While the trend in recent years has been towards ever increasing openness and transparency in parliamentary expenses, I believe that the most recent expenses ‘scandal’ shows, instead, that the system has been made too transparent and requires a complete rethink.
The scandal concerns Liberal Democrat MP and Cabinet member, David Laws, who stepped down from his position as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, following his admission that he claimed expenses to pay rent to his partner. The irony is cruel: to protect his private life from further intrusion, Laws had to reveal that his landlord was also his partner.
David Laws paid his partner £40,000 in rent since 2006. These payments were then claimed back from Mr. Laws’ expenses account; a direct violation to the new parliamentary expenses rules put into place in 2006.
As a key member of the negotiating team from the Liberal Democrats in the formation of the coalition government, Laws has found common ground between the two parties and taken a leading role in the development of relations. David Cameron described him as an “honourable man” and Nick Clegg echoed this, adding that there might be an “opportunity for him to rejoin the government.”
Right or wrong, there is a deeper debate here.
It is generally agreed that Laws acted not out of a financial motivation, but instead to protect his privacy and sexuality from entering the public domain, a privacy which Nick Clegg described as being “cruelly shattered” by the press.
So with his praises being sung by the leaders of both parties in government, and a general agreement that he acted selflessly to protect his privacy and the privacy of those around him, what exactly is Mr. Laws guilty of?
The current expenses rules require a level of openness which most people would not be comfortable with. But that is part and parcel of being an MP in the current system. So, in an attempt to circumvent the levels of openness required and protect his partner from public scrutiny, Laws claimed the very lowest amount in rent possible, and lied on his expenses claims.
Shouldn’t an MP be entitled to their privacy? Or are we instead positioning our MPs as celebrities? They are open to the public eye and the invasion of privacy that comes with it. This is what the drive for transparency and openness has led to: a system where even an MP’s sexuality must be put on a form and revealed to the public. Mr. Laws’ decision to keep his sexuality to himself is more than understandable. One can only hope that this sorry tale marks the end of the expenses saga.