Payback time for ousted MPs

Julie Kirkbride and other MPs who have announced they are quitting at the next election over the expenses scandal are now being pursued by campaigners to repay the money they milked from the taxpayer.

Members of the Julie Must Go! campaign are already saying Kirkbride and her disgraced husband, Andrew MacKay, who has also been forced to quit, should repay the £282,000 they took from the taxpayer over eight years in second-home allowances and other perks.

Bill Cash - a millionaire who makes his money from the family business he inherited, selling the name tapes that are sewn into the pants of boarding school kids - is the latest to be caught out. He is going to be under pressure to pay back the £15,000 he claimed on expenses for rent paid to his daughter Laetitia for a London flat she owned, even though he also owned a flat that was nearer to Westminster.

It could also scupper a budding career, for Laetitia is a Tory candidate on David Cameron's A List, who might otherwise have stood a good chance of picking up a safe Tory seat now being vacated in the rush to clean out the Westminster stables.

Voters are also furious to discover that the MPs they have hounded out for expenses scandals are hanging on to their seats until the next general election in order to qualify for hefty 'parachute payments' they are entitled to on leaving Parliament at election time.

The Daily Mail is reporting today that 12 MPs forced to quit over the expenses scandal will pocket an extra £1.2m of taxpayers' money this way. The parachute payments can be as high as £129,532, depending on length of service.

The 12 – who include Julie Kirkbride and Margaret Moran as of yesterday - will also be able to go on claiming salaries and expenses until the election,  probably a year away, further boosting their income.

On top of all that, they will also qualify for a £42,068 'winding-up' allowance payable to MPs who quit at any time. This will cost taxpayers another half a million.

It is estimated that the total payouts will amount to £97,149 for Julie Kirkbride (Con), £125,532 for Andrew MacKay (Con), £111,397 for Margaret Moran (Lab), £97,149 for Christopher Fraser (Con), £103,625 for Sir Anthony Steen (Con), £129,532 for Douglas Hogg (Con), £97,149 for Sir Nicholas Winterton (Con), £108,806 for Lady Ann Winterton (Con), £97,149 for Sir Peter Viggers (Con), £102,330 for Ben Chapman (Lab) and £129,532 for Ian McCartney (Lab).

The Speaker, Michael Martin, won’t qualify for a parachute payment because he who is leaving on June 21. But he stands to receive a gold-plated pension worth £1.4 million and could still get a seat in the Lords.

Gordon Brown is expected to embrace the idea of a 'recall' power to give voters the right to vote out MPs and force by-elections without waiting for a general election. That power needs to be exercised by the party leaders now. Otherwise, Brown will face growing demands for a general election right now. ·