In defence of MPs not publishing their expenses

[ciphergoth]

(Copied from a comment I made elsewhere)

Gosh, but my MP is quick. I read about MPs moving to conceal their expenses again, and was moved to write to him. But I only got as far filling in my address in the letter on writetothem.com and thinking about what I wanted to write when I got the reply. It went like this:

Dear ciphergoth,

Thanks for writing. It says here I'm supposed to give some guff about costs of documenting these things, but you wouldn't buy that and I wouldn't want to insult you with it. If you promise not to tell anyone, I'll tell you the real reason.

We spend absolutely footling amounts of money compared to the money that we control as MPs. We could be twice as profligate as we are and it would make no difference to the national spend at all. In fact if that profligacy made us 0.1% more efficient at our jobs, it would totally be worth it, because if we can save 0.1% we've saved all our salaries and expenses many, many times. But the tabloids care because it's not hard to make a reasonable expense sound unreasonable, and it's always a story, a story that takes our time and attention away from the things that really matter.

We wouldn't mind being as accountable as everyone else, but we know we're not going to get treated fairly, and frankly we don't need the bother. We thought saying all this out loud wouldn't work, though, so frankly it seemed best for everyone's long term interests just to bury it while we were fucking up the big stuff.

Your loving MP, Keith.

What do you think?

(NB in case it isn't clear, my MP didn't really write the letter above)

Comments

[apathysketchpad.com (from livejournal.com)]

It's an interesting idea, but I think the principle is important enough that no numbers could overrule it. I almost don't care about the actual expenses so much as how the current MPs vote on it; if the government pushed it through and then everyone who voted for it (or abstained) was lost their seat at the next election, getting the decision reversed would be relatively unimportant to me. But any MP who feels they should be unaccountable to the public with regard to their use of tax money has so fundamentally missed the point of government that they shouldn't be allowed to do it.

In any case, if MPs never did anything if they thought tabloids would get the wrong end of the stick then (a) they'd never do anything and (b) tabloids would just make [more] stuff up. If you don't want to be scrutinised, don't apply for an important job in the public sector.

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

I think your imaginary MP friend is reasonable. There's a general fallacy about evaluating public/private conduct. Think of Bill Clinton. I was passing by his country not long after he bombed a medicine factory in Sudan, and also received a blowjob. There was a huge media campaign against him over the blowjob. Only a few people in places like Berkeley were angry about the bombs.

I think the fallacy is roughly as follows: The public looks at a powerful figure and correctly tries to judge them. They know from everyday experience how to judge personal conduct but frankly have no idea how to judge the actions of power, since that skill is not diffused. So the public tries to judge personal conduct with great severity, while ignoring the actions of power. The proper response from journalists and educators would be to teach people how to judge power.

[djm4]

Dear MP,

I have a lot of sympathy with this view, since I find the press griping about every last thing you had for lunch annoying too. However, if you don't publish your expenses, they'll just run with 'MPs spend huge amounts of our money on themselves and then cover it up,' which is also a good story.

Yes, the money is a footling amount. I don't agree that that makes it a candidate for concealment. If your instinct is to conceal even something as footling as your expenses, it doesn't bode well for how open you'll be in other areas of government. The presumption should always be that Government will happen openly and under full scrutiny unless there's a good reason why not. 'Because The Sun will distort the figures' is not a good enough reason, for me. You like the tabloids when they handily distort the figures about immigration, or single parent families. Live by the tabloid scare story: die by the tabloid scare story.

Especially since, if all MP's expenses are made public, any single expense will seem less remarkable. You will have a defence, not only of 'these expenses are within the limits allowed', but also in many cases '400 other MPs across different parties spent a similar amount on all of this'. No, the papers won't tend to report this, but after about five such stories where this turns out to be the case, the public will lose interest.

[lovingboth]

Dear MP,

Nice try. I agree that you have made some horrendous mistakes in 'fucking up the big stuff' and that compared to, say, the financial consequences of your vote for the invasion of Iraq, the cost to the public of your second home in London is tiny.

Alas, you know that some of your Parliamentary colleagues have their noses so deep in the trough that it's a wonder they can see daylight. Allowances for staff are to help you do your job, not fund your children's lives of never ending piss-ups. In order to make an informed choice at election time, the voters need to know who is taking the piss. Getting rid of just one useless MP would increase efficiency by more than 0.1%.

It would have helped if so many of you hadn't voted for a string of privacy reducing measures with the justification that the innocent have nothing to hide. If that's good enough for us, it's good enough for you. (See also the way that keeping benefits low apparently 'incentivises' the poor, and the insistence on means testing several of them when not doing so would actually be cheaper.)

You also know that under the current system, the majority of MPs have no influence on policy and no qualifications for the job beyond being able to be chosen by few members of their party in one of its safe seats. (Having the right skin colour and genitals helps greatly, doesn't it?) Similarly, you know that publishing details of party funding is helping reduce the abuses there.

All this increases the cynicism much of the public feel towards politicians and politics in general. It actively helps extremist groups like the BNP who seek the 'none of the above' vote. The effect is most strong with the European Parliament where the abuses are larger and the controls even weaker, but it is there at all levels of government.

In this case, the vast bulk of the money has been spent in scanning what receipts exist. Publish them!

[lovingboth]

And it looks like they will be published! I wonder if the desire to keep things secret is proportional to the length of time served as an MP.

[httf.livejournal.com]

I think that clever, casual tone is hardly ever used in American politics. Fascinating.