As part of the slow, painful and vital process of restoring public trust in Parliament and our democracy the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) has been set up to oversee MP's expenses. Last Wednesday Parliament was asked to approve its membership.
You would think that by now every MP would have got the message that the days when we thought we could determine our own pay and judge ourselves on our own behaviour were over. But no. On the night Conservative MPs attempted to move an amendment to interfere with the membership of the board of IPSA while the Government made no attempt to stop them undermining its independence.
In an effort to preserve both the independence of IPSA and the integrity of the independent public appointments process, we used an obscure procedural device to ensure that MPs were not able to pick and choose the membership of IPSA's board. Instead, the House was required to consider the full slate of names as the Act intended.
The Tories and some Labour MPs accused the Liberal Democrats of attempting to stifle debate and prevent the setting up of IPSA. The procedure would not have delayed it any more than the Tory amendment - which by deleting a member of the board would have prevented IPSA being set-up. Our motion, if it had been won, would have delayed its setting up by no more than twenty-four hours. There was no attempt to stifle debate - merely to prevent Conservative MPs from undermining the independence of the IPSA appointments process.
MPs should not be picking and choosing the members of the authority in charge of MPs expenses. Nor should Conservative MPs be second-guessing a fair and open competitive selection process. We may have had to use an obscure procedure, but once again we kept Parliament honest.
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