UK Lawmakers should not decide their own salaries

LONDON — Britain’s prime minister, facing a national uproar over lawmakers claiming lavish expenses, promised Sunday to pursue constitutional reforms including a proposal to take away legislators’ power to decide their own pay.

Gordon Brown said he was shocked by the recent revelations that scores of legislators from all three main political parties had filed claims for a range of expenses from tax advice to swimming pools.

He said the government was considering reforms that would mean lawmakers no longer set the rules about their salaries and expenses.

“There will be no more of the gentleman’s club,” Brown said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show. “Self regulation, closed society. That was a 19th century idea.”

He said he would back a bill to reform Britain’s constitution, and wanted to overhaul the House of Lords — Britain’s unelected upper chamber — and set up external supervision of Parliament.

“It is no longer left to MPs to make their own decision,” he said.

Brown also said an independent panel would scrutinize all lawmakers’ expense claims for the last four years.

Brown said he wanted a code of conduct for lawmakers to be written into the Constitutional Renewal Bill that is due to go through parliament later this year. The bill was meant to strengthen parliament and reduce the role of the Attorney General, but Brown said he now wants use it to set up codes for lawmakers.

He said he also wanted to create a committee to study wider constitutional changes, such as a written constitution and reform of the unelected House of Lords.

Opposition leader David Cameron said he wanted Brown to call an election instead of looking at long term measures. He also said he wanted to institute a system under which lawmakers can be recalled, or fired, by constituents if they are found to have broken the law.

“I think if we can’t have an election, and I think we should, because that’s the best way to recall the whole of Parliament…then recall is a power we do need to look at,” he told Sky News broadcaster.

The scandal over expenses has rocked all three major parties, and at least 12 lawmakers have said they would not run again in next year’s elections.

But the Labour Party’s popularity has plummeted the furthest, as Britain’s recession continues to bite and newspapers continue to publish details of lawmakers expenses. The Sunday Telegraph reported that a Labour lawmaker had tried unsuccessfully to claim a 5 pound ($8) church donation.

A poll shows Britain’s governing Labour Party is least popular of the three parties for the first time in 22 years, just days before European parliamentary elections.

The ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph indicates 22 percent of voters would support Labour in a general election, while 40 percent would vote for the Conservative Party and 25 percent for the Liberal Democrats. The poll surveyed 1,013 adults in late May. No margin of error was given.

Labour was last in third place in polls in 1987 during a Conservative government.

The three parties are expected to dominate the British vote for EU legislative elections Thursday, but smaller parties including the Green Party, the British National Party and the UK Independence Party are also vying for European Parliament seats.