Being a Briton means having to follow rules with harsh penalties should we not follow them to the letter. We are all subject to the demands of the HMRC, DVLA and other government agencies and required to submit any required and requested documentation to these agencies on time every time. Failure to do so can incur a penalty which can be at best a fine from the tax authorities to at worst prison time and the loss of everything.

Government agencies do not in general allow British subjects to make excuses when the ordinary person falls short when it comes to things like submitting tax returns or road tax payments on time. However the various Parliamentary watchdogs for expenses and interests do tend to give MP’s who are in error with their expenses payment or outside interests a considerable degree of leniency, a leniency that is often not extended to ordinary people.

Jess Phillips the MP for Birmingham Ladywood and the Shadow Domestic Violence and Safeguarding, has been caught out failing to declare payments and outside interests within the required timeframe. She failed to declare as earnings accommodation provided by Google, failed to declare earnings from a BBC TV show appearance and failing to register 17 of her outside interests with the Parliamentary authorities within the 28 day time period that they should have been registered.

The result of Ms Phillips’s error of administration amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist. She was brought in, according to Guido Fawkes, to speak directly with and get a bollocking from the Registrar of Members Interests. Ms Phillips is also to have the relevant entries in the register of members interests highlighted when the next edition is published.

This is a pretty serious breach of the rules which if done by a member of any other party would elicit the screaming ab dabs from the Left who would point out that failing to declare interests gave the impression that the MP had something to hide. However as it is a Labour MP it will be crickets. There will be no noise from the Left even though MP’s failing to declare outside interests is a serious matter relating to the probity and honest of our MP’s.

If an ordinary person had failed to put in their tax return on time or had driven around for a month without renewing their road tax or failed to supply some information that the State required then that ordinary person would be hammered by the State. These sort of failures would result in fines, financial difficulty and possibly prison time. Not so for Ms Phillips. She’s walked away relatively freely with just a bollocking and a bit of public shame over her entry in the register, something that would not happen to the ordinary person had they breached the rules that apply to them in a similar manner to how Ms Phillips has breached Parliamentary rules.

What gobsmacks me about this case is that Ms Phillips is not an overworked single parent rushing around doing two jobs and who mislaid or forgot to put in a required form. She’s an MP, on over £80k per year and backed up by her staff. This sort of stuff, the documentation that needed to be submitted to the Registrar, should not have been forgotten or mislaid. Both Ms Phillips and her staff should have been on top of this issue. That they were not makes me wonder about Ms Phillips’s competence. After all if she can’t keep track of the required paperwork for her job then is she really suitable to represent her constituents? Would you trust Ms Phillips, a person who has failed in a very basic workplace record keeping task and something equivalent to failing to put their tax return in on time, with any important job or even employ her in a key position? If the answer to that question is ‘no’ then maybe the people of the constituency that she represents should consider whether a person unable to do the equivalent of a tax return should be representing their interests in Parliament.