Courageous Tory MPs on Privileges Committee deserve cross-party respect: Andy Brown

The second problem with dismissing everyone who tries to represent the public as a corrupt incompetent liar who is only in it for their own self-interest is that accepting that view allows those who fall into that category to get away with some appalling behaviour.

It puts at risk our entire democratic system if we allow ourselves to passively accept lying, cheating and manipulating as normal and fall for the myth that it is never possible for anyone to enter public office with good intentions and succeed in sticking with them.

It is right to be cynical about Ministers who use public office to award lucrative contracts to friends and relatives. Others manage to do very difficult high pressure jobs without lining their own pocket.

It helps the corrupt and weakens those who behave decently if we make no distinction between the two.

It matters when MPs choose to neglect their duties to appear on shows like ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’ in return for large sums of money. Yet the vast majority of MPs don’t indulge in such exploitative behaviour and most of them spend very long hours working hard on behalf of their constituents.

There is a real difference between an MP who gets caught discussing the price of their vote with a lobbying company and those who think long and hard about the issues before they decide how to vote on the basis of what they genuinely believe.

Standards are important. There are still a lot of people in public office who can be trusted to uphold them. Those who don’t shouldn’t be allowed to cover up their faults with a knowing smile that encourages the public to believe that everyone else is as bad as them.

There is, for instance, a genuine and very real contrast between the behaviour of Boris Johnson and the behaviour of MPs from his own political party who were appointed by their colleagues to investigate wrongdoing by MPs.

The former Prime Minister was found guilty of knowingly lying to the House of Commons by every one of his party colleagues who looked into his behaviour. He then proceeded to try and rubbish their reputation. The very same day that he was found guilty of lying about not being aware of lockdown parties, video emerged of people dancing and taking group photographs. At the time the rest of us weren’t even allowed to gather at a funeral. Two of the people in those pictures remained firmly on Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list.

By contrast every single Conservative MP on the House of Commons Privileges Committee looked carefully at what Boris Johnson said to the House of Commons and concluded that it conflicted so radically with the evidence that they needed to recommend a severe sanction for lying to the House.

Doing that required courage and determination and they chose to go down the route of forming an independent judgement about the facts rather than adopting the new American-style politics where supporting your own side requires ditching any regard for the truth.

It is a sign of a healthy democracy when someone who has recently been Prime Minister has to face exactly the same consequences as any other member of our Parliament who knowingly and deliberately lies to it. It weakens that democracy if the people that MPs from across the House appointed to uphold standards on their behalf are attacked when they do that job rigorously.

During the Brexit referendum campaign we heard a great deal about the importance of British Parliamentary sovereignty. If that means anything then it ought to mean that our Parliament is able to scrutinise the behaviour of the most powerful in the land and exercise control when they step beyond acceptable limits. It was interesting to see how casually some of the strongest voices about the importance of an independent Parliament in 2016 decided that powerful democratic controls over abuses of power were unimportant when they were applied to Boris Johnson.

One of the main things that this country used to pride itself on was our ability to hold sincere beliefs without demonising everyone who holds a different set of beliefs equally seriously.

It is important therefore to express respect for those we normally disagree with when they stand up for decent values regardless of the personal or political consequences.

We still have significant numbers of public representatives who are prepared to state the truth as they find it even when it brings them no political advantage. There are still people in public office who form alliances and friendships across party lines because they care about a particular locality or a particular issue more than their care about party politics.

Those features of our public life should be valued and appreciated.

Every single Conservative MP who voted to support the report of the House of Commons Privileges Committee deserves our respect.

Those who failed to back it don’t. They aren’t all the same.

Andy Brown is the North Yorkshire Councillor for Aire Valley.