The Spectator’s Notes | 4 July 2009

Except for the great William Rees-Mogg, no commentator seems to have noticed that Gordon Brown’s Bill to ‘clean up politics’ is about to remove the liberty of Parliament. ‘Res ipsa loquitur’ is the old legal tag: ‘the thing itself speaks’. Under the new Bill, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is created. When IPSA speaks, its word will be law. It will tell Parliament what its allowances will be and MPs will not be allowed to vote this down. As David Heathcoat-Amory said in the debate in the Commons on Monday, it is ‘the final achievement of the quango state’ to create a quango which will tell Parliament what to do. So the people we have elected to make our laws will be ruled by people no one has elected.

The Clerk of the House of Commons, Malcolm Jack, found himself last week reluctantly speaking up against the Bill’s constitutional impropriety.