Tag Archives: #MPexpenses

Jeremy Browne wins expenses appeal – acted “openly and honestly”

By The Voice | Published 28th January 2010 - 8:58 pm

The BBC has the story of how Lib Dem MP Jeremy Browne has won his appeal against repaying £18,000 of expenses.

Taunton MP Jeremy Browne complained after auditor Sir Thomas Legg ruled he must repay the cash claimed for mortgage interest on his second home.

Sir Paul Kennedy, who was appointed to hear appeals, said he had acted “openly and honestly” when making his claim.

Mr Browne said he felt “relieved” and “vindicated”, but “not elated”.

He is the first of the 80 MPs who challenged Sir Thomas’s requests to repay money to make the results of his appeal public.

Labour’s Frank Cook, Frank

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Posted in News, Parliament | Also tagged jeremy browne, mps expenses | 2 Comments

Revisiting Jo Swinson and the Telegraph’s #mpexpenses stories

By Stephen Tall | Published 11th June 2009 - 6:30 pm

Remember the Telegraph’s hatchet job on Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson during their series of revelations about MPs’ expenses? (Lib Dem blogger James Graham has followed-up the issue on his own Quaequam Blog! HERE).

Well, on Monday evening, as billed here, I had the chance to put these points direct to the Daily Telegraph’s assistant editor, Andrew Pierce, at a debate posing the question, A triumph for journalism? (You can watch the debate online here – worth watching in full, but the section focusing on Jo starts about 29 minutes in).

The issues of dodgy …

Posted in News, Parliament | Also tagged alan reid, andrew george, andrew pierce, jo swinson, journalism.co.uk, martin horwood | 6 Comments

What Nick said to Gordon about political reform

By The Voice | Published 10th June 2009 - 5:45 pm

At 12.30 pm today, Gordon Brown stood up in the House of Commons to make what was billed as a “wide-ranging statement on proposed changes to Britain’s constitution and voting system.” As so often, the feature didn’t match up to the trailer. Here’s Nick Clegg’s response, as recorded by Hansard, to Mr Brown’s statement:

Mr. Nick Clegg (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD): I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. Of course everyone agrees that the political crisis requires big changes in the way we do things, so I welcome this deathbed conversion to political reform from the man who has blocked

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged electoral reform, house of commons, house of lords, nick clegg | Leave a comment

Opinion: Losing at the Bridge Table

By David Allen | Published 8th June 2009 - 1:40 pm

Losing at the Bridge Table

Politics is like tournament bridge. It’s not the quality of the cards you are dealt that matters. It’s how well you play the hand.

Cameron was dealt a rotten hand over expenses. His party is a bunch of upper class rotters milking the public purse. Cameron turned this to his own advantage. He summoned the rotters to his study and gave them all a good caning. He also effectively saw off the reform agenda in a cloud of grandiloquent promises. These amounted to a cast-iron commitment to think hard about …

Posted in Op-eds | 14 Comments

Open letter to Speaker Martin over #MPexpenses

By Alex Foster | Published 17th May 2009 - 10:05 pm

Fifty-six Lib Dem PPCs have put their name to an open letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin:

Dear Mr Speaker,

As Parliament continues to be dragged down by the allowance system, and its rules, the role of those in public service across the country is being undermined.

We are Liberal Democrat candidates seeking to be elected to Parliament and yet we find ourselves disappointed, and frustrated, at the way in which this matter is being handled. Every day our residents are telling us loudly that this must stop and this must stop now.

Three things stand out:

• The resistance

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Posted in Online politics | 31 Comments

Cash for cushions: the wordcloud

By Helen Duffett | Published 16th May 2009 - 11:00 am

You can now view details of MPs’ expenses as a wordcloud. The Open University’s Tony Hirst, who produced the Google Map of MPs’ travel expenses in April has created wordclouds based on the Guardian Datablog’s spreadsheet.

The more recherché items, such as moats and porticos, lack the prominence their studied refinement deserves, but the wordcloud is very telling:

mpexpenses-wordcloud
Charles Arthur writes in the Guardian:

Cleaning, food, interest, mortgage, payments, repairs… those are the sorts of things that this debate has been about so far: the more often a word appears

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Posted in News | Also tagged mps expenses | 2 Comments

James Purnell accused of abusing expenses rules

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd May 2009 - 10:24 am

An ironic twist in the latest MP expenses story – this time is it James Purnell, the minister in charge of ensuring that the rest of us don’t claim too much in expenses, who is accused of claiming back more in rental costs than he actually paid out. The Sunday Express writes:

CABINET Minister James Purnell was under pressure last night to explain why he claimed £10,000 more in Parliamentary expenses than he paid in rent for his London flat.

The Welfare and Pensions Secretary, tipped as a future leader of the Labour Party, pocketed £10,143 more than the rent he

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Posted in Opposition watch | Also tagged james purnell, norman baker, vince cable | 8 Comments

“Reform MPs’ pay once and for all, says Clegg”

By The Voice | Published 14th April 2009 - 10:21 am

From today’s Independent,

The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg demanded yesterday that Gordon Brown swiftly set a date to discuss MPs’ expenses.

The Prime Minister said last week that the system of pay and perks must be sorted out “once and for all, adding that he was happy to discuss the issue with fellow party leaders.

But Mr Clegg said the email scandal engulfing No 10 had heightened the need for reforms. He said a meeting should be held “without delay to come up with a fair and open way of meeting MPs’ costs”.

He said: “As the events of the Easter weekend have

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Posted in Parliament | Also tagged nick clegg | Leave a comment

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 …

Posted in Parliament | Also tagged chris grayling, malcolm rifkind, margaret moran | 1 Comment

Conservative MP Chris Grayling under fire for his expense claims

By Mark Pack | Published 21st February 2009 - 10:19 pm

The Sunday Mirror is highlighting Conservative MP Chris Grayling’s expense claims for his flat near Parliament:

Top Tory Chris Grayling has claimed £104,183 of taxpayers’ money over six years for a London flat – even though he has a family home just 17 miles away from Westminster.

And neighbours of the Shadow Home Secretary say they “rarely, if ever” see him at the Westminster flat where his postbox is packed with unopened mail.

On the eve of becoming an MP in June 2001, Mr Grayling, 46, paid £127,000 for the one-bedroom flat in a six-storey block, which has views of Westminster Cathedral and is

…

Posted in News, Opposition watch | Also tagged chris grayling, norman baker | Leave a comment

Pressure grows on Jacqui Smith over expense claims

By Mark Pack | Published 18th February 2009 - 11:45 pm

The former chairman of the Standards Committee, Sir Alistair Graham, has acquired rather a habit of speaking out bluntly to put pressure on MPs over their standards and he’s done it again on Newsnight:

“It must not look as if you’re manipulating expenses for your own financial gain.”

If it is found Ms Smith resides in her London home more nights a week than her Redditch home, he said: “She’ll be in the clear in the sense of the rules, but in the sense of her political career – she won’t be.” (PoliticsHome)

Posted in News, Opposition watch, Parliament | Also tagged jacqui smith | 5 Comments

Why are we still waiting for details on how MPs spent their Communications Allowance?

By Hywel Morgan | Published 11th February 2009 - 9:58 am

The Communications Allowance is a fund for each MP of £10,000 a year of taxpayers money to spend on ~~ensuring their re-election~~ communicating with their constituents. That is a pretty massive sum. At current prices as a sitting MP I could have a full colour A3 delivered to every house in a constituency four times a year. By anyone’s standards its a massive boost to local campaigning

So I’m awaiting details as to how MPs have spent this windfall with interest. And it will be declared by the Parliamentary authorities.

Eventually at least.

According to www.parliament.uk, “Costs will …

Posted in News | Also tagged parliamentary reform | 5 Comments

Secrecy row over MPs’ foreign trips

By Helen Duffett | Published 8th February 2009 - 8:36 pm

The Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, has blocked the release of details about MPs’ foreign trips with the British Council.

From The Telegraph:

Since February 2007, 12 MPs have travelled overseas with the British Council to destinations including Thailand, India and Malawi, often at a cost of thousands of pounds.

MPs must normally declare any hospitality they receive from outside organisations, and the British Council does not appear on a list of bodies whose gifts are exempt from the requirement.

When The Sunday Telegraph used the Freedom of Information Act to ask the Commons authorities why the trips were not

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Posted in News, Parliament | Also tagged michael martin, mps expenses | 6 Comments

PM U-turn on #MPexpenses

By Alex Foster | Published 21st January 2009 - 1:21 pm

Surprising turn of events reported in the Guardian:

Gordon Brown today retreated from plans to exempt MPs’ expenses from the Freedom of Information Act.

The surprise announcement made during prime ministers questions follows the collapse overnight of a bipartisan agreement between Brown and David Cameron, the Tory leader, to back a parliamentary order exempting MPs’ expenses from the act. The move came after he was challenged by a Tory backbencher over why he was in favour of keeping them secret.

It means that plans to issue 1.2m receipts for MPs’ expenses over the past three years are likely to go ahead within weeks.

The

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Posted in News, Parliament | 7 Comments

#MPexpenses: two parties shift position

By Alex Foster | Published 21st January 2009 - 1:59 am

Last night, it was not clear if there was an organised Tory position on the emerging scandal concerning freedom of information and MPs’ expenses. Last week’s Guardian confided: “A Tory source said David Cameron was likely to encourage his MPs to abstain on Thursday”

The same Guardian article last week had Lib Dem Shadow Leader of the House David Heath saying, “[T]his is not a matter for a whipped vote [...] I will certainly be recommending that colleagues vote against the proposal to exempt parliament.”

This morning, all change. “Tory frontbench and Lib Dems fight move to hide MPs’ expenses”, the

Posted in News, Parliament | 7 Comments

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