With local elections fast approaching, and politicians including the prime minister out canvassing voters, the Conservatives are claiming that issues of sleaze aren’t cutting through to voters on the doorstep. 

It’s not ‘stuff that people are talking about’, according to the prime minister.

I don’t know whether the sleaze, the lying and the questions over who paid for the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat will affect the results on 6 May. But I do know that these issues matter to the health of our democracy and as things stand, it is in a sickly state.

We have a prime minister who has been described by a former Conservative Attorney General as a ‘vacuum of integrity’. One of his former employers says he is completely unfit to be prime minister.

Whether it’s heartless comments about Covid victims or who paid for the flat renovations, the stories keep coming. Each time Johnson denies what the newspapers are writing about him, more sources to emerge saying the reports are true.

Even when there are leaked emails pointing to, at the very least, impropriety by the prime minister, the stories are brushed aside or dismissed by ministers as ’tittle tattle’.

But integrity matters, and the concern about honesty in politics goes far beyond the Westminster village, whatever Tory MPs might claim. 

They may say they have had only a few complaints from their constituents. Plenty of mine are writing to me, and they are angry at what they see as dishonesty, a cheapening of political standards and an abuse of office.

It is one thing to lie on the campaign trail, or deny you’ve said something within the walls of Number 10, which several people say they overheard. It is yet another to stand accused of persistently lying to Parliament. 

It appears Boris Johnson is driving a coach and horses through the Ministerial Code – which he himself is charged with upholding.

There are plenty of examples. He’s claimed the nurses’ bursary has been restored – not true, the new maintenance grant for student nurses doesn’t cover tuition costs, which the bursary did.

He’s claimed that 400,000 fewer families are living in poverty now than in 2010. Both the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and the Office for Statistics Regulation said these figures were generally incorrect. 

And he’s said all Covid-related contracts are ‘on the record’, when the High Court had just found that they weren’t. 

The Ministerial Code says ministers must give ‘accurate and truthful information to Parliament’. Any mistake is expected to be corrected as soon as possible and any minister who has knowingly misled MPs is expected to offer their resignation to the prime minister.

But it is the prime minister himself who is misleading or lying to the House. As the designated upholder of the Ministerial Code, he is marking his own homework and giving himself a Pass, where any objective assessment would give him a clear Fail.

The problem isn’t just that we have a prime minister with a very loose relationship with the truth. The problem is that Parliament’s archaic and dysfunctional rules make it almost impossible for MPs to call out these lies.

Each MP is held to be, and called, an ‘honourable member’ and it is un-parliamentary to suggest one of them is not telling the truth. Any MP who suggests as much is firmly asked by the Speaker to withdraw the accusation.

But if MPs cannot call out statements which are simply wrong, then they cannot hold the Government to account and the main function of Parliament starts to break down.

The whole system needs to be urgently revised. The Cabinet Office Minister, Michael Gove, told me in the Commons this week that there was an opportunity to look again at how scrutiny can be strengthened when a new independent adviser on ministerial interests is appointed. 

This is a role which has existed since 2006 with the job of conducting investigations at the request of the prime minister. 

He’s already shown what he thinks of the role. When the previous independent adviser found that Priti Patel’s bullying behaviour had broken the Ministerial Code, Johnson backed her and the adviser left his job. 

The post has been vacant until today, when Lord Geidt was appointed. He will be tasked with looking into the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat.

Under our system of government, Parliament is supposed to be supreme, not Downing Street. Yet over the years, Number 10 has steadily grabbed more and more power – a process which has accelerated under Johnson.

As I’ve argued before in this column, it feels as if his purpose is to create a presidential system with nothing and no-one able to hold him to account.

Parliament needs to take back control from this prime minister. And that starts with creating a system which ensures the occupant of Number 10 has to follow the same rules as everyone else, and is held accountable when he doesn’t.

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