My hon. Friend is absolutely right: what the Labour party is promoting and what we want to see is transparency. We did that and demonstrated that under the last Labour Government, and we will continue to do that. Under this Government, we have seen time and again an erosion of that transparency, that right to freedom of information and that conduct in terms of how we report how donations are made and so on, with them trying to get around the rules. That is why we have proposed the independent ethics commission, because we think it is an important step in cleaning up some of the problems we face today.
This Prime Minister has tested our unwritten constitution to its limit, but today all Members of this House have their own choice to make. As Sir John Major said of the Committee in his foreword to this latest report,
“The Committee will never be redundant. A minority will evade or misinterpret the rules of proper behaviour. The rules will always need regular updating to meet changing expectations in many areas”.
As Lord Evans said, without reform to the systems that uphold and protect standards in public life, the Prime Minister’s recent changes
“will not restore public trust in ethical standards at the heart of government. Instead, suspicion about the way in which the Ministerial Code is administered will linger”.
Conservative Members must now ask themselves the question: will they back the package of recommendations proposed by the Committee on Standards in Public Life or will they turn their backs to save the skin of a rogue Prime Minister—one who is already haemorrhaging support from his own side? Those who reject these cross- party proposals will be complicit. They will be propping up a Prime Minister intent on dragging everyone and everything down with him. Today, all of us have a choice—we have a chance to draw the line in the sand and say, “Enough is enough!”
We urge Members to vote to defend the principles of public life, to back high standards and to clean up politics. It is time to stop the rot, and I commend this motion to the House.
1.2 pm