The recommendation that the names of MPs’ staff should be removed from a decades-old register, made by the House of Commons standards committee, is a retrograde step away from transparency. It is also appallingly timed. Public confidence in institutions including the government is fragile. A Labour MP resigned the whip just this week, after her husband was arrested on suspicion of spying. Parliamentarians should be striving to boost trust and engagement, not hiding information.
The plan is all the more ill-judged as it emerged from a proposal to increase scrutiny. Currently, about 2,000 people employed by MPs, who hold passes granting them access to parliament, are named on the Register of Interests of Members’ Staff. But employees based in constituency offices with access to the parliamentary intranet, and email accounts, are not on it. Last summer, Lucy Powell, then leader of the Commons and now deputy leader of the Labour party, offered the government’s support for a plan to add these staff to the register. As there are about 2,200 of them, this would have more than doubled its size.
