Peter Skinner, the former Labour MEP for South East England has now been sentenced. He was given 4 years by Mrs Justice McGowan, sitting at Southwark.
He was found to have misused £100,000 of public funds. There will be a further hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act. If the Crown apply “the lifestyle assumptions” in that Act, the burden of proof will be on Skinner to show that any money he received for any source in the last 6 years was legitimate. If he can’t show that it was then the court can assume it to represent criminal gain and confiscate any assets he has to an equivalent value.
Corrupt public officials, whether elected or unelected, should always be dealt with severely. Their status gives them a certain protection against being caught. When they are convicted deterrent sentences are needed as a warning to others.
I notice in this and many other parliamentary expenses cases is that the defendants are typically people who have either:
a) Not had a substantial professional career outside of politics, and/or
b) Served in parliament for a long time.
On the first point, most professions in the UK have high standards of ethics. Proper behaviour towards client’s money or public funds is drilled into you – that is certainly my experience in the legal world.
I suspect that a risk of long service in Parliament, for some individuals, is that they lose touch with reality, get a sense of entitlement, to the point that their moral compass no longer works.
* Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party's representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup.
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6 Comments
Peter Skinner got what he deserved.
At the same time I hope this article is not meant to be some sort of implied go at another political party. There is an old saying about throwing stones in glass houses. Nuff said.
Agreed. Offenders in other parties should be pursued.
I was not making a party political point.
But in fact no Liberal Democrat MEP has ever been prosecuted for expenses fraud. Labour, Conservative and UKIP MEPs have been.
Same in Westminster. No Liberal Democrat MP or Peer has been prosecuted. Labour and Conservative MPs and Peers have been convicted of fraud.
I would agree though that some people in the Lib Dems have still let us down and we need a stronger culture of standards and ethics.
Sorry, Antony, but I don’t like it on principle. Anyone standing on ‘Holier than Thou’ is on thin ice. Do you remember the ‘back to basics’ boomerang ?
Why stick to fraud ? I can think of other issues where the benighted subject died before issues emerged.
Awful.
I don’t see anything in Antony’s article that suggests this couldn’t happen with a Liberal Democrat or that it’s particularly a Labour problem. In fact I think there is a culture in Labour parties in traditional Labour heartlands that lends itself to such incidents, but its origins aren’t despicable: people used to a culture of “you lend me your lawnmower and I’ll take your kids to school tomorrow” extend the same sort of neighbourly quid pro quo attitude to public service. They’re sometimes bewildered that what they’ve done is illegal.
The problem to be aware of among Liberal Democrats, I suspect, is that with few MPs, we tend to idolise the few and so might be reluctant to see the signs of trouble.