Thursday 30 March 2017

Punishment for MPs who transgress

Guido reports that a committee recommends that MPs who break their code of conduct should be prosecuted in the criminal courts. To me, this seems an expensive way of persuading members to keep to the strait and narrow, besides potentially adding to the already bloated prison population. We should be reducing the number of imprisonable offences, not adding to them.

Far more effective in my opinion would be to compel MPs standing again to publish as part of their paid-for election communications a list of all reproofs and censures they have earned during their previous term in parliament. For most voters, who do not follow the minutiae of the Commons, this would be the first they would know of how their former representative was regarded by his fellows.


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