From the BBC:
Mr Conway was reprimanded by Commons authorities for paying his student son nearly £40,000 to be a researcher.
Scotland Yard said a “lack of systems” for accounting for MPs’ expenses meant it was ruling out an investigation…
The Metropolitan Police has said it could not investigate the affair because Westminster did not have a system to account for MPs’ expenses properly…
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: “The public have the right to expect that their money is being properly accounted for.
“The Speaker’s review of expenses must provide the basis for fundamental changes to the system of MPs’ allowances.”
The Met started an investigation after receiving a letter from Duncan Borrowman, who is the prospective Lib Dem candidate for Mr Conway’s Old Bexley and Sidcup seat.
Mr Borrowman, who asked officers to examine whether a fraud had been committed and said he was “disappointed” the inquiry was not pursued further.
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6 Comments
Does the Houses of Parliament not have duties to keep proper accounts. If there aren’t proper systems covering how money is spend wouldn’t/shouldn’t the auditors have picked it up?
Maybe something for Nick Harvey to investigate?
The point is that Mr Conway should be at least investigated for fraud. He appears to have diddled the taxpayer out of about £40,000 – maybe more. Of course there should be change to the system, and Nick Clegg has a similar line to the other two parties on that. But the only way to assuage the public anger over this is to throw the book at the chief perpetrator, and on this I believe that Nick is avoiding the central issue, which is that a crime appears to have been committed by an MP. MPs cannot and must not be above the criminal law, whatever party they belong to. Saying (as Nick effectively does) ‘the system should change so that it doesn’t happen again’ is, I submit once again, simply too limp a response.
Does anyone out there think that Conway has suffered enough? His carreer is in ruins, after all.
The Derek Conway issue has NOTHING to do with the wider issue of MP expenses. The question is, did his sons do the work and if they didn’t, was it a deliberate deception i.e. fraud. The police should be investigating that, however much smoke screen is throw up by the expenses issue, or various bodies would rather it was swept under the carpet.
… but MPs’ expenses should surely also be investigated?
Are we as Lib Dems sure that our parliamentary party’s hands are clean on this issue, and if not, why not? Can the Lib Dem leadership force all its MPs to declare all of their expenses individually in order to show that we are above reproach? I suspect not. We should, from this point on, surely be seen to be whiter than white if we want to be seen as the credible alternative to old-school politics.
(when I say “investigated” I don’t mean by the police, obviously)