Clegg: Don’t be fooled by expenses manouvering
By politics.co.uk staff
Voters should not be fooled by Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s commitment to political reform, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said today.
Reacting to the Labour decision to remove the whip from the three MPs who are set to go on trial for allegedly fiddling their expenses and Mr Cameron’s outspoken attack on Mr Brown this morning, the Lib Dem leader insisted both main parties had always been an obstacle to parliamentary reform.
“In the light of the charges brought by the DPP [director of public prosecutions] against a number of MPs and peers, Gordon Brown and David Cameron are suddenly falling over themselves to talk about political reform,” Mr Clegg said.
“Nobody should be fooled.
“Gordon Brown has been the obdurate obstacle to almost every attempt at political reform over the past 13 years, while the double-speak of David Cameron – who even now refuses to divulge the tax status of one of his party’s biggest donors – is simply breathtaking.”
“Listening to the two of them anyone would think they were powerless backbenchers rather than the leaders of the two parties in parliament which have proved to be the real roadblocks to reform,” he added.
“It’s like a couple of cowboy builders coming back to your house to tell you how bad their workmanship is.”
The Liberal Democrats want an amendment to the constitutional reform and governance bill on Tuesday to prevent parliamentary privilege being used to protect MPs and peers from criminal charges unrelated to their freedom of speech in parliament.
Mr Cameron called for Labour to introduce a Parliamentary Privilege Act before the general election to ensure it cannot be used as a defence.
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