New Rules for MPs Lexis Nexis Butterworth´s

Published on 3 Jul 2009 under category: article

By Dan Hyde, Consultant at Cubism Law

As published in Lexis Nexis Butterworth’s – 3^rd July 2009

Members of Parliament (MPs) that break the rules could face up to a year in jail under plans for new criminal charges for parliamentarians. Neil Hodge reports

On 23 June Harriet Harman outlined three new offences targeting false claims, not registering interests and payments to MPs for raising issues in parliament. She also pledged to “look again” at the issue of blacking out details on MPs´ published expenses claims.

Harman announced that the new Parliamentary Standards Bill would introduce new criminal offences that would also put MPs on the same footing as local councillors and Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs).

The new offences will be: knowingly providing false or misleading information in allowance claims; failing to comply with the rules on registration of interests; and breaching the rules which ban paid advocacy. Making a false claim would be punishable by up to 12 months in jail or an unlimited fine. The other two would be punishable by fines of up to £5000.

The Bill would also put the MPs´ code of conduct on a statutory footing for the first time and make MPs declare all outside earnings.

However, Dan Hyde, head of the crime team at law firm Cubism Law, says that the new rules “risk creating a two-tier system for prosecuting fraud in the UK”.

Hyde says that the government’s proposals may be welcome if they are meant to prosecute low-level frauds and misdemeanours that would not normally be prosecuted under the UK’s Fraud Act.

However, he says, if the government’s proposals are used to prosecute fraud and theft by MPs irrespective of the sums involved instead of under the Fraud Act, then the bill is “grossly inappropriate”. “It would be grossly unfair to have one set of rules regarding fraud and theft for 60 million people in the UK and another less punitive law for just 647 people,” says Hyde.

“Under the government’s proposals, MPs found guilty of making a false claim will face a maximum penalty of 12 months in jail. But that’s chickenfeed compared to what a ‘normal’ UK citizen could expect to face for a similar offence under the Fraud Act which has a maximum sentence of 10 years, with the possibility of an unlimited fine,” says Hyde.

Essentially, the maximum sentence on indictment for fraud under the Fraud Act 2006 would be 10 years imprisonment and/or a fine. In summary proceedings at a Magistrates’ Court the sentence would be a maximum of 12 months and/or a fine limited to the statutory maximum. “It seems the proposed MPs code mirrors the summary maximum rather than the 10 years available in the Crown Court,” says Hyde.

“If the code is for ‘knowingly’ providing misleading or false information—which appears to be the proposal—then it has no advantage over the current legislation as it requires dishonesty, yet the maximum penalty is fixed at 12 months´ imprisonment. It is hard to see any additional protection—so far as fraudulent expense claims are concerned—as the proposed rules reproduce existing legislation with only one tenth of the maximum penalty,” he says.