Should lying in the House of Commons be punished?
Should lying in the House of Commons be punished?
As our government becomes more and more polarized, what can we do to ensure that facts and data hold out?
I'm not suggesting that lying should be illegal (in fact, it's often unintentional), but when an MPs statement can later be proven to be false, shouldn't they be forced to publicly apologize?
The truth shouldn't be political.
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How do you take into account that someone told what they believed was true at the time although with limited knowledge, which then became false as the situation developed?
Intent is considered in the justice system, although sometimes hard to determine with 100% certainty.
Sometimes you need to make a decision NOW with partial information.
It's not an admission of intent, but an admission of fact: that your statement was false.
It became false once more data became available.. How do you deal with that, when you need to deal with a situation with partial information?
It's not like they meant to lie about it, then had to make a decision and you can't always make the right choice when you're missing data.
Hey, that's fine.
"We did the best with what we had and we now know that to have been the wrong decision"
But again, decisions aren't facts. Misrepresenting facts should be decoupled from the resulting decision.