THERE’S been a lot of talk down the road at Westminster this past week about natural justice. It’s mostly come from Tories trying to defend one of the most egregious cases of paid advocacy, also known as corruption, I’ve seen in my time as an MP. The (now former) MP in question was being paid £500 an hour to raise the issues of two different companies in Parliament and he used parliamentary resources to do it.

The hypocrisy in all of this was eye-watering. Imagine the brass neck it takes to weep and wail about how a well-paid, powerful MP has been denied access to justice at a time when the Tories are happily introducing bill after bill that takes away the rights and access to justice for the ordinary woman and man on the street.

Take the Judicial Review and Courts Bill. Part of it is about taking away your right to apply for a judicial review if you’re going through the tribunal system. What do tribunals consider? Disability benefits and asylum claims among other things, both of which tend only to be experienced by the most vulnerable and the least well off.

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It gets worse. Say you have been treated unlawfully by a public body or the government itself, as in the case of those who went to the Supreme Court and successfully argued that it was unlawful for the UK Government to charge fees for employment tribunals.

When they won, it was backdated so that everyone else also treated unlawfully got their fees back. And nobody was charged fees thereafter.

This bill tells judges not to backdate, not even for the person bringing the case. But, worse, they can suspend the order for long enough for the government to change the law. So the thing the courts have just judged to be unlawful is changed so that it’s now lawful.

No justice for those bringing the case, none for other victims and absolutely no point in challenging them because nothing changes for anyone going forward. But wealthy Tory MPs just trying to earn an extra £100,000 or so, absolutely must be able to appeal.

The Nationality and Borders Bill makes a criminal of any asylum seeker who doesn’t use the practically non-existent UK safe and legal routes to get here. Remember those desperate people in Afghanistan that we said we’d help and we’re still saying we will help, at a date “tbc”? Yes that’s who could be in our jail cells next year if they somehow manage to flee the Taliban and make it here by themselves.

Again, no rights and no justice for the most vulnerable people on our planet. But wealthy Tory MPs just trying to line those pockets, absolutely must have the backing of the government.

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Trust me, these examples along with the review of the Human Rights Act 1998, the Elections Bill, the Policing Bill and the upcoming review of the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 are all part of a concerted effort to remove your rights too. If you’re not terrified you really should be. And if you’re not planning to vote Yes in the next Scottish independence referendum, then I’m terrified for you.

I raised this hypocrisy several times this week including at Justice Questions when I asked the Minister what is was “about the wealthy, powerful friends of this Government that makes their right to so-called natural justice so much more compelling than the right of the ordinary man or woman on the street”.

I got no answer but the Tory government should be explaining itself because it wasn’t just this MP’s backbench pals who were rushing to defend him.

The government itself tried its best to get him off the hook by using parliamentary time to hold a debate on his behalf and astonishingly, whipping their MPs to vote with them.

Shamefully, they also allowed the character of the Parliamentary Commissioner on Standards to be traduced and the ability of the lay members on the committee to be questioned.

As a former member of the Committee on Standards, I can’t tell you how impressive every single one of these lay members is. Their expertise and commitment to providing impartial scrutiny of what we do as MPs is second to none. And the Commissioner herself, Kathryn Stone, is about the most consistently fair person I’ve encountered.

Where she goes wrong is firstly she’s a woman and secondly she’s from a working-class background. There are far too many down there who don’t like being told what to do by a woman and they certainly won’t take it from one that they see as being beneath them.

Where is the natural justice in the Commissioner and her team having to have their security ramped up because of the insidious attacks from politicians?

We can all only hope that she and the lay members don’t just tell us to stick it because I guarantee if they do, they will be replaced by cheerleaders of the Tory government. These positions must only ever be taken up by friends of the public and nobody else.

To see the compassion oozing out of Tory MPs for one of their powerful friends while they gleefully and systematically remove the rights of the least powerful and most vulnerable was just sickening.

The sooner Scotland is independent and able to build a democracy worthy of the name, the better.