The Week on WalesHome.org: The new politics needs a new maturity

SUCH is the neuralgia over MPs’ expenses that within 36 hours of an allegation of wrongdoing, one of the new Cabinet’s most high profile members has been forced from office. David Laws has now acknowledged that what he did was wrong, but the extent of his impropriety is not clear-cut, nor has it been determined by the authorities.

That Mr Laws allegedly resigned on the basis of soundings from colleagues and the fear of a long, otherwise news-free Bank Holiday weekend seems a decidedly old way to conduct the new politics we have been promised. Moreover, the fact that he was driven from office as a result of a scandal of dubious severity and unlikely importance, rather than for any policy decision, points to a continuing immaturity in the way we do politics.

The verdict on David Laws’ brief tenure appears to be that he was successfully carrying out the remit upon which both his party and the Conservatives were elected – to make early inroads into the UK’s daunting structural deficit. Yet his and George Osborne’s decision to axe the Future Jobs Fund and Child Trust Funds was a clear breach of their collective pledge to leave front-line services untouched in this first wave of spending reductions. David Laws should be accounting for this decision as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, rather than explaining his definition of the word “partner” from the back benches.

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