Will MPs be allowed to ciommit murder ?

[modeller]

Now that the MPs being prosecuted for the criminal offence of fraud and theft are claiming parliamentary immunity does that mean all the other 400 who have or are being asked to pay back their improper gains will also get away with it ? How about Geoffrey Archer maybe he will be able to claim for wrongful arrest and detention ? If they are successful in their plea what is to stop any of them from claiming immunity for any crime including murder. ?

[modeller]

Then why are the MPs trying to use it ?

[Sandy-Wroe]

well, some of them seem to be getting away with murder...

[modeller]

May I suggest Zac that you read the 1689 Act of Parliamentary Privilege
and the 2008/9 Reasonable Discretion Act both of which allow MPs to commit
any criminal act as long as they claim they acted in good faith. Being as that is subjective how could you proove they didn't act in good faith.

[buildersmate]

Well it's the job of the defence to get their client off the hook.
But on this one, it's my bet that it won't stand up in court - so you are jumping the gun. There will be too much of an outcry if they manage to use this to have to charges struck out.
Hard to tell if each of them will be found guilty - but the difference between this crowd and the other shysters is that these ones are alleged to have generated fraudulent documents or claimed amounts for expenditures that weren't actually incurred at all - rather than claiming for things that did exist but which shouldn't have been allowed.

[fredpuli47]

modeller, if you'd read the two acts you refer to you'd have found that the first is the Bill of Rights 1689 and the second is the Committee on Parliamentary Privileges reporting on a proposed Act.
You'd have found that the Bill of Rights is to define and restrict the power of the Crown and to stop abuses of that power which had occurred under James II (who had fled the country and was deemed to have abdicated). The incoming King William and Queen Mary were obliged to agree to it.
It says " That the freedom of speech and debate and proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament " Nothing about murder or being immune from prosecution for crimes, everything about stopping the King interfering in debates and proceedings of Parliament by use of the courts and thereby trying to fetter Parliament.
The second proceeding you refer to actually proposes to remove the (obsolete) rule that MPs could not be arrested within Parliament, so it gives them less protection. As to the rest, it says nothing about any MP having privilege against prosecution other than the Bill of Rights protection against prosecution for what is said in debates etc

[fredpuli47]

And the Reasonable Discretion Act is to protect servants of local authorities etc It doesn't apply to Parliament and MPs if the definitions given in the definition section are anything to go by!

[modeller]

If you go to the britishpolitics.com/tag/politics site you will see it includes local and central government.

[fredpuli47]

modeller the Act applies to a 'public authority,its servants or agents (s1) and to 'a servant, agent or person acting on behalf of a public authority (s2)
Public authority is defined (s4) as
Any government departmental agency
Any non-departmental public body
Any body or agency of the devolved administration in Wales and Scotland
Any local authority as defined by si of the Local Government Act 2000
Any body designated as part of the NHS
Any police authority
Any body which is a combination of the above

Which of those is MPs in Parliament ?None.
It should be noted that the protection for the bodies above and their servants etc and those acting on their behalf as servants etc is limited. It only applies when the act or failure to act is in the public interest, for one thing (there are other restrictions). It doesn't apply to MPs but it wouldn't help them if it did.Submitting false expenses forms to steal from the taxpayer is , I assume, not an act 'in the public interest' and could not be thought so ,in good faiith, by any MP. The MPs have , however, the same defence as anyone else in such a case viz. that what they did was not dishonest

[buildersmate]

Very informative, Fred. Thanks.

[modeller]

Thanks for some excellent answers and as a lawyer on the radio said it is a grey area. I see that Cameron says he would change the law so the privilege act can not be used to escape justice.

[jno]

a typical Cameron soundbite - since nobody has escaped justice yet, and probably won't do so, he's unlikely to have to stand by his promise.

[buildersmate]

Quite so, because the CPS lawyers will be able to look on here and discover just why the accused do have a case to answer.
(Maybe Fred is the CPS lawyer)

[fredpuli47]

Damn, BM my secret's out ! LOL If the CPS had the same problem finding the text of the act that I did, they'll not know it's been passed.It's not on statutelaw databank, where we normally look for acts but is in parliamentary papers as a bill with a note that it was passed on December 2nd 2009. We'll charitably assume that the Director of Public Prosecutions knows that and has considered the Act and rejected it as not material.
My suspicion that this act was a desperate attempt by Mr Blair and his colleagues to avoid prosecution for anything illegal they've done proves ill-founded.Words about 'discretion', 'in the public interest' good faith, and only gross negligence not being a defence made me think of one person, somehow (and one Inquiry) !

[fredpuli47]

EDIT Statutelaw databank ???? I meant 'database'.I do know, honest !

[fredpuli47]

By the way, if it fell to running a technical defence, the lawyers would be trying to conjure some way of applying the words 'proceedings in Parliament' in the Bill of Rights to a whole lot of false accounts of expenses, mortgages etc. It sounds like a typical first 'solicitor's point' rather than one seriously proposed as a runnable argument by senior counsel.It's the kind of thought that would come to counsel's mind when counsel is first asked in general terms what his first thoughts are, off the top of his head, and before he's sent his junior or pupils off to find the law (such trade secrets,not for public knowledge !) or studied the papers and law in depth.Still, the golden rule is to keep evidence out not in, the less in the better,and that would get rid of a great deal, at a stroke, and could leave the Crown with not much of a case, if any.So you'd be looking for any points like that, in preliminary thoughts, though they prove useless after checking.

[modeller]

. May I for the moment go back to my original question ( I know nobody likes a hypothetical question ) but humour me for the moment . If they are successful in their plea what are the implications for all the other MPs who haven't been charged but have been asked to pay back their excessive expence claims. I know they may change the law in the future but purely as it stands what would stop an MP committing a serious crime and using this case as a precedent.

[fredpuli47]

Well, the ' defence' is not a defence but a means of excluding evidence. If it succeeds it means that MPs can be prosecuted but the prosecution will not be able to rely on documents which come into existence in the course of proceedings in Parliament (of necessity very widely defined for this to work, which it wil have been!). The prosecution are already bound to exclude anything said in debates and speeches in the House, unless the Speaker rules otherwise ( an MP who adds ''I'm now going to kill the Honorable Member opposite' and lunges across the aisle with a dagger, would find his words adduced to explain his intent, they being outside what the Speaker allows as part of a speech !) And what he says in the House is not privileged when he repeats it outside the House.

The MPs are trying to make their cases only suitable for the House itself to rule on.They could be impeached (like Warren Hastings in the C18) , which would be fun but could only lead to their being removed as MPs and declared unfit for office.In practice the House would deal with it without such a grandiose spectacle.

MPs adjudged to have been overpaid are unaffected by any decision on privilege.One of the reasons for the Bill of Rights was to declare that Parliament should be free to regulate its own business.That's the result the charged ones are hoping for, to be regulated and judged by Parliament alone ! .