Contribution
I agree 100%.
There is a responsibility on all of us, frankly, to do better. Why? The point has already been made very well, but there is a decline in trust in politicians. I naively thought when I was elected to this place that if I just told the truth all the time, worked incredibly hard and acted with integrity, it would shine through, but it does not. I have many constituents who do not trust me and think that I am a liar, not because of anything tangible that I have done, but because they think the whole political class is not to be trusted and that the moment somebody becomes a politician, they fall into that class. That is why it is so important that we do more to uphold and strengthen standards in public life.
It is important that we address a couple of areas in particular. One is around stronger safeguards that give our constituents confidence that when we choose to put ourselves forward and become elected to this place, we genuinely have their interests at heart and are not using this place to enrich ourselves. For example, we have to get rid of second jobs. I am not talking about medics maintaining their medical licences; I am talking about people earning vast sums of money while not representing their constituents in this place. I have found that this job is equivalent to two full-time jobs. It is impossible to be a proper Member of Parliament and to do our job properly while constantly being away earning huge sums of money elsewhere. It simply cannot be done, and we need to legislate strongly against that. We also need to do more to enable our constituents to see the difference. Maybe there needs to be greater transparency. I have often wondered if we should clock in and out of the Chamber and report how many surgeries we all hold, and so on, so that people can make fair comparisons and understand who is doing the work and who is not doing the work.
Another point we need to address is our debating. Maybe we need to review “Erskine May” and what constitutes parliamentary language. I have been really disappointed at times since I was elected by the things that are deemed acceptable. For example, I thought it was disgusting when the Leader of the Opposition described Members on the Government Benches as “paedo defenders”, and we all know that we got abuse because of that. The things said in this Chamber get repeated to us by our constituents. Members on the Government Benches who are themselves survivors of child sexual abuse had that label attached to them, and it was deeply distressing to them. Frankly, the Leader of the Opposition should have done better, but that was not called out by Mr Speaker because it is apparently deemed to be parliamentary language. We need to address that.
We also need to look beyond this place. There are examples—one has been given already—of where the public simply do not have the transparency that they would expect at lower levels of government and in public bodies. I was very disappointed to see that the leadership of Durham county council changed the rules on hearing standards complaints, so that a very small committee, on which Reform always has a majority, hears an increasing number of serious complaints. Some former Reform councillors who resigned and sit as independents have described the leadership as shambolic.
The Nolan principles predominantly deal with integrity, but do we need to consider principles that address the challenges of 2026? Is it acceptable for people in public life to express racist opinions under the guise of free speech? Before Reform took control of Durham county council, I supplied it and the media with a full dossier of disgusting Facebook posts from accounts that claimed to be their candidates’ accounts and who the administrators of those accounts were. One of those people went on to become a Reform councillor, which was entirely unacceptable.
Finally—as I raised with the Leader of the House today—as we look increasingly to devolve power, there needs to be stronger accountability for regional mayors and local government, right down to parish council level. There need to be legal safeguards in place to provide protection. At the moment, town and parish councillors do not have to declare interests and are not subject to the same scrutiny as us, yet planning decisions are often made by them. I think we can do better on this issue in a number of areas.