Prescott's Privacy
Today's Sunday Times reports that the Metropolitan Police are that John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, allegedly broke the law by having sex with his secretary in his Whitehall Office. The complaint raises the issue of possible double standards in public life by citing the case of a Greater Manchester police officer who was given 200 hours community service after he had sex with a woman three times at her home while he was on duty.
What is Mr Prescott's punishment? He's kept his title as DPM, plus his two state residences, a quarter of a million pounds in salary and expenses -- and his governmental responsibilities have been redistributed to other ministers, leaving John Prescott, in effect, as a minister without portfolio.
I put the moral question of double standards in public service to the political journalist Anthony Howard during today's Sunday Sequence. Why should a senior politician be held to lesser standards than a serving police officer? Anthony Howard wasn't persuaded by the moral analogy: ministers do not serve "under orders", in the manner of military officers or police constables, notwithstanding their obligations to propriety in public office.
This raises the question of the status of the , which begins with the sentence, "Ministers of the Crown are expected to behave according to the highest standards of constitutional and personal conduct in the performance of their duties."
There is much talk now about 'strengthening' this Code, apparently since it would require a massive hermeneutical effort to find a provision of the Code inconsistent with John Prescott's behaviour. Drawing a similarly clear distinction between what is 'private' and what is 'public' in the Prescott Affair will probably require a team of analytic philosophers.
Comments
It's a digrace. I'm a Labour voter, and I am outraged that Blair should permit this situation.
Isn't this precisely why Bill Clinton was shamed in office?
Why are we now allowing Prescott to accept pay for a non-job?
I love the reference here to analytic philosophers! But is it really that difficult to separate out the private from the public dimensions of this case? Private means he had an affair. His business. Public means he conducted the affair at work and in state residences. My business. I'd like someone to calculate how much money this affair has taken from the public purse: cars, taxis, residences, dinners, correspondence, and time away from red boxes. Ker-ching, Mr Prescott.
I'm with David Green on this one. An affair that takes place without detriment to the job the taxpayers have employed him to do is entirely his business. This newest complaint alleges that Prescott has been conducting personal business using public resources - sex aside - that's worthy of 'disciplinary proceedings'.
He might not be 'under orders', but he's in a similar position to a public servant. If sex in the office is 'inappropriate behaviour in the workplace' for Joe Bloggs, it's inappropriate behaviour for John Prescott.
Still, there have been so many stories of adulterous politicians that I'm probably less shocked by that than I should be. But his willingness to keep his ministerial salary and accroutements - that seems dishonest.
I may not know much of NI's politics. But I know that politicians are human beings who are promoted to gods by the majority of people.
During the scandals of Clinton/Lewinsky of 1998, it was revealed that Members of Congress indulged in immoral acts [which are too much to be revealed in this blog].
In Ohio [1980], a Judge liberated two prostitutes after the prostitutes slept with him.