Where defendants were alleged to have taken advantage of the allowances scheme designed to enable them to perform their important public duties as members of Parliament to commit crimes of dishonesty to which parliamentary immunity or privilege did not, had never and, the Court of Appeal believed, never would attach, those against whom those allegations were proved would have committed ordinary crimes. R v David Chaytor, Elliot Morley, James Devine & Lord Hanningfield [2010] EWCA Crim 1910.
Upholding the decision of Saunders J, the Lord Chief Justice said that even stretching language to its limits, the court was unable to envisage how dishonest claims by members of Parliament for their expenses or allowances began to involve the legislative or core functions of the relevant House, or the proper performance of their important public duties. No question or privilege arose, and the ordinary process of the criminal justice system should take its normal course unaffected by any groundless anxiety that they might constitute an infringement of the principles of parliamentary privilege.
Each of the defendants is due to stand trial at the Crown Court at Southwark to face allegations of false accounting contrary to section 17(1)(b) of the Theft Act 1968 in relation to their claims for expenses as members of Parliament. An essential ingredient common to all of them is that the defendant in question acted dishonestly. Three of the defendants were members of the House of Commons and one was, and is, a member of the House of Lords.
The court considered the authorities of Prebble v Television New Zealand Limited [1995] 1 AC 321, quoted with approval in Buchanan v Jenkins [2005] 1 AC 115 at 124, Burdett v Abbott (1811) 14 East 1, Stockdale v Hansard [1839] 9Ad and EI 1 at 134 and Bradlaugh v Gossett [1884] 12 QBD 271. Properly analysed, those decisions addressed problems which were essential to the performance of Parliament’s functions. They did not begin to come anywhere near judicial recognition that members of Parliament were immune from proceedings for criminal behaviour in Parliament.
