Tag Archives: malcolm rifkind

The top five London MPs for outside earnings

By Mark Pack | Published 30th September 2011 - 8:55 am

Via a survey carried out for LondonlovesBusiness.com comes this list of the top five London MPs for annual outside earnings on top of their MP salary of £65,738:

  1. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, MP for Kensington (Con) – upwards of £240,000
  2. Nick Raynsford, MP for Greenwich and Woolwich (Lab) - £60,657
  3. Mark Field, MP for Cities of London and Westminster (Con) - £41,740
  4. Jo Johnson, MP for Orpington (Con) - £12,314
  5. Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Lab) - £10,326

What do you think of these figures: good to see MPs having a range of activities or bad to see MPs spending time earning these sorts of sums?

 

Posted in London, Parliament | Also tagged , , , | 10 Comments

MPs expenses: the details that you’ve probably missed

By Mark Pack | Published 7th November 2009 - 3:57 pm

The headline recommendations from Sir Christopher Kelley’s review of MPs’ expenses have been widely covered. Despite this coverage, there is a series of detailed proposals which have been largely overlooked – including one which may yet put the leaders of political parties on the spot over cases involving their own MPs which they thought they had dealt with.

You can read the full report here, but these are the details I have in mind:

Travel: “MPs should expect to be treated in the same way as their constituents in this regard, unless there are compelling reasons to the contrary. That …

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Posted in Election law, Parliament | Also tagged , , | 6 Comments

Viewing MPs’ travel expenses on a map

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd April 2009 - 11:10 am

There’s a nifty little Google Map at http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/maps/mpTravelExpensesMap.html which is a great example of how you can use maps to make statistics clearer. In this case, the big issue is that MPs do have genuinely different legitimate travel needs depending on where they live. It’s only reasonable for an MP from Scotland to have much higher travel expenses than one who lives in London, for example.

Putting the sums on a map helps show the patterns which are reasonable. And it also highlights those which are a bit more surprising, such as the previously mentioned Margaret Moran, Labour MP …

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , , | 1 Comment

What is it about London Conservatives and expenses?

By Mark Pack | Published 1st April 2009 - 2:10 pm

London Conservative Assembly Member Brian Coleman’s huge expense claims are nearing the stuff of legend, hiss free travel card notwithstanding.* Even when the figures last year showed he had cut his taxi claims by a fifth, they still came in at over £8,000 in a year, compared with £685 on average for other London Assembly members.**

However, he is by no means alone when it comes to expense bills that, shall we say, don’t exactly leave the impression of someone taking care over taxpayers’ money.

Boris Johnson has a bit of form when it comes to

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Posted in London, Opposition watch | Also tagged , , , , | 3 Comments