Last week, the Parliamentary Commissionar for Standards, Philip Mawer, called for a radical reform and overhaul of the expense allowances system currently in use by MPs. His concerned stemed, quite rightly, from the massive differences in claims between some MPs. As some may recall, there are MPs that claim to be spending £25,000 on postage alone, suggesting that they may be using their expenses for political campaigning purposes (or paying for their second home).Given all this, I was surprised to read that the Leader of the House, Jack Straw, has brought forward proposals for yet another expense to be made available to MPs as a "communications allowance". Apparently, this will enable MPs to
It is quite surreal I think that at a time when the probity of MPs and the Government in general is so massively in the spotlight, the Leader of the House would suggest there should be even more scope for "snouts in the trough", especially where public money could so easily be exploited for party political purposes.
Image shamelessly stolen from Guido's
4 comments:
It beggars belief, but then he needs to coin it in before he loses his seat; that could be just a few months away...
During the 2005 conference season I asked Electoral Commission reps if they ever compared and analysed election expenses claims in a similar way. they said they'd check and get back to me. So far nothing ... but it strikes me that such analysis would indicate some very wide discrepancies and even indicate which claims to investigate. For example the lying Lib Dem chancer in Withington elected off a total phone spend of £17 which miraculously stretched to a wide and deep phone bank campaign including the candidate's mummy successfully calling people out on the day.
Greedy sods... nearly as greedy as this lot of snout dippers...
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/
torydiary/2006/12/tory_john_butte.html
I thought that this was old news:
http://philtaylor.org.uk/?p=347
Regrettably, I have to say that Bob is right and that too many Tories like Sir John "Greedy boy" Butterfill were asking for more cash back at the start of December. Straw did actually kybosh this. Maybe letting MPs have their communications allowance was a sop.
Given the way that Labour and LibDem MPs voted for this I don't see them being backward in coming forward if there is any kind of vote to increase MP's salaries. The Tories voted against Bob.
Twittering about these small sums is all a bit beside the point. Do you know the whole budget (I should say blank cheque really) for Parliament? Answer: £455 million. See:
http://philtaylor.org.uk/?p=414
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