Investigating Cash for Amendments
The four Lords named by the Sunday Times in the cash-for-amendments scandal will not be subjected to an official police investigation. The Metropolitan Police statement said “The application of the criminal law to members of the House of Lords in the circumstances that have arisen here is far from clear.” and went on to say “In addition, there are very clear difficulties in gathering and adducing evidence in these circumstances in the context of Parliamentary Privilege.” How it can be “far from clear” how to apply criminal law to members of the House of Lords escapes me. The answer is and must be very simple: “Exactly as it is to everyone else.” If there is reasonable suspicion that a criminal offence has been commited by one or more individuals, whether they be Lords or not, warrants are required to gather information and question other individuals. Individuals, Peers or otherwise, are generally required by law to assist the police to the best of their ability and failure to do so can lead to prosection for withholding evidence or attempting to pervert the course of justice. It is right that Parliamentary Privilege should be considered and warrants for investigation should carefully outline the subject of the investigation and the span of the information that may be requested.
That only leaves the question of whether or not a criminal offence may have been commited. The recordings made by the Sunday Times reporters obviously convinced them and their editors that the Peers in question were willing to take money in order to introduce amendments to legislation. If the Peers were absolutely certain that the allegations of such willingness were unfounded, surely they would, or at least could, sue the Sunday Times. I have not, as yet, heard of such a reaction. If it is not a criminal offence for Members of either House to accept cash, gratuities or any other form of recompense from individuals or businesses to influence the wording of legislation, its passage into law or the direction of overall policy, it jolly well should be. In fact, it should be a central tennet of any decent democratic system.
However, the practice of allowing those with money to buy influence on policy and legislation has been with us for many years and has been honed to a vertitable art form under New Labour. Is it a meer coincidence that these four Lords are elected peers? These people were amongst New Labour’s replacements for hereditary peers, introduced to improve the Upper House and it is only a couple of years ago that the cash-for-honours affair raised the question of whether those with enough money could buy their way in. As far as I’m aware, the police investigation into those allegations was abandoned for very similar reasons, giving the distinct impression that the police may have believed that some peerages were linked to donations to the Labour Party. However, they knew that it would be nearly impossible to gather enough evidence to secure any convictions. To what extent both sets of allegations are true remains shrouded from public view, but it certainly seems that something is decidedly rotten in Denmark.
