My problem with this is that I don’t think that judicialising the issue helps: lying is a political problem that can and should be resolved politically.
https://twitter.com/dgreeenshields/status/1434808258133385219
(I say “judicialising” because this - and other proposals flying around - effectively put the Speaker/fact check service into a judicial role.)
Several reasons for that. One is that - on occasion - lying is politically justified. (Examples in foreign affairs/defence/economic policy come to mind.) But the question of when they are justified is IMO not a suitable judicial question: it’s political.
Further, judges (and Speakers and fact-check services) get things wrong - or incomplete. To whom are they accountable when they do - or are plausibly said to have done?
And Speakers and fact-check services may be seen as neutral now: but after a few high-profile cases on hard-fought political issues resulting in suspensions etc they won’t be seen that way any more, by one side or another.
It may be that there could be a role for a neutral fact check service in reporting on allegations of lying, if asked to by eg the Speaker or a Select Committee.
But in the end, the only way in which politicians can satisfactorily be held to account for lying on political questions is through politics.
And it’s precisely because the current ban in the HoC on accusing MPs of lying - no matter how well evidenced - gets in the way of that political accountability that I think it needs to be removed.
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