'Get out of jail free card' for prison-threat Wirral MP (From Wirral Globe)

'Get out of jail free card' for prison-threat Wirral MP

10:27am Thursday 2nd July 2009

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JUSTICE Secretary Jack Straw handed a "get out of jail free card" to Wirral MP Frank Field over his threat to spend time in prison rather than comply with a new law.

Mr Field had said the rules requiring MPs to reveal every detail of their work outside of Parliament meant he would be "sold into some form of slavery."

And he told the House of Commons that he would rather be imprisoned than go along with it.

However, during an exchange in the House on Wednesday, the Justice Secretary appeared to give the Birkenhead Labour backbencher an escape route from his impending incarceration.

Mr Straw told the chamber: "Attractive though I know the stake or the gallows appears to him, the prospect of this proceeding that way and being fined by the new body is out of the question."

The Parliamentary Standards Bill, which passed through the Commons on Wednesday, requires each MP to list all earnings from any private sector work.

It also requires them to log all hours spent working on "extra curricular" activity.

Any MP who fails to do so could face a one-year jail sentence.

Mr Field, a director of Liverpool-based health insurer Medicash, said the Bill is an attack on his idea of public service.

He said he would happily reveal his earnings from Medicash, but not the hours he works there.

Writing on his blog, he says: "This nasty little measure will change what we mean by being a representative in this country, converting it into membership of a very tightly drawn and declining political class.

"To help dislodge the whole measure I will refuse to put in the hours worked for my part-time earnings, although I shall attempt to make an estimate for my website.

"This will land me with a fine of up to £5,000, which I won't pay. I shall resist the bailiffs taking goods to that effect so finally I will be landed in prison.

"I would prefer to spend time honourably with inmates in prison than with a Parliament cowered into submission by a Government that has given up any appearance of knowing the difference between its ear and its elbow."

And he added: "Far from having the freedom I thought a salary gave me to pursue a public life, I have in fact been sold into some form of slavery where I have to account for every part of the day that couldn't be justified in a technical sense as parliamentary business."

You can read Mr Field's blog by clicking the link below.

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