Tuesday 5 February 2008

Is it me or…….

I’m confused.

So just after noon today David Cameron announces his lovely new form on which his front bench team will declare expenses employees etc. Either a fairly reasonable plan or an attempt to steal a march in the ‘Transparacy. debate following the to do over MP’s expenses, you can decide. David earnestly exhorted his back benchers to follow this lead and one can only hope that they do.

Anyway shortly afterwards the Leader of the House and Deputy Head Orc, Harriet Harman attempted the normal hatchet job on anything Tory. She said something along the lines of not wanting to get involved in a tit for tat exchange with other parties on the issue.

On being asked whether Labour would be introducing rules for its own MPs before then, she said House of Commons rules needed to apply to all MPs, rather than different rules for different parties.

"We're not going to make up policy on the hoof for the sake of headlines," she said.

Then at tea time our glorious leader hoved into view to announce that he had ordered all Labour MPs to declare "as soon as possible" details of any relatives they employ.

In a letter to the Speaker, he says he has told Labour MPs not to wait until April, as recommended by the Commons standards committee earlier.

Which sounds rather like making up ‘policy on the hoof for the sake of headlines’.

But they wouldn’t do that would they?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looking at the picture on the left, I didn't realise Cameron could pronounce the word Siegheil ;-)

Julie said...

And what's the point, anyway? Declaring that they employ this person or that doesn't guarantee that they are all doing the work for which they are paid.