Friday
The police in the UK have admitted that regardless of whether or not an Members of Parliament broke the law regarding expenses (i.e. helping themselves to our money), they see no point in attempting to prosecute any of them as the laws are so arcane, it is almost impossible to know if any have in fact been broken.
I believe it was a Roman senator (Crassus?) who when asked if he would use his power and privilege to prevent himself being punished for some small transgression, he replied "as we make the laws, it behoves us to obey them if we want other to as well". Clearly this is not the view prevailing in Westminster.
Ah, to be above the law... vote for me and I will make all of your dreams come true.
Posted by Ken at March 22, 2008 04:01 AM
Not quite. The police have been advised by the CPS that the records are not sufficient to provide evidence of wrongdoing. It is the argument of some MPs - notably those who want to be indirectly censorious of their comlleagues - that the rules are so arcane that they cannot understand them. Doesn't seem to be a problem with Erskine May... or perhaps they'd never admit that.
The real scandal is not MP's exploitation of the rules, but that the rules on permissable are apparently vastly different and vastly more generous for MPs than they are for other taxpayers. I have remarked here before that they have a special tax office, and on my suspicions that that means they are not subject to the same approach from HMIT and HMCT.
HMRC has recently been engaging in an aggressive campaign against family businesses' "income shifting", where the onus in on the taxpayer to prove that the pay is somehow "proportionate" to the work done by individuals for the business. This onus does not apparently have to be discharged in the same way by MPs who employ familiy members.
I don't mind if MPs make a lot of money from their office. There are, after all, relatively few of them; and they notionally do an important job. I do mind if they are insulated - by the decision of the institutions executing those burdens - from the burdens they impose on others; and so the way they do that job is being corrupted by the organs of state. I don't want a mean-minded compliance culture to start dominating MPs lives, but if they don't have direct experience of it, it explains why they do so little to protect their constituents.
Posted by guy herbert at March 22, 2008 08:46 AM
I recall seeing an article some years ago saying that MPs were not subject to the same tax rules as anyone else. There were it said many allowances for these people that did not apply to the general taxpayer, employed or self -employed. That is clearly wrong, so why do politicians keep banging on about "social justice"? A good place to start would be in the House of Commons, for common indeed it is!
Posted by Derek Buxton at March 22, 2008 12:49 PM
Somehow, I don't think it was Crassus. ;)
Could have been a different Crassus.
Posted by CountingCats at March 22, 2008 01:26 PM
I think Juvenal was closer to it:
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? or, Who guards the guardians?
Clearly a question of as great a burning intensity now as when he asked it nearly twenty centuries ago.
Posted by Miv Tucker at March 22, 2008 06:20 PM
The effectively unchecked growth of government in the late Roman Republic brought with it all sorts of campaign and corruption laws, in a superficial attempt to deal with the problem and to aggrandize the reputation of those initiating the laws. The result was a complex web that could as easily be used to ensnare competitors, and political deals which, when they fell apart, eventually brought their republic down.
If a law cannot be equitably applied, if equal punishment is not possible, perhaps it is better not to enforce it at all. Who enforces blue laws nowadays?
Posted by tdh at March 23, 2008 07:46 PM
