All MPs should thank Frank Field for what he did yesterday. The Labour MP, who is so independent that he is positively wayward, saved the day for sanity. Without him, the debate on parliamentary sleaze and Derek Conway would have had all the edge of a sandwich with the crusts cut off. Actually, it was worse than that. In general it had all the rigour of a bowl of porridge.
It was a solemn affair. I have seen happier funerals. MPs had come to mourn their colleague who had committed the ultimate sin. I speak not of employing a son and paying him £45,163 for doing nothing. (Nice non-work if you can get it and, it must be said, if your name is Conway, you can.) No, Mr Conway’s sin was worse than that: he had got caught.

The punishment for this scandal had been devised by the MPs on the Standards and Privileges Committee. The chair is Sir George Young, the bicyling baronet. Sir George is widely respected, both for his integrity and his willowy height. He needed both yesterday as he tried to occupy the moral high ground.

He was at pains to tell us how tough the committee had been. Mr Conway would have to pay back £13,161. And there was worse. “In recognition of the overall seriousness of this case, the committee recommends that the honourable (sic) gentleman be suspended from the service of the House for ten sitting days,” said Sir George with great severity.

No one laughed. No one protested that this was, actually, more of a present. For starters, Mr Conway didn’t have to sit through this. Sir George said that some (!) may see the sentence as too light but they were wrong: “The reputational consequences of our report can be fatal.” Oh the horror, the horror.

On Planet Parliament there can be no worse fate than reputational consequences. “I therefore reject any suggestion that the committee is either a kangaroo court or a gentlemen’s club.” (Come to think of it, Sir George does look a bit like Roo.)

It was becoming surreal. David Winnick, the Labour MP, cried: “We are not crooks! Indeed we are not. We are honest people! And when someone makes claims unfairly and breaks the rules, we see what happens!”

Mr Winnick wouldn’t want to have gone through what Mr Conway had on Monday. I cast my mind back: oh yes, that was when Mr Conway made a short statement to Parliament. Hell, it wasn’t.

Frank Field spoke softly and precisely. Yesterday, amid the frantic explanations, he provided a reality check. He said that MPs, as a whole, were not held in the highest esteem. “It is difficult to think how much lower our collective reputation might sink.”

Almost gently, he began to beg to differ. Sir George had said that it was difficult to think of a more severe punishment. “But the committee has been more severe on other members in other reports and those members go around this place as happy as Larry.” (I don’t think there are any Larrys in the Commons, you know.)

“If this example of what I would see as embezzlement had occurred on this scale in, say, the Refreshment Department, we would expect the person involved to leave the employment of this establishment on the day it was discovered,” he noted.

“I believe that we should treat ourselves in a similar manner to how other people employed by this House would be treated.”

MPs looked alarmed. Treat themselves like normal people? Like members of the catering staff? It was, simply, unthinkable.

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