Politicians spending on themselves
Alan Carter wrote from Oxford about this mess. He reminds us that MPs, unlike US members of Congress, do not have large budgets for offices, staff, and expenses. Does that mean they make up for it in other ways?Britons Outraged at Lawmakers’ Liberty With Spending Accounts
The disclosures have been outrageous and ridiculous, sometimes both at once.
Oliver Letwin, the head of policy for the Conservative Party, claimed $3,000 to replace a leaky pipe under his tennis court in Somerset. Barbara Follett, a Labor member of Parliament and the wife of the author Ken Follett, charged $38,000 for security patrols at her house in London after she was mugged. David Willetts, a Conservative education spokesman, charged $120 to have an electrician come to his house and change the light bulbs in the bathroom.
The public airing of these and hundreds of other questionable claims from the expense accounts of Britain’s most powerful members of Parliament has disgusted the electorate and thrown the House of Commons into a major public relations crisis. On Monday, politicians from all parties tried to salvage some of their dignity by groveling, denouncing their own weak ways and promising to reform the system, starting now...
But nothing anyone has said has helped quell a mounting public fury over the disclosures...
While many of the practices appear to have been perfectly acceptable under the rules and the amounts relatively small, especially by Washington standards, the details have raised questions of propriety and make up “a catalog of behavior that is a matter of national shame,” a Liberal Democratic member of Parliament, Norman Baker, wrote in The Telegraph...
In the United States, members of the House of Representatives make $174,000 a year. They also receive, on average, between $1.4 million and $1.9 million a year to run their offices and pay for travel to and from Washington, depending on how far away their districts are.
The Daily Telegraph report about the claims MPs made for allowable expenses.
Paying bills for Tory grandees
The Daily Telegraph discloses how Tory grandees have received tens of thousands of pounds to maintain manor houses and stately homes. One claimed successfully towards the cost of a full-time housekeeper with a salary package of £14,000 a year, along with a claim including £2,000 for clearing the moat surrounding his manor house. Another was allowed to claim for a “helipad” to be maintained.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, was understood to be “appalled” by the latest allegations and vowed to take action against Conservatives MPs who "abused" their expenses. Tories who have broken the rules on expenses could be sacked, Mr Cameron has suggested...
The latest embarrassing revelations about MPs' allowances - which also include an expenses claim for horse manure - come amid evidence that the controversy has hit confidence in both main parties.
A Populus opinion poll for The Times found that both the main political parties have suffered a fall in their popularity in the wake of the expenses scandal. Labour is down four percentage points at 26 per cent, the Conservatives are down by the same amount to 39 per cent. However, the Liberal Democrats, whose expense claims have yet to be disclosed, are up slightly...
Today’s Telegraph Expenses Files disclose that the taxpayer has subsidised lifestyles far beyond those experienced by most Britons. It can be disclosed that:
* Douglas Hogg, the former agriculture secretary, submitted a claim form including more than £2,000 for the moat around his country estate to be cleared.
* David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, spent more than £10,000 of taxpayers’ money on home renovations and furnishings, including a new £5,700 portico at his home in Yorkshire.
* David Heathcoat-Amory claimed for more than £380 of horse manure for his garden...
MPs' expenses system has got to be changed, says Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown today blamed "the system" after new revelations about cabinet-level expense claims inflicted a fresh blow on the government's authority.
The prime minister, who was forced to defend his own expenses claims, said that the new information justified his decision to press for wholesale reform of the system of parliamentary expenses and allowances...
Among the ministers identified by the Telegraph are:
• The prime minister, who paid his brother Andrew for cleaning costs at their London flats... £6,577...
• Jack Straw, the justice secretary, who reclaimed the full cost of council tax, even though he received a 50% discount from his local authority...
• Lord Mandelson, who claimed thousands of pounds to repair his constituency home in Hartlepool after announcing his resignation as an MP in 2004...
Labels: corruption, politics, UK
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:29 AM
4 Comments:
Justice minister Malik steps downLabour MP Shahid Malik has stepped down as justice minister pending an inquiry into claims about his expenses made in the Daily Telegraph newspaper...
It comes amid a rising tide of public anger at MPs from all parties, with former police chief Ray Mallon, now independent mayor of Middlesbrough, urging criminal investigations into some expenses claims and the Daily Mail launching a campaign to mount private prosecutions...
It comes as Labour slumped to its lowest ever opinion poll rating.
A YouGov poll of 1,814 people for The Sun newspaper suggests Labour support at a general election would be 22%, with the Conservatives on 41% and the Liberal Democrats on 19%. If repeated at a general election, the Conservatives would win with a Commons majority of 152.
British Speaker Faces Demands to Quit"After days of humiliating disclosures about the liberties British legislators take with their expenses, British news reports said the speaker of the House of Commons planned to address Parliament Tuesday and was expected to offer his resignation...
"Mr. Martin’s resignation would be the first ouster of a speaker in more than 300 years and would likely be seen by British political analysts as a sign that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had bowed to legislators’ calls for his departure, further damaging his political fortunes...
"The fate of the speaker is in many ways a sideshow to the scandal enveloping the House of Commons, over the freewheeling attitude of many legislators toward their parliamentary expense accounts...
"In recent years, Mr. Martin, who is supposed to preside over the standards and procedures of the House of Commons, was embroiled in a long and unsuccessful legal battle to prevent publication of details of the spending.
"Ordered by the courts, Parliament was due to publish the details this summer, only to be beaten to it by The Telegraph..."
Kathryn Green, who teaches at Benilde St. Margaret's in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, reminded me to include this bit of follow up:
U.K. Speaker gone in 30 seconds"Heather Brooke's initiative to expose the politicians' greed, now led by The Daily Telegraph, sparked the biggest scandal to hit the House of Commons in decades.
Yesterday, the scandal claimed its biggest victim yet when Commons Speaker Michael Martin became the first man to be ousted from that job since 1695.
"Martin took just 30 seconds to announce that in the interest of maintaining unity in the Commons, he would leave his post by June 21…"
And here, courtesy of Kathryn Green is a link to the BBC coverage of Prime Minister's Question time about the expenses scandal.
Prime Ministers Questions
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