United Kingdom/Statute Book/Parliament Code of Conduct

Parliament Code of Conduct

Information

This legislation was a knee-jerk reaction to recent controversial pre-mature "leaks" of two parliamentary proposals. CreveRoeland released information on the issues via his newspaper, with one leaked proposal being on Belgian devolution (proposed by CreveRoeland, which did not pass), and the other being a proposal on a General Manager contract (proposed by Frufru, which did not pass).
The actions of CreveRoeland have resulted in this legislation, which passed with 12 for, 3 against, and 2 votes of "Yes after an amendment".
It was approved by congress August 7th 2008, and is also known as the "Secrets Act".

The Legislation

The government has established a "Congressional Code Of Conduct" which ALL incoming Congressmen must sign before they are admitted to the Congress forum group - no signature, no access.

This code of conduct covers the disclosure into the public or private domain of any congressional proposals before the vote has been concluded and the proposal has either been adopted or rejected.

All congressmen declare that they

1) Will not disclose any proposals that involve the Defence of the eUK (this includes proposed MPPs and considerations of Wars, even if it is a War where the UK is not one of the belligerents)

2) Will not disclose any proposals that involve action regarding foreign nations (this includes proposed trade deals and sanctions)

3) Will, in disclosing any other proposals, provide the full text verbatim as made to Congress and amend verbatim if the proposal to Congress is later amended.

4) Will not, in disclosing any other proposals, paraphrase the proposal in any way

Sanctions:

Sanctions will be taken against Congressmen who release information (either directly or by proxy) in the following steps:

Warning
One week suspension from the Congress forum on the eUK forums
One month suspension from the Congress forum on the eUK forums
Permanent suspension from the Congress forum on the eUK forums

Any Congressman who breaks clause 1: (Military and Foreign policies) will receive a one week suspension from the Congress forums without prior notice of a Warning.

Such action is necessary because for a congressman to break this clasue would be a serious breach of national security which could alert foreign nations to our status of our economic/militaristic intentions towards them.
Therefore there will be no formal warning and the first step will be a one week suspension. If the same Congressman breaks the clause a second time, it is clear that the Congressman has a problem in keeping national secrets, so s/he will be permanently suspended from the Congress forum.