Parliament has largely cleaned up its act about money and conflicts of interest, but not entirely, as the Times investigation shows.

Despite frequent allegations about “sleaze”, British public life is pretty clean by international standards. This is partly because most MPs and peers have little directly to do with fundraising. Even at the height of the cash-for-questions affair in the mid-1990s, the number of MPs involved in taking money was small.

The most glaring abuses have largely disappeared thanks to new rules and greater transparency after the first report of the late Lord Nolan’s Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1995. Sir Philip Mawer, the outgoing Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, noted a year ago that the arrangements provided “a robust and impartial means of investigating complaints and seeking to prevent wrongdoing”. Sir Philip and Sir George Young, chairman of the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee, have applied a tough, commonsense approach in which persistent failure to disclose interests has been punished. The main emphasis has been on transparency so that voters can judge MPs’ outside interests.There are still some systemic weaknesses. In his final report as chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Sir Alistair Graham argued that the “system of expenses and allowances for MPs is attracting too much attention for the good of the body politic and has the potential for a corrosive effect on public perceptions of MPs”. The rules were “less rigorous and transparent” than those for other public office holders, he said.

The Lords has always lagged behind the Commons on these issues. It did not adopt a code of conduct nor register of interests until 2002 after a report by the Standards Committee. The Lords’ regime is more limited in range of disclosure, non-compliance and enforcement. It is not a full-time House and many peers have other interests — and are appointed for that reason. So while interests have to be declared, the amount of outside earnings does not.

The Lords strongly defends self-regulation, resting on the principle that good chaps (of both sexes) know how to behave. But the principle of greater transparency was accepted in 2002. Many research assistants and secretaries, perfectly legitimately, have part-time jobs. The new report from the Lords Privileges Committee comes after claims that photo-passes giving access to Westminster are being used in a few cases to further other occupations, notably PR and lobbying (in effect their main job). Hence the call for a register of interests of Lords’ secretaries and assistants, as adopted by the Commons in 1985.

But this is much broader than tidying up the disclosure regime for researchers. MPs are now, rightly, held accountable between, as well as at, general elections, increasingly via the internet and e-mails. Similarly, as the Lords becomes more influential and active, whether mainly appointed or elected, peers will face growing pressure to be more accountable to the public.

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