The mistake of the last Speaker, Michael Martin, was to refuse to recognise the head of steam building up over MPs expenses.
The new one isn’t going to repeat that error. John Bercow – currently speaking to the Hansard Society about the need for reform post-Expensesgate – is bending over backwards to convince that he is a reformer.
“I cannot think of a single year in the recent history of Parliament when more damage has been done to it than this year, with the possible exception of when Nazi bombs fell on the chamber in 1941,” he says in his speech.
“We have to make it crystal clear that we will dynamite the past arrangements, practices and, crucially, cultures that allowed the expenses disaster to take place and will do so with as much vigour as Guy Fawkes intended to apply here in 1605.”
But what kind of changes is Bercow in a position to implement? His ideas include a more open Parliament (in terms of external visitors), a new education centre for Westminster, more engagement with universities, getting the public to chip in to select committee inquiries.
He will also set up a “Speaker’s Advisory Council on Public Engagement” featuring external figures with “stellar careers”. Bercow will name the chairman of the group shortly.
“It will doubtless be denounced in some quarters as public relations and not what it really is, public engagement,” he will say this evening.
I’ll leave you to judge whether this “outreach agenda” is enough to remove the taint of the expenses revelations. Personally I suspect that the departure of several hundred MPs next summer may have more of an obvious “cleansing” effect.
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