By April
Why do MPs have until April 1 to declare details of family members they employ? Why do they need so long? Why shouldn’t they have to declare them by the end of February? Next Friday? Or even, why not this Friday?
It’s not like MPs either employ that many people or have so many relatives that it would take three months to list them all. MPs should know who of their employees are family members and how much they are paying them. It’s not like I object to MPs employing family members, just that they should have to declare them, and immediately.
There is no excuse for MPs not to declare how many - and who - of their relatives they employ right away. Any who wait until the deadline to make their declaration should be viewed with great suspicion by the electorate.
The only reason I can think of to pick April 1 as the deadline is to thumb their noses at us Fools.
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Like I’ve been saying all along, MPs who cheat the system have nothing to fear because they have other MPs watching over them. The deadline of April 1 is far from surprising.
I suspect the idea is to make sure they all appear at once, in the next annual full Register of Interests. I don’t know how the system works in Parliament, but I imagine it is similar to the way it works in councils. We can add such material at any time, but there is an annual exercise to ensure (as far as possible, at any rate!) that everyone is up-to-date.
There is another reason why I’d go along with the “by April” line, and that is to be able to show up any other parties who have not done the same. Any other date would be arbitrary, but if (say) Labour members hadn’t done so by 1 April 2008, they could be collectively shamed into getting their act together.
Another eight weeks from now is hardly here or there, anyway; and this is far better than anyone else has ever done on this matter, so I say: accept it.
As the Terminator would put it, “I would!”
call me a cynic but I think it probably takes that long to switch from the current scam to whatever the next one is.