This is what Stubbs’s Constitutional History of England says: ‘That individual members should not be called to account for their behaviour in Parliament, or for words there spoken, by any authority external to the house in which the offence was given, seems to be the essential safeguard of freedom of debate. It was the boon guaranteed by the king to the Speaker when he accepted him, under the general term, privilege.’ This is still the case, but people don’t understand it any more. They keep thinking that some external authority should control MPs. They do not realise that, if this happened, they would be taking away their own power, which resides in the men and women they have elected, and giving it to unelected people. You cannot have a free Parliament if you do that. But this truth, I fear, only makes the behaviour of the present Speaker, Michael Martin, even worse than the critics think. Since the Speaker is the guardian of parliamentary privilege (that is what he Speaks for), he should be unbelievably strict in insisting on its essence and repudiating its, ahem, frills — exploiting your constituency office allowances, charging up your wife’s taxis, or spreading your officially earned air miles round your warm extended family. If the Speaker won’t, who else can? But of course Mr Martin won’t, can’t. It would be wrong for him to be voted out, since that would set a precedent for war within Parliament about who presides over it; but it would be a good thing if he slipped quietly away. His successor should be the one who tells MPs honestly how near they have come to self-ruin, and promises to reclaim their true rights — to make proper laws without government guillotine, to scrutinise European legislation as fully as other laws, to choose the heads of committees without reference to whips, etc.
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