7pm: I think David Chaytor should have been punished heavily, but not by sending him to prison. What good will it do apart from appease parts of the media?
8pm: Do you welcome the imminent return of Technical Colleges? Shouldn't we provide more vocational training?
9pm Honesty: If you found a wallet would you hand it in? Or might temptation get in the way?
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Phone in on 0845 60 60 973. Text 84850. Email iain@lbc.co.uk. Tweet me @lbc973
Iain,
ReplyDeleteI can't receive your LBC show (no DAB coverage and LBC online software doesn't work with Macs), so a comment as contribution to your first hour on David Chaytor. Maybe you'll read it in time.
I cannot agree that he should not go to prison. The man has been convicted - following his own admission / guilty plea - of theft of taxpayers' money. Last year a civil servant in the Fees Office was imprisoned for stealing less money through fraud. Benefits cheats get sent to prison. There's more than enough context to conclude that lower levels of similar crimes merit imprisonment for others.
Then there's the argument about higher standards being expected of our rulers. I firmly believe that as an MP, he had a moral duty to act within the law. He's not unknown Joe Smoke from the next street over.
David Chaytor spent an inordinate amount of time arguing that he shouldn't be tried by a normal court, only giving in when all appeals had been exhausted. Those are not the actions of a contrite man. I cannot give him credit for his eventual guilty plea, even if our legal system does. It's clear to me that his guilty plea was merely a tactic to minimise his inevitable sentence, not the mark of genuine contrition.
Finally, there's the jungle argument. If he was not committed to prison, what's the point of the law for any lesser crimes? You have to draw a line between compassion and punishment somewhere. In my eyes, it's not around the £20,000 mark. He deliberately, knowingly, and blatantly stole more money than a person on the average wage takes home in a year. In my view, it's simply and dangerously wrong-headed to advocate a minor slap on the wrist and some form of non-custodial punishment for that level of criminality.