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MPs’ expenses claims ‘on sale’ to media for £300,000
Gordon Brown suggests a way out of the controversial allowances system as senior MP claims details are being touted around the media
Having come out in defence of his Home Secretary Jacqui Smith yesterday, claiming her problem with her husband's blue movie expenses claim was a "personal matter" and she should be allowed to get back to work, Prime Minister Gordon Brown later tried to take the heat out of the controversy over second home allowances for MPs by suggesting they should be scrapped.
His intervention came just hours before a claim was made by a senior Labour MP that someone on the House of Commons staff has been offering to sell to the media copies of all MPs' expenses claims for the past five years. Sir Stuart Bell, who sits on the Speaker's Commons Estimates Committee, told the BBC that his committee was investigating reports that £300,000 is being sought for the receipts. "The price is going up because of the interest in the subject," said Wheeler.
This follows a string of revelations in the press concerning MPs' dubious claims for the second home allowance, which allows those MPs with constituencies outside central London to claim up to £23,000 a year towards the expense of running a second home.
Among the revelations have been the fact that Jacqui Smith nominates her sister's home in south London as her primary residence, thus enabling her to claim expenses for the running of what is her family home in Redditch, where she is the local MP.
One of the regular expenses she claims for the Redditch home, where husband and two children live full-time, is her monthly Virgin cable TV subscription. One of the Virgin bills - leaked to the Sunday Express at the weekend - turned out to include a £10 fee for blue movies on adult channels watched by her husband, Richard Timney, while Smith was staying at her sister's.
Another senior member of the Government, employment minister Tony McNulty, was revealed to have claimed a total of £60,000 over recent years for his 'second home' which turned out to be a house his parents lived in, situated in Harrow, north London, only miles from his main home in Hammersmith.
In neither case was the minister breaking the very flexible rules - though the blue movie charge was reckoned to be over-stepping the mark, and Smith and her husband have not only apologised for the error, but promised to repay the £10.
As for Brown's intervention, he has written to the independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, which is looking into MPs' pay expenses, and urged it to consider replacing the current allowance with a "simpler overnight allowance" that would be independently determined. ·
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An inquiry that might actually achieve something! Wouldn't that be a first? Should we be overly concerned about MPs remuneration and expenses. Compared to the corporate world it is hardly excessive. That for me is not the real issue, there are just far too many of them. Pay them some more, be clear on allowances expenses etc, and reduce their numbers by about 80%, but get some good ones in (suitably educated as well). Will it happen? Hmmmmm.
This is surely a case for spending money. 300 K is a small price to pay for finding out just how dishonest our M.P's. really are.
Then the exposure! Wow. That would increase circulation, until the net got hold of it.
I'll put 10 pounds in. 29999 punters to go. Then we share the profits.
We could even sell some back to M.P's. and get some of the expenses back.