Tom Griffin (London, OK): The ongoing debacle in the House of Commons last week overshadowed an equally significant scandal in the House of Lords. A day after Michael Martin became the first Speaker of the Commons to be forced out since 1695, Lord Truscott and Lord Taylor of Blackburn became the first peers to face suspension from the Lords since 1642.
The latter landmark is in some ways more troubling. The Sub-Committee on Lords Interests looked at the conduct of the peers involved in the cash for amendments affair. It found that Truscott "was advertising his power and willingness to influence Parliament in return for a substantial financial inducement"and that Taylor displayed "his clear willingness to breach the Code of Conduct by engaging in paid advocacy, and by failing to act on his personal honour." This is a degree of corruption beyond fiddling expenses.
There is now a danger that a crackdown on expenses will leave some MPs and peers more susceptible to financial inducements from lobbyists. It is essential therefore that reform of Parliament includes measures to regulate lobbying.
In the wake of the Lords verdict, David Miller of the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency called for a statutory register to achieve this.
Like the Commons, the House of Lords must get rid of its ‘bad apples’. But, as with expenses, the system needs urgent reform through transparency. Lobbying of politicians must be out in the open so that the public can scrutinise who is influencing decisions on public policy. If Gordon Brown wants to restore public trust, his reforms must include a statutory register of lobbyists, which would put in the public domain who is influencing whom, on what and how much they are spending.
The public must now be allowed to see in whose interest politicians are acting – their own, the outside interests that pay them – as demonstrated by Lords Taylor and Truscott – or the public's.
The case for a register has been taken up by the Commons' Public Administration Select Committee, and by a number of reformist MPs, several of whom were prominent in the calling for Michael Martin to step down as speaker.
Gordon Prentice, who called on Martin to go during Monday's extraordinary Commons sitting, has put down an early day motion calling for a compulsory register. A list of MPs who have signed up is on the Commons website. If your MP isn't there, consider writing to them.
