This is how to keep politicians like Boris Johnson honest

Boris Johnson is often accused of misleading parliament, and sometimes of doing so “knowingly”, which is contrary to the ministerial code – although it seems a problem that the code is enforced by the prime minister himself. How can the rules be improved? I hosted a question and answer session with Independent readers on this subject on Friday.

The issue was unexpectedly topical, as the prime minister had just issued a written statement correcting something he had said in answer to questions on his Ukraine statement in the Commons on Tuesday. He said Roman Abramovich, the Russian-Israeli owner of Chelsea Football Club, was “already facing sanctions”. In the correction on Wednesday, he said: “Roman Abramovich has not been the subject of targeted measures.” This is the sort of thing that many of us want to see more of. But how?

One proposal is that the independent adviser on ministers’ interests, currently Lord Geidt, should have the power to make their own investigations, rather than waiting for the prime minister to refer things to them. Another is that they should have legal powers to enforce his rulings – Lord Geidt’s predecessor, Sir Alex Allan, resigned because Johnson overruled his finding that Priti Patel was guilty of bullying civil servants.

The first is a reasonable idea, but the second would give an unelected appointee the power to sack a prime minister, which I think is going too far.

My view is that some of Johnson’s opponents are too ready to resort to the rhetorical excess of calling him a liar, when most of his misstatements are careless errors. Some of them are reprehensible, such as his blunderings about Nazanin Zagari-Radcliffe when he was foreign secretary, but they were not attempts to “knowingly mislead” people.

The existing machinery for holding ministers to account is far from toothless. The civil service has a duty to ensure that ministers’ statements are accurate – hence Wednesday’s correction; independent bodies such as the National Statistics Authority keep telling the prime minister off for using misleading figures; there are organisations such as Full Fact, which I think has done superb work in the online world since it was set up in 2009; and above all the free media are the best defence against misinformation.

Ultimately, in a democracy, we rely on a free people, informed by a free media, to hold politicians to account. And possibly, before we reach that stage, on MPs, prodded by their self-interest in holding their seats, in disposing of a prime minister who has become an embarrassment to his party.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator