Extraordinary that, while I was away, the Attorney General Baroness Scotland should have come under such pressure. Now, she’s been fined for employing an illegal immigrant as her housekeeper. Here’s her apology and defence of her “technical” error. I do have some sympathy with the Attorney – she obviously trusted this woman, apparently partly because she’s married to a solicitor (a touching detail), had no reason to think she was an overstayer, and has fallen foul of the great mass of rules we all have to comply with nowadays and which are a bigger problem in my view than, say, the growth of CCTV cameras. I have the same sympathy for her as I have, say, for people who are penalised for failing to pay their tax on time, or for forgetting to renew their tax disc. What reduces my sympathy somewhat is the line of defence she’s putting out, which implies she’s been fined for failing to photocopy something, which is a bit misleading. She’s been fined under section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 for employing an illegal immigrant – the technical bit comes in because, having failed to copy the document, she does not benefit from the statutory “excuse”.
I’m not sure she should remain as Attorney after this. But she certainly shouldn’t remain if the more serious allegation is true, that she’s been pocketing over thirty thousand pounds a year in London overnight allowances in spite of having a London home. Even if within the now notorious rules, that is scandalous – and of course there is a link, because the £5000 fine she’s paid today was all the less painful for having been so generously subsidised by the government.
Sadly, I think Gordon Brown may now be so out of touch that he stands by her in spite of everything, and simply does his government more damage. So she may yet survive, after a fashion. She certainly should go, though.
Carl Gardner2009-09-22T17:57:30+00:00
hang on – the telegraph (supporter of all things labour and paper that has hardly profited at all from exposing the expenses stuff) acknowledges in the story to which you link that there is nothing in the rules that says she can’t claim it. the nearest it can get is that parliament’s intention was that it shouldn’t be claimable – we are not told how that intention is deduced (which may or may not be relevant).
i am as cockeyed as they come in support of anyone vaguely on the left, but i would suggest that even the most loathsome tory should not be convicted of breaking rules that (on this evidence at least) they haven’t actually broken. it’s all a bit piranha brothers and transgressing the unwritten code. which, given there is a written rule, is not the safest basis for a conviction.
whether she should or shouldn’t have done it is another (and very valid) matter. but if we are to believe the telegraph, she hasn’t broken the rules. not the worst defence to the charge.
.-= simply wondered´s last blog ..latest search term mania =-.
I reckon only you and Gordon Brown think that since expensesgate, Simply. I don’t think “sticking to the rules” is credible at all – especially as other ministers in her position didn’t take it. She’s simply treated this money as extra salary regardless of the ethics – exactly the expensesgate problem.
well i think of myself as a pretty moral person – largely because i have had few opportunities to be led astray but i’ll still claim it as a theoretical virtue.
i think -like you- what the mps were doing was wrong (if facts are as generally stated) and a problem; but if it’s not against rules or laws, the only place we can try them is harriet’s court of public opinion and that way madness lies.
change the rules, curse ourselves for being stupid and write the money off. if we don’t like our own mp, vote em out and elect a new mouthpiece for our favoured party line who will be equally venal (ie as venal as they can get away with being). get a system of enforcement and then hold people to known rules.
the alternative is to say retrospectively – ah that’s not illegal but other people took a better line on it. i can’t actually show you what you breached but i think your actions were shady by subjective standards of my own (or allegedly objective standards that i or the owners of the telegraph decide are universal) so i’m afraid ‘you’re fired’. but then we are being unethical by breaking the principles of the ECHR even though it wouldn’t apply in such a case. we have to sack ourselves and get a new public.
no – a system has to be clear, prospective and understandable or there is no system.
on the other hand, if there is a vague and undefined nasty smell coming from a particular party then the party will have to take whatever action it deems proper or live with the consequences (largely other politicians saying horrid things and being believed). that’s politics and something that doesn’t have to go by clear rules. in fact if it ever did, i presume it wold explode in a haze of internal contradiction.
.-= simply wondered´s last blog ..latest search term mania =-.