As I wrote previously about the voting down in the summer of 2008 of plans to reform MPs’ expenses:
The bulk of the blame for blocking the reforms must lie with the Labour Party as 146 of their MPs voted to block the reforms but given David Cameron’s strident recent comments, it’s striking to see that seven of his frontbenchers, and 21 MPs in total, voted to block reform when they had the chance. This was enough to see the measure defeated.
A year and a half on from those 21 voting against changing the expense rules, what do we now know about them? Here’s a summary of what has since come out about their expense claims:
- David Amess – overclaimed on his expenses and then said his bank had told me to overclaim
- James Arbuthnot – claimed for looking after a swimming pool and then agreed to repay the money
- Henry Bellingham – no issues
- Brian Binley – rented a flat from his own company and claimed for paying someone who said they weren’t paid
- John Butterfill – paid back over £60,000 after claiming money for servants’ quarters at his country home
- Christopher Chope – criticised for paying to have a sofa shipped between his London and constituency homes, though won an appeal about other claims
- John Greenway – attacked for doing up a home on expenses shortly before selling it and also repaied £537.47 for gardening costs
- Gerald Howarth – defended himself over his gardening and other claims, saying constituents expected him to act like a “squire of the manor” but ended up repaying £1,178
- Bernard Jenkin – repaid £36,250
- Julie Kirkbride – repaid £29,243
- Eleanor Laing – made £1m profit on sale of her second home and didn’t pay capital gains tax
- Andrew MacKay – repaid £31,193
- Anne McIntosh – repaid £948 though still says did nothing wrong and only paying it as a “goodwill gesture”
- Andrew Rosindell – claimed more than £125,000 in second home expenses for a flat in London, while designating his childhood home 17 miles away – where his mother lived – as his main address
- Hugo Swire – repaid £788
- Sir Peter Tapsell – no issues
- Angela Watkinson – claimed £6,350 for a new bathroom
- Ann Widdecombe – repaid £402.80
- David Wilshire – paid £100,000 to his own company and also said he was “sorry and embarrassed” for some of his second home claims
- Ann Winterton – see below
- Nicholas Winterton – with wife Ann Winterton claimed £80,000 to rent a property which they had passed to a trust owned by their children
The record of these 21 is much worse than that of the House of Commons overall – which prompts some fairly unappetising conclusions about why at least some of them voted the way they did to block expense reform.
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Yes, truly disgraceful. I hope that the local parties in every one of these seats is reminding the public constantly that these scoundrels voted to successfully block reform of expenses.
In Bracknell every knows, the funny thing is most people I speak too think Andrew Mackay is not our MP and more. So perhaps we need to remind them that he still is and hes not talking to anyone locally about his claims
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[...] footnote to my post about the subsequent expenses revelations regarding the 21 Conservative MPs who voted down expenses reform in 2008, before the Daily Telegraph revelations forced everyone’s hand. Of the three Labour MPs now [...]
[...] Winterton (who voted to block reform of FoI to cover expenses, and who, perhaps relatedly also claimed £80,000 in rent for a property owned by a trust in the name of his kids), and the other [...]
[...] watch, Parliament, peter atkinson, simon burns I’ve commented on the fate of the 21 Conservative MPs who voted against reform of Parliamentary expenses (in brief: nearly all of them have since had to pay back money or had an expenses scandal come to [...]