Greed in parliament

British MPs and politicians helped create and maintain a corrupt system which they could have reformed at any time, yet never did, writes The Guardian.

The Guardian

It is important to see,in the larger scheme of things exposed by the Westminster expenses scandal, that the role of the Speaker of the House of Commons remains a second-order issue. Whatever his faults and limitations, Michael Martin is not personally responsible for creating the cornucopia of allowances on which so many MPs have gorged for so long. The MPs themselves — over 70 of whose expenses have now been exposed to detailed public view — bear primary personal responsibility for shaping that. They themselves, not Speaker Martin, made their expenses claims. They and their political parties — Labour and the Conservatives in particular – have connived in the creation and maintenance of a corrupt and indefensible system which they could have reformed at any time, yet never did.

So it is important not to get the Speaker's position out of proportion. Nevertheless, Mr Martin is not irrelevant to what has gone so wrong for parliament. He is implicated in this crisis in two direct ways: first, by his earlier efforts to get the courts to exempt MPs and their expenses from freedom of information laws; and now, second, by his increasingly inept and reprehensible public handling of the successive phases of the crisis from his position in the Commons chair. He represents parliament to the people — and he has let both of them down. …

• Deborah Capras comments on this topic in: Time to pull out.