Tag Archives: mps expenses

Times backs Jeremy Browne’s expenses appeal

As LDV reported yesterday, Lib Dem MP for ultra-marginal Taunton is appealing against Sir Thomas Legg’s request for repayment of almost £18,000 in expenses which Sir Thomas says were against the rules.

Today’s Times carries a leader column backing Jeremy’s appeal – here’s an excerpt:

Take Jeremy Browne, the Liberal Democrat and the first MP to confirm that he would appeal. Upon entering Parliament, Mr Browne removed equity from a London home that he owned before he was elected and used it to buy a property in his constituency. He then claimed against his allowance for the (now larger)

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Lib Dem MP Jeremy Browne appeals against decision which would have stopped him buying Taunton home

Here’s the statement on Jeremy’s website:

Taunton constituency MP Jeremy Browne is appealing against a decision by the House of Commons ACA Review Team that would have prevented him from buying a home in Taunton with his own money. Instead Sir Thomas Legg’s House of Commons ACA Review Team has requested a repayment of £17,894 in mortgage interest payments, dating from the initial arrangements Jeremy Browne made when he was elected in 2005. The appeal, conducted by Sir Paul Kennedy, will be considered and published, along with the full ACA Review Team report, in January 2010.

Jeremy Browne said:

“When I was

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Top Tory Jeremy Hunt repays £9,500 over expenses claim breach

Last month, the Economist labelled the Tories’ shadow culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, one to watch … a label which also clearly applies to his expenses claims, as the BBC reports:

Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is to repay more than £9,500 after he was found to have breached expenses rules. The Standards and Privileges Committee criticised an arrangement under which the MP’s agent stayed rent-free in his taxpayer subsidised home. … If the MP “promptly” repaid half of his claims on the home over the period, it said he would face no further action. …

The matter was referred to

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What the papers say…

A look back at the last few days of news and comment in the National newspapers, by former Fleet Street News Editor (and former Editor of Liberal News), Philip Young… including a few clippings you may have missed.

Sunday Times, 6.12.09:

“A Tory peer has been caught using someone else’s home address to claim tens of thousands of pounds in expenses. Lord Taylor of Warwick, a 57-year-old former barrister, told the House of Lords that his main home was a terrace house in Oxford, which he neither owned nor lived in. Taylor has lived in his family home …

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Daily View 2×2: 11 December 2009

Welcome to December 11th – only 20 days to go until the end of the year. Four years ago today the top story was the fire at the Buncefield oil depot which injured 43 people and was said to have been the biggest fire of its kind in peacetime Europe.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

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Daily View 2×2: 20 November 2009

Welcome, Daily Viewers, to November 20th; it’s 17 years since fire broke out at Windsor Castle, causing tens of millions of pounds worth of damage. It’s also 24 years since Microsoft released Windows 1.0.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

  • The Isms of Cruddas Giles Wilkes at Freethinking Economist on why it’s not enough to think about thinkers.
  • The forgotten work and the financial penalties for women as primary carers – by Jane Watkinson at My Liberal Democrat Political Ramblings.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories


Harriet Harman to be prosecuted for alleged driving offences

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Three reasons Nick Clegg was right to call for the ‘cancellation’ of the Queen’s Speech

When I woke up yesterday morning to news reports that Nick Clegg had called for the Queen’s Speech to be cancelled – because with limited time before the general election it would be far better to use the time focusing on reforming Parliament ready for the new batch of MPs – I was impressed.

First, because it was one of the leading news items, and for a Lib Dem leader to be that high up the running order in peace-time is no mean achievement. Secondly, because he was focusing public and media attention once again on a key liberal …

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LibLink … Nick Clegg: Don’t waste our time… bring forward real reform

In today’s Independent, Nick Clegg makes a bold pitch – that Parliament should use the few months it has left before the election to try and actually achieve something to solve the big political issue of the year: restoring the public’s trust in Parliament. Here’s an excerpt:

On Wednesday, all the pomp and ceremony that Parliament can muster will be rolled out for the Queen’s Speech, setting out the Government’s list of new laws for the coming year. But the glitz and glamour will be based on a complete fiction. Parliament will find it difficult to pass any of the

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Interning for MPs: exploitation or experience?

Donal MacIntyre and Hannah Barnes have reported on MPs’ interns for BBC Radio 5 live:

MPs could be breaking the law by not paying their parliamentary interns. Hundreds of young graduates are putting in thousands of hours of unpaid work at Westminster. This practice is excluding many young people without independent financial support from a route that many see as the first step on the ladder to a political career. But, this is not just a question of pushing the bounds of fairness. Minimum wage regulations require that some of these interns should be paid.”

You can listen to the podcast of last Sunday’s show “Parliament’s unpaid workers” here.

Among Liberal Democrat MPs, practices vary: Phil Willis and Alistair Carmichael pay their interns the national minimum wage while others pay only travel and lunch expenses.

I spoke to Alistair Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland, who puts his interns on a contract as part-time researchers:

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MPs expenses: the details that you’ve probably missed

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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The ban on MPs employing their relatives: two Lib Dems protest

The Telegraph reports today that two Lib Dem MPs – Malcolm Bruce and Matthew Taylor – are among the 17 MPs who have protested to Sir Christopher Kelly at the proposed ban on employing relatives:

Malcolm Bruce
Liberal Democrat MP for Gordon
Employs wife, Rosemary Bruce, as Office Manager and Diary Secretary
“Having my wife as office manager, diary secretary and constituency PA operating from an office in our home is invaluable not only to me but, I strongly believe, to constituents and other organisations I deal with as part of my parliamentary and constituency duties.”

Matthew Taylor
Liberal Democrat MP for Truro

Posted in Parliament | Also tagged , and | 18 Comments

LibLink … Norman Baker: Devil in detail of MP expenses rules

Over at The Guardian, the Lib Dems’ rottweiler-without-portfolio Norman Baker – the MP who was campaigning to clean up Parliamentary expenses long before it was fashionable – argues that Christopher Kelly’s report may help to restore parliament’s reputation, but the solutions it contains must be workable. Here’s an excerpt:

Kelly’s report is an important document and perhaps the most significant staging post in the long and painful journey towards restoring the reputation of parliament. Given the terrible exposures of their abuse of the expenses system, MPs have forfeited the right to decide their own pay and conditions. It was never a

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Opinion: Here comes the giant ‘house-swap’

This morning I wake to news that MPs will be banned from paying mortgages under the new rules that will be suggested by Sir Christopher Kelly. My first reaction was ‘great’ – but how do poor people who do not live within commuting distance become MPs?

As I read the further detail of the suggestions given to the press I realised that, yet again, we are facing a sticking plaster solution to cover up a rotten system. Sir Christopher Kelly is said to be recommending that no MP should be able to claim for a mortgage for their second home …

Posted in Op-eds | 16 Comments

Ros Scott’s Report of the Lib Dem Federal Executive held (26th October 2009)

Our usual practice at Federal Executive (FE) is to have a round up of current issues, presented by Nick Clegg, followed by a Q&A. In Nick’s absence we heard from the Chief Whip, Paul Burstow, and the new Chair of the Campaigns and Communications Committee (CCC), Willie Rennie.

Paul Burstow updated FE on the issue of Members’ expenses, outlining progress on the Legg Report and the Kelly review (due to be published 4th November), neither of which had finished. He emphasised that work on a Lib Dem Code of Conduct for Parliamentarians would be finalised once these two pieces …

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Speaker Bercow tells Nick: no inquiry into MPs’ ‘flipping’ or CGT evasion

Two weeks ago, Nick Clegg wrote to Sir Thomas Legg – in the wake of Sir Thomas’s decision to recommend MPs repay public money if they had been found to have overclaimed expenses for cleaning and gardening – asking that he examine the most serious allegations levelled against MPs:

… when your inquiry was first announced, I think most people expected the worst offences such as flipping to come under the toughest scrutiny. The letters sent this week, however, appear not to focus on these offences. If your review is to be seen as credible it must expose every single one of those MPs who claimed for a non-existent mortgage or ‘flipped’ their second homes purely for personal gain, some of whom then went on to avoid Capital Gains Tax. Some of these MPs appear to have made tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds in profits with the help of taxpayer subsidies. They must be exposed and these illegitimate profits returned.

Today Nick got his answer, but not the one he – or the public – would have hoped for. Sir Thomas passed Nick’s letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, to reply. Here’s what he said (with a big hat-tip to The Times’s Sam Coates):

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Rennard’s expenses clearance: Party needs to learn some lessons in transparency

What’s the correct response to the news that Lord (Chris) Rennard has been cleared by the Clerk of the Parliaments of any wrong-doing over his allowances claims? I ask because I think there are some important issues at play here for how we, the Lib Dems, as a party can help restore trust in democracy.

First, we need to separate the personal from the political (and, incidentally, this applies just as much to Chris’s critics). Most of us who have met, or in some way know, Chris will be pleased for him on a personal level. The allegations that he’d somehow fiddled the system has dogged him since April, and brought about a more-hasty-than-planned exit to his time as the party’s chief executive.

Above all, though, Chris’s friends and the wider party will be relieved. The allegations against him have hung like a dark cloud over the Lib Dems’ pronouncements on expenses for several months now.

To be blunt, it’s been an embarrassment, and one which the party has handled poorly – precisely because we’ve failed to separate the personal from the political.

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Andrew Lewin selected for Lib Dems in Hertford and Stortford

Vince Cable and Andrew LewinCongratulations to Andrew Lewin who was selected on Tuesday night as the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Hertford and Stortford.

Andrew will be challenging incumbent Conservative MP, Mark Prisk. Prisk has been the MP for Hertford and Stortford since 2001, but has recently been asked to repay £7,000 of Parliamentary expenses.

Andrew Lewin said,

I share the public’s anger over the expenses episode, it is essential that candidates tackle this issue openly and offer solutions that can rebuild trust in the system. If I

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The Legg letters: the 24 21 Lib Dem MPs staying silent

All this week, LDV has been compiling a full list of the findings of Sir Thomas Legg’s inquiries into MPs’ expenses as they related to the Lib Dems’ 63 MPs. We are adding to this list as information is received by us or published elsewhere.

We now have information on around two-thirds of the Parliamentary party, 39 MPs – but this still leaves 24 Lib Dem MPs whose Legg letters we don’t know about. The party’s whips office has recommended all the party’s MPs publish a statement on their websites in order to ensure the party’s representatives are as open and accountable as possible. However, after spot-checking half a dozen of the 24 ‘missing’ MPs I can see no references on any of their sites: this is a pretty unimpressive record.

LDV readers – or MPs or their staff – can contact us direct to help us establish a full, accurate and transparent record: please leave a comment in the thread to update us, or alternatively email us at [email protected].

As of Saturday, here’s the scores on the doors (which we’ll update as we get more info):

Clean bill of health letter received from Sir Thomas Legg:

Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged | 5 Comments

MPs expenses: some MPs still don’t get it

If being brazenly out of touch with the public mood is your idea of being a top-notch MP, it’s time you started singing the praises of Ann Keen, Jacqui Lait and Harry Cohen. For as the Evening Standard reported yesterday:

Five London MPs are refusing to say if they are being asked to repay part of their Commons expenses.

They are Ann and Alan Keen, the couple dubbed Mr and Mrs Expenses, senior Tories Jacqui Lait and Richard Ottaway and Labour’s Harry Cohen…

Mrs Keen told the Standard to “get stuffed” when approached politely at the Commons.

Her husband Alan also declined to answer

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Members of the public who believe Lib Dem MPs behaved worst over expenses? ZERO PER CENT

PoliticsHome (yes, I’m still reading it, despite everything) published an interesting poll today, taking the temperature of public opinion on MPs’ expenses, post-Legg:

… suggests that more than half the population believes the recommendations were ‘not tough enough’, 57% have ‘no sympathy whatsoever’ and 60% are as interested in the story as they ever were. The LIberal Democrat MPs are perceived to have behaved the best.

The survey is split down into categories of voter identification – Lib Dem, Labour, Tory, none – and generally there is little marked difference in the attitudes of party supporters:

Posted in Polls | Also tagged and | 12 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 16 October 2009

2 Big Stories

Wilshire to stand down amid expenses allegations

A Conservative MP accused of paying more than £100,000 of public money into his own company announced last night that he would stand down at the general election.

David Wilshire called the allegations “deeply hurtful and unjustified” and predicted he would be cleared by the Commons standards watchdog.

But in a brief statement, he said he had reluctantly decided it would not be “sensible” to seek re-election as the MP for Spelthorne.

(Independent)

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The Lib Dem Legg letters – the missing 30

On Tuesday, LDV began compiling a full list of the findings of Sir Thomas Legg’s inquiries into MPs’ expenses as they related to the Lib Dems’ 63 MPs. We are adding to this list as information is received by us or published elsewhere.

We understand the party’s whips office has recommended all Lib Dem MPs publish a statement on their website. As of Thursday, we have information on just over one-half of the Parliamentary party, 33 MPs – but this leaves 30 MPs whose Legg letters we don’t know about. Can LDV readers help crowd-source this information on ‘the missing 30’, by letting us know about those who have published statements we’ve missed, or if local papers have published articles?

Naturally MPs or their staff can contact us direct to help us establish an accurate and transparent record: please leave a comment in the thread to update us, or alternatively email us at [email protected].

As of Thursday, here’s the scores on the doors:

Clean bill of health letter received from Sir Thomas Legg:

Posted in News | Also tagged | 8 Comments

CommentIsLinked@LDV … Nick Clegg: Sir Thomas Legg must re-open MPs’ expenses files

Over at the Daily Telegraph, Nick Clegg urges Sir Thomas Legg – heading the Parliamentary inquiry into MPs’ expenses – to go further than he has to date, and “take on the biggest abusers of the expenses regime”. Here’s an excerpt:

’ve instructed Liberal Democrat MPs to cooperate fully with Sir Thomas’ investigations, and abide by any reasonable requests for repayments. But when the Legg process was first announced, I think most people expected the worst offences to come under the toughest scrutiny – MPs who avoided Capital Gains Tax, claimed cash for mortgages that didn’t exist or ‘flipped’ their second home so they could claim for renovations on house after house. Legg’s review, which is still ongoing, will simply not be credible if it doesn’t do all it can to investigate these offences.

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 18 Comments

Lib Dem MPs’ Legg letters: scores on the doors

Yesterday, LDV began compiling a full list of the findings of Sir Thomas Legg’s inquiries into MPs’ expenses as they related to the Lib Dems’ 63 MPs. We will be adding to this ist as information is received by us or published elsewhere: please leave a comment in the thread to update us, or alternatively email us at [email protected].

As of Wednesday, we have information on almost one-half of the Parliamentary party, 29 MPs – here’s the scores on the doors:

Update: by Thursday, we have information on half of all Lib Dem MPs …

Posted in News and Parliament | 7 Comments

Lib Dem MPs: what the Legg letters said

On this page, which LDV will update as we receive information, we will publish the details of Sir Thomas Legg’s findings as they relate to the Lib Dems’ 63 MPs. Please email [email protected] to let us know anything we’ve missed:

* Danny Alexander, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, 2005 – present … Repaid £125 claimed for financial advice on his mortgage and has also been asked to submit further copies of domestic utility bills. Paid back in full.
* Norman Baker, Lewes, 1997 – present … Clean bill of health.

Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged | 13 Comments

Lib Dem MP: Where’s my nearest railway station? In Norway.

The Voice enjoyed this snippet from Hugh Muir’s diary in today’s Guardian:

Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat MP for the distant seat of Orkney and Shetland, received a parliamentary travel expenses form, which asked: “What is your nearest mainline railway station?” He contacted the Fees Office to explain that his constituency is in the middle of the North Sea but was told he had to answer. OK then, he said: Oslo. The member for Smarty-pants west.

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Are MPs being treated fairly?

It seems only fair to ask. I’ve been struck today by the cross-party consensus – noted here on Left Foot Forward – that the Blogosphere is united in disgust at MPs:

Bloggers of left, right and centre were united today in disgust over reports in today’s papers that some MPs will refuse to pay back expenses that they claimed erroneously.

The argument put forward is logical enough, and best summed up by Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson’s exasperated question, “Do they honestly think that the public are going to stand for them rejecting the report, whatever the grounds?”

True …

Posted in News and Parliament | Also tagged | 13 Comments

Nick to pay back £910 #mpsexpenses

The party has just released the text of the letter from Nick Clegg to Sir Thomas Legg confirming that the Lib Dem leader will – as recommended by Sir Thomas – re-pay £910 of taxpayers’ money claimed as expenses for gardening costs associated with Nick’s second home. Here’s the text of the letter:

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Daily View 2×2: 12 October 2009

2 Big Stories

MPs’ expenses row re-ignites as MPs question findings of independent inquiry

In case you thought the row had blown itself out, here comes the sequel:

Gordon Brown has urged MPs to repay expenses claimed up to five years ago if asked to do so following an audit ordered after the furore. There are reports that some MPs plan to defy calls to repay money and may challenge the request in the courts.

The PM is among hundreds of MPs expected to be asked to repay sums following a review of all claims by former civil servant Sir Thomas Legg. …

The BBC understands he has set retrospective limits for some items and annual limits on what he believes they should have claimed. These are £1,000 a year for gardening, and £2,000 a year for cleaning. It is believed to have angered some MPs who say they will not repay the money.

Saturday’s Telegraph reported the following snippet:

Last night, the Lib Dems, who are confident that they avoided the worst excesses, stepped up pressure on the Conservatives

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Jim Fitzpatrick accused of abusing Parliamentary expenses

The Evening Standard reports:

A Government minister was today accused of misusing taxpayers’ money – allegedly spending thousands on invitations to Saturday coffee mornings.

Farming Minister Jim Fitzpatrick broke Parliamentary rules, the Conservatives claim, by sending thousands of unsolicited letters using Commons notepaper and envelopes.

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