Labour suspends MP as public demand action

Gordon Brown has bowed to public pressure and suspended Elliott Morley from the Labour Party after the Scunthorpe MP admitted claiming £16,000 from the taxpayer for a mortgage he had already paid off. The Prime Minister, said by colleagues to be shell-shocked by the astonishing attacks on the authority of his Government and the credibility of Parliament, made the announcement as he launched his party's Euro election campaign at lunchtime.

Earlier in the day, Brown had turned his back on the cameras to avoid questions about the expenses scandal when he visited a school with Ed Balls. But it seems he could no longer keep out the public clamour for something to be done. Many believe that suspensions, to be followed by by-elections, are the only way to get rid of the stink of corruption now coming from Westminster.

Morley, Labour chairman of the environment committee, continued to claimed for reimbursement of mortgage interest payments for 18 months after his mortgage was paid off. He said it was a sloppy accounting mistake. But taxpayers' campaigners had already lodged a fraud complaint with the police by the time Brown made his decision.

On the Tory side, Andrew MacKay had to resign today as David Cameron's senior political adviser after failing the Tory leader's 'smell test'. It emerged that MacKay and his wife, fellow Tory MP Julie Kirkbride, were both claiming second homes allowances for the houses they shared together, netting them over £80,000 a year in expenses from the taxpayer.

MacKay's departure came only 24 hours after he had told his constituency newspaper, the Bracknell Forest Standard, that he was confident there was nothing "unreasonable" about the expenses he had been claiming. Cameron apparently saw it differently, saying: "He [Mackay] submitted his expense claims to an examination. I don't believe the claims were reasonable or acceptable and he has now resigned." he is not being suspended as a Tory MP, however.

There has been a stampede by MPs with guilty consciences to pay back money they have taken from the taxpayer, led by Hazel Blears with her cheque to the taxman for £13,000 for avoiding capital gains tax on the sale of her London flat.

But in a sign of toughening attitudes, John Mann, the Labour MP, said on BBC Radio's World At One today that the scandal had gone "beyond payback time". He said the public wanted an opportunity to vote out their MPs for the excesses. Mann was clearly picking up on the public mood: one angry caller to a radio station even suggested the Queen should step in and dissolve Parliament.

Brown knows he cannot call a general election now, because he would lose it so badly that Labour might never recover. But a series of by-elections - involving Tories as well as Labour MPs - could do something to tackle the contempt with which the public view this rotten Parliament.

It would also give Parliament the chance to select a new Speaker to replace the useless Michael Martin. The calls for him to go were joined today by Tory MP Richard Shepherd, who has cut out a reputation for himself as a maverick campaigner for civil rights and probity. Let's have some by-elections, and fast!

Meanwhile the Lords are dealing with their own little local difficulty. They will vote next Wednesday to suspend two peers, Lord Taylor of Blackburn and Lord Truscott, found guilty by the Lords Committee for Privileges of offering to amend Government legislation in return for cash. The two men were exposed by a Sunday Times investigation. Two other Labour peers, Lord Moonie and Lord Snape, were cleared of wrongdoing but told to apologise to the Lords for "unwise" comments they made to reporters posing as lobbyists.

Taylor and Truscott are the first members of the Lords to be suspended since the English Civil War. The Attorney General had advised that they could be not be suspended, but their peers decided they did have the power to do so, relying on 300-year-old laws. ·