The House of hypocrisy
It is such a familiar spectacle that we should all be used to it, but it still grates: MPs are again revealed as purveyors of double standards and hypocrisy.
Labour and Conservative MPs have preached financial responsibility and parsimony over the past 20 years, but many of them were simultaneously digging their snouts in the trough of financial sleaze at every opportunity. Today The Observer reveals that the same applies to their pensions.
MPs' retirement funds are invested in some of the most politically incorrect companies in Britain. Two reports - from the blue-blood City houses of Cazenove and Barings - show that the cash is in traditional capitalist villains such as tobacco, defence, oil and mining.
Gallaher, BAe Systems, Shell and RTZ have been lambasted for years in the House of Commons (overwhelmingly, it must be said, by Labour MPs) as cancer-peddling warmongers which exploit workers and despoil the earth. Yet, when it comes to protecting MPs' nest eggs, it seems they are acceptable after all.
Even where there are no health or human rights objections to the investments, there is plenty of scope for conflicts of interest - MPs are also big investors in media, telecommunications and banking - all sectors where politicians take an increasing interest via legislation or the regulators. MPs will say either that they didn't know their money - a handsome £300m all told - was in these companies, or that they could do nothing about it because the cash was being managed by those awful City types at Caz and Barings.
Untrue on both counts. They have access to the trustees, fellow MPs who receive, detailed annual statements of their investments, which say precisely where their money goes. And they could easily change their instructions to their fund managers, saying which sectors they did, and did not, wish to invest in.
Ironically, the revelation of parliamentary hypocrisy over pensions comes as the City is beginning to clean up its act. In the next few weeks, the financial authorities are launching the first officially 'ethical' index, the embarrassingly-named FTSE4Good. The compilers announced last week that they would exclude tobacco and arms companies from their list, as well as other firms that do not meet socially responsible investment criteria. It will be interesting to see which index performs better - the new squeaky clean FTSE4Good, or the dirty old All-Share. My money would be on the presumably renamed FTSE4Bad.
This initiative gives MPs a chance to clean up their act. The 7 June intake could get the ball rolling by insisting their cash is invested in the new index.
When it comes to the time for their senior citizen bus passes, their consciences will be clear. Of course, their pockets may well be lighter but, as a bunch of altruistic public servants, that shouldn't worry them, should it?
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