More like this
Expenses crackdown: the wife-swapping solution
The Mole: MPs' wives could work for each others' husbands to get round secretary ban
With the general election now six months away - seven months tops - the big question is not which party will win it, but which will find enough mugs to stand for parliament to replace the increasing numbers expected to quit.
It's a serious point. Sir Christopher Kelly, the man asked by Gordon Brown to overhaul the rules on MPs' expenses, has gone draconian.
MPs will be forced to rent constituency homes, not buy them - and certainly not buy them with taxpayers donating to their mortgage repayments - and there will be a ban on putting partners and children on the payroll as secretaries and researchers.
There could also be a rule that anyone living within 60 minutes of the Palace of Westminster would not be entitled to second home allowances of any kind.
The proposals have been leaked ahead of a formal announcement on November 4. They will be backed by party leaders - they /have/ to be, if they are to keep faith with the public ahead of an election campaign - but most MPs are livid.
In their view, these perks turned a bog-standard salary into a more comfortable living wage and without them life in Westminster will be hardly worth living. Many more MPs are expected to join the exodus that has already begun as a result of the /Daily Telegraph/'s great expenses scoop earlier this year.
About 100 MPs pay their partners to act as their secretaries, their excuse being that it helps keep the family together.
Unite, the trade union which represents staff in the Commons, has threatened to step in, hoping to use employment law to stop family members being sacked as a result.
But already some wily MPs have hatched a plan: wives will arrange among themselves to become secretaries to each other's husbands, bringing a whole new meaning to wife-swapping. (The Mole is not being sexist: four-fifths of MPs are men, and so the huge majority of these 'partners' are wives.)
Brown's brief to Sir Christopher was to fashion new rules that would carry public confidence. He looks to have achieved that, but at the expense of parliamentary hatred. ·
Comments are now closed on this article
Comments
Is there nothing the MPs don't get? I've been trying to get my Mrs onto the swinging circuit for years and she's just too decent to participate.........................
The bottom line is, no one is going to jail, and as for the wife swapping solution, stuff like that already happens. And have you noticed, that these crooks are not being told to pay back the money they stole, they are being asked to pay it back. If one is caught shoplifting he is not asked to put back what he stole, its taken back from the thief. So why is this not happening to our sticky is fingered MP's? The bottom line is, that this shameful saga will be dumped down, and forgotten, then, it will be re-emerging under a new political format. I suppose in the end only way to keep these bloodsuckers down is with the wooden stake through the heart.