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A Southwark Crown Court judge has ruled that the three former MPs and one peer charged with expenses fraud are not covered by parliamentary privilege as they had claimed.
The judge said the argument that submitting an expenses form was part of the proceedings of parliament, and therefore protected by privilege, was akin to saying that the coin used in a slot machine was part of its machinery. There was no ‘logical, practical or moral justification’ for the four men using parliamentary privilege to prevent prosecution, he said, adding that there was no legal justification for it either.
That judgement seems to me to be not only very sensible but as clear as a bell.
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A Southwark Crown Court judge has ruled that the three former MPs and one peer charged with expenses fraud are not covered by parliamentary privilege as they had claimed.
The judge said the argument that submitting an expenses form was part of the proceedings of parliament, and therefore protected by privilege, was akin to saying that the coin used in a slot machine was part of its machinery. There was no ‘logical, practical or moral justification’ for the four men using parliamentary privilege to prevent prosecution, he said, adding that there was no legal justification for it either.
That judgement seems to me to be not only very sensible but as clear as a bell.
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