effort to evade public scrutiny. Rather than being overseen publicly by the courts, the disclosure regime will be dealt with by Parliament's privileges committee - politicians sitting in judgement on themselves, in secret, and with transparency and justice subverted by shoddy back-room dealing. We are rightly suspicious of such processes when applied to the police, or by professional bodies such as the Law Society or Medical Council; why then should we allow politicians to scratch each other's backs to the public detriment in this way?

The potential for MPs to have conflicts of interest raises significant questions of public trust. The solution to such problems is transparency, allowing the public both to judge whether a conflict is significant, and to hold politicians accountable for dubious behaviour. But that is not enough. Investigations into the truthfulness or otherwise of those disclosures must be open, public, and immune to political pressure. This suggests that the courts, rather than Parliament, are the best venue for such matters. While MPs will cry "Parliamentary Sovereignty", this is not a matter of Parliament's internal procedures. It is not about whether MPs trust one another, but whether we trust them. Put this way, it should be clear why having more MPs in the process is no solution.