The David Laws story has infuriated me – I’m angry at the press, angry at David, angry at Labour for being utter dicks over this, and angry at many gay commentators who have argued that he should have been open about his sexuality.
The angry part of me is my inner Lib Dem politician. However, when I’m not off being a politician I’m a student of moral and political philosophy, so I want to help myself explore the morality of what Law’s has done from that perspective. You’ll have to forgive me – politics is all about simplifying messages and then repeating them. Analytical moral philosophy on the other hand might be concerned with clarity, but it values completeness over brevity – this will be long (in the tradition of academia – I’ll tell you now that I conclude that he probably did not do wrong – his motivations were not bad, his actions were not corrupt, and the consequences were not harmful).
So, to begin with – what are the objective facts of this case?
- Between 2001 and 2006 David Laws claimed back from parliament the costs of sharing a home with his lover (I use the term lover because David has said that he did not consider his relationship to be that of two partners as defined by the Commons as “one of a couple … who although not married to each-other or civil partners are living together and treat each-other as spouses”).
- In 2007 David’s lover took out a mortgage on a house and David claimed back his share of the costs.
I don’t think anyone’s saying that David did something illegal, rather they are saying that he broke parliamentary rules and in doing so acted immorally. To assess this claim we have to first determine if he did break the rules.
Again – what are the objective facts? They are:
- Up until 2006 David was entitled to make the claims he did – no rules were broken.
- In 2006 the rules changed prohibiting payments being made to partners.
Thus, whether David broke the rules depends upon whether he was right to regard his relationship as that of two partners as defined by the Commons. This question is currently with parliamentary standards, and David is right to say that the definition is open to interpretation. However, I think that it’s pretty reasonable to regard two people living together for nine years and sharing the costs of a mortgage to be partners. I leave open the question, but will proceed on the basis that it’s right to regard David’s lover as his partner, which would mean that he did break the rules.
So far I’ve said first; that David did not break the law, but second; that he probably did break parliamentary rules. However, that he broke .rules does not therefore mean that he acted immorally in doing so. As anyone who devotes a few seconds of their time to thinking about it knows – it can easily be the right thing to do to break the law or the rules (think about illegal actions against slavery, or running a red light to get a badly injured person to hospital as examples). To establish if David has done wrong we need to determine if in breaking the rules he acted immorally. There are two potential avenues open to us: we could argue that breaking these rules was immoral regardless of the reasons or consequences; or we could argue that the reasons and consequences of breaking these rules were immoral.
It would be hard to argue that rule breaking in general is immoral – for example nobody would think we did wrong to break a contract or promise if by doing so we prevented great harm. Perhaps then there is something special about this rule that makes it immoral to break it? It can’t be that paying partners rent is innately immoral – which leaves the possibility that paying partners rent from public money is innately immoral. If this is true I cannot see what makes it so. So it’s not breaking the rules, or this rule in particular that is counts as an immoral act.
It could be that breaking parliamentary rules is wrong for some other reason, and there are some promising grounds for finding wrong action here. A key principle of liberal democracy is that those invested with authority are bound by the same laws as the governed; underlying everything is a principle of moral and political equality of citizens. Equality cannot be respected if the rulers are not bound by the same laws as the governed. However, as I have already mentioned – it doesn’t yet appear that David broke any laws. What he broke were rules, and these rules are rules which do not try to bind everyone in the democracy equally – they bind only those in authority. Instead, what David has done is breach a principle of fairness, where all those in parliament are expected to abide by the same rules. That’s not a breach of trust with the public, it is one with his fellow parliamentarians – however, before judging whether this counts as anything significantly wrong it would be necessary to look at the consequences and reasons for breaking that rule.
The second apparent wrong that David has committed is breach the trust of the public – democracy is not just founded upon a principle of equality; its institutions and the sovereign body need to be accountable to the public, and for this they must be transparent and open. Many would argue that there are limits to this – such as in the case of natural security, or when the principle of openness conflicts with the individual rights of the governed. In David’s case we would need to assess whether David’s right to a private and personal and family life are trumped by the public interest. We can address the strength of the public interest, and determine whether the consequences and reasons for David’s actions were wrong by exploring what the purpose of these parliamentary rules are for – in other words by looking at the spirit of the rules, the level of harm caused by breach of the letter of the law, and David’s motivations.
What are the rules for? Presumably they are there to prevent MPs profiting above the level set by parliament and thus pursing public office more in their own interests than those of the public. We expect our politicians to put the interests of those they represent above their own interests (within limits), and not to seek office as merely a means to profit (corruption).
Has David acted to put his own interests above those of the public to an excessive degree and broken the spirit of the law? One way to look at this is to understand that had he declared his relationship to the parliamentary authorities he would not have been able to claim payments for rent owed to his partner, but he would have been able to claim interest on mortgage payments on the property instead. If he’d been seeking profit at the tax payer’s expense he could simply have declared his relationship and received more money than he could be keeping it secret. Alternatively, he could have lived separately from his partner and claimed greater amounts for more luxurious accommodation. Clearly it wasn’t about the money.
So what other motivation was there? I think that much is clear to everyone. David’s Catholic family, and wider circle of friends did not know about his sexuality and he was worried that they would think ill of him if they knew of it. In order not to fall foul of the rule change in expense payments brought in in 2006 David would have to have either a) ceased getting the accommodation all MPs are entitled to paid for, b) moved into alternative accommodation (and so lived away from his lover and at greater expense to the tax-payer), or c) declared his relationship to the parliamentary authorities and thus outed himself as gay to the public.
David’s motivations were clearly not morally wrong. The consequences of his actions did not amount to corruption since he did not gain above the level that other MPs were entitled to and so were not immoral. Breaking the rules might have been breeched trust with other MPs, but are mitigated by his motivations and the lack of negative consequences. He might have committed a wrong by breaching the principle of transparency (and thus accountability since the public are unable to make informed decisions when voting), but there’s a strong argument to say that his right to personal privacy and a family life trumped this principle given the facts already discussed.
Writing this has certainly helped me to conclude that David did not acted wrongly to any great degree in what he did – though the situation is a little muddy given that facts I may not have access to are with the parliamentary standards body. However, I think that there are still wrongs/harmful consequences that have come out of this. The fact that the story has become public has lead to a loss of public trust and confidence in politics, something that David should have foreseen. Nevertheless, his personal circumstances left him in the horns of a moral dilemma, with the only option beside revealing his sexuality or ceasing to live with his partner of many years being for him to receive less financial support for being in public office than other MPs. I’m sure he could have afforded that – but do we want a political system where MPs are means tested to determine whether they should get paid or receive expenses? I’ll leave that discussion for another day, but I’m not sure I’d favour such a regime. Alongside this has a been the consequence that the nation has lost a minister who was supremely well qualified to do his job in a time of desperate need. In that sense the Telegraph and all of those who have unthinkingly jumped on their bandwagon have done real harm to the country. Their motives in seeking a fair and transparent politics surely mitigate this (though it looks to me as if the motives of many were spite, envy, prejudice and hate to be honest), but the harm done looks to outweigh any good in their motives.
It’s a complex case, and David was to a considerable extent trapped by a change in the rules he was subject to, but overall I don’t think he acted in any way near as wrongly a manner as his detractors have argued (I say argued, but arguments in this case have been rather thin on the ground – instead we’ve had shrill outrage, with volume and insinuation substituted for reason). I really, really hope that he returns to government and I sincerely (and irrationally) hope that the editor, owners and journalists at the Telegraph get bitten on their collective and hypocritical bums by some kind of cosmic Karma.
Receive email alerts of planning applications near you via: 
