Tagged with MP’s Expenses

Recall of MPs bill is a farce

cash envelopeZac Goldsmith MP deserves credit for sponsoring a bill to introduce a mechanism for the recall of MPs and to ensure that it was effective. He won a vote in the Commons in support of the principle of his bill, but the government ignored it, as they have done in about 20 instances in this Parliament since 2010 on the strongly disputed grounds that they are not bound by any vote on a matter which is not business introduced by the government.

The government didn’t like Goldsmith’s bill, and we now see why. The government’s own Recall of MPs bill which has just been unveiled after the Queen’s Speech yesterday is a complete stitch-up. It allows 10% of voters (roughly 8,000 per constituency) to trigger a by-election if an MP has been given a jail sentence (as over the expenses scandal) and has not been automatically expelled, or if Parliament agrees a recall petition is appropriate. Continue reading →

Even with MPs, it’s only the small fry who get collared for fiddling their expenses

pigs troughThe fifth anniversary of the Daily Telegraph exposures about MPs’ expenses once again brings to mind that, like so many other cases involving the Establishment, it was the little people that got done over while the real culprits escaped free.   No-one can condone the offences for which half a dozen lesser known MPs were sent to prison, but they were the small fry compared with the front-benchers of all the main parties who have never been booked.  As indeed that paragon of virtue, Maria Miller, was the first to remind us.

As she slowly twisted in the wind as a result of enriching herself from taxpayers’ generosity over housing allowances, one of her ploys to try to hang on was digging up precedents of well-known MPs who maxed up mortgages on properties they had bought at much lower prices or even owned outright.  It makes interesting reading. Continue reading →

Grant Shapps: four times asked to back Maria Miller and four times declines

Pienaars politicsSupport for Maria Miller within the Tory party is disappearing fast. Take the Tory Chair, Grant Shapps for example. Interviewed this morning by John Pienaar on BBC Radio 5 Live (available for 7 days here, with quote below starting at 12:50), Shapps was asked four times whether he backed Maria Miller, whom Michael Meacher called on to resign or be sacked for fiddling her expenses, and four times he declined. The full transcript of this conversation is as follows: Continue reading →

Maria Miller should resign or be sacked

Maria MillerIt is shocking that Cameron, who has repeatedly said in the past that he is cleaning up on MPs’ expenses, now says he is giving “very warm support” to Maria Miller, the disgraced secretary of state for culture, media and sport. Miller, a haughty Tory lady of the grande dame variety, became an MP in 2005 and designated a house in Wimbledon as her second home (and thus eligible under parliamentary expenses) on the grounds that she spent most of her time in a rented house in her constituency (Basingstoke). She then made claims for 4 years on the Wimbledon home, but stopped claiming when the expenses scandal broke in 2009. Continue reading →