The Government should introduce legislation to make lying in the House of Commons a criminal offence. This would mean that all MPs, including Ministers, would face a serious penalty for knowingly making false statements in the House of Commons, as is the case in a court of law.
I’m saying that if you make it illegal “lie” then they will say very little in case they are accused of lying.
Why the scare quotes around lie ? The word has a straight forward meaning which is already defined in House of Commons rules.i.e knowingly mislead.
It’s not even “negligently mislead” where they say something they should have known was not true, but the much tougher test of proving they knew it wasn’t true.
A ridiculously low bar, and yet you think even that is too high. Is this because you support politicians who have been shown regularly to knowingly mislead ?
The majority of parliament arrive carefully well prepared with facts. It’s only a small number who deliberately lie, our former PM has been proved to be one of those.
So you’re saying that it is impossible for a politician to speak without lying ?
I don’t care who you normally vote for, would you mind sitting the next election out ? Preferably all the ones after that too.
No, but I’m saying that if you make it illegal “lie” then they will say very little in case they are accused of lying.
Why the scare quotes around lie ? The word has a straight forward meaning which is already defined in House of Commons rules.i.e knowingly mislead.
It’s not even “negligently mislead” where they say something they should have known was not true, but the much tougher test of proving they knew it wasn’t true.
A ridiculously low bar, and yet you think even that is too high. Is this because you support politicians who have been shown regularly to knowingly mislead ?
The majority of parliament arrive carefully well prepared with facts. It’s only a small number who deliberately lie, our former PM has been proved to be one of those.