I do love the idea of being able to take an MP to court for lying. There are ways and means of taking an MP to court just now, but it is very difficult.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There's a lot of money with a lot of big law firms that have a tremendous amount at stake by getting the right language to convince the right jury that my client is either innocent or that the opposition is guilty.
The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP they have run out of better ideas.
Lying to a committee is a very grave abuse, and there ought to be a clear punishment.
To be fair, lying is part and parcel of public life. Every politician has lied about something because they are owned by the special interest groups that finance their elections.
The duty of responsibility placed on any MP is one of the greatest honours that can be bestowed and I for one don't believe the Conservative Party would abuse that trust by selecting someone who did not have the goods to do the job, just for the sake of media coverage.
No one can just file a charge and go directly to a jury trial. That just cannot happen.
Anyone can be falsely accused of a crime. Everyone accused of a crime deserves a fair trial.
Everything needs to be public. The legitimacy of the courts comes from the fact that they reason openly, on the record, based on facts.
If you take the cameras out of the courtroom, then you hide a certain measure of truth from the public.
Lying under oath, and encouraging lies under oath, does go to the very heart and soul of what courts do. If we say we don't care, let's forget about courts, and we'll just have other ways of figuring out how to handle disputes.