According to a report on the Daily Telegraph website for Monday, ‘The 300-year-old law of Parliamentary Privilege is being threatened by a libel case being brought by a Thai football executive, the Speaker of the House of Commons has said. John Bercow, the speaker of the House of Commons, yesterday said he had “grave   concerns” about the case which appears before the Court of Appeal later this month.’ Meanwhile in another part of the parallel universe which our Parliament appears to inhabit with some form of irony by-pass, two of our Parliamentarians have been making good use of some other form of a privilege that appears to be limited to Parliamentarians.

Attributing value to one crime or misdemeanour and comparing it to another is very difficult if we remove context. Many of us feel angry that a small number of mostly unnamed Bankers who made wilful immoral decisions over many months or years with Millions of Pounds of other peoples money appear to have suffered no more than to have their bonuses moderated for a year or two. This anger is made more extreme when we read stories of some of the young people who appeared to have got caught up in the riots of August 2011 and on a whim in a moment of madness stole a bottle of water from a looted Supermarket, leading to a prison sentence. This comparison suggests we have got our values wrong and life is not just. Another example of how our rules appear to be applied in different ways emerged this week. The news that Nadine Dorries who had chosen not to declare £82,000 of private income earned in one year and Simon Hughes who had overlooked payments of £30,000 over a five year period is described in Mondays Guardian. These oversights may not have caused a major problem for these two people, in the case of Nadine Dorries it is clear that she does not believe she has done anything wrong, despite her formal apology. However many people who lose their jobs or occasionally are prosecuted for failing to declare income from other jobs, or even that they are working for a second employer may feel differently. The people in our society who live on the margins, receiving benefits that are dependent on other income or savings, might be disturbed because they know that if they overlooked a few hundred pounds of cash in hand money and were caught, that they would lose their benefits and potentially be prosecuted. They would not be able to absolve themselves with a simple apology to people in their community.

Parliamentary privilege is vital if our 650 honourable MPs and many Lords are to be able to take risks on our behalf to challenge big business and political leadership in other nations. I can understand why John Bercow is disturbed by the potential Court case. However this privilege depends in part on Parliament and its members acting in an honourable manner in the work they do on our behalf, and the way in which they carry out any extra-curricular activities. If the privilege is to be supported by men and women in our nation who are the source of their authority, the actions of our MPs and Lords must reflect the standards of the laws which they expect all citizens to be held to. This weeks news from Simon Hughes and Nadine Dorries, eats away at the source of Parliamentary Privilege, as clearly as a moth would eat away at a pullover in my wardrobe.