So much is said about the ‘scroungers’ on benefits by
the current Government and the right-wing media that you’d almost believe that
they are the demonic spawn from Hell that brought the country to its knees
(even though we know it was really the bankers). So blinded by the
current ConDem propaganda machine’s output that people tend to overlook the
real scroungers and parasites in Parliament, the products of a corrupt
political system based on petty tribalism and constant division.
Out of sheer curiosity, I thought I’d look at some of
the expenses stories that have actually made it into the Press to show you just
how bad things have gotten and how much we really need change in the political
system. But first, I downloaded the (supposedly) complete set of MP’s
expense claims for the tax year 2013/14 from the Independent Parliamentary
Standards Authority (IPSA) website and looked at two people in particular –
David Cameron and Ed Miliband.
As much as I despise David Cameron, both as a
politician and a man, I have one thing good to say about him – at least the
expenses he claimed in tax year 2013/14 didn’t include the payment of personal
bills and his constituency office expenses (apart from stationary) seem to be
confined to a 25% contribution to the research assistant’s mobile phone
bill. In fact, his total expenses claim was rather small at only £7874.63
although, with his annual wage being over a hundred thousand a year and a
significant personal fortune, I think even that amount is taking the
Mickey. He must have learnt his lesson after the 2009 scandal.
On the other hand, Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour
Party (supposed champions of the working man), claimed £2734.48 for personal
bills (Council Tax, BT phone line, electricity, water, TV Licence and the
renewal of tenancy agreement on his constituency house) and a further £6972.91
in bills for his constituency office (rent, maintenance charges, office
cleaning, telephone and the installation/maintenance of office equipment) in the
same period. However, Mr Miliband’s total claim for that year was a
whopping £22,812.59! I’ll leave you to work out how much accommodation
and travel cost.
Now I can understand accommodation expenses (which I
haven’t included) due to his constituency being so far from London but I can’t
see why the taxpayer has to foot his personal bills given how much he earns and
which, in any other job, would have to be paid for out of a person’s own
pocket.
I really can’t understand why the taxpayer has to pay
out any charges for an MP’s constituency office; surely those charges should be
covered by their own political party and its local adherents?
But these are rather cheap MPs compared to former Tory
leader William Hague who manages to cost the taxpayer £2,000 a day to live in
One Carlton Garden in St James’s in London[1].
The former occupant was David Miliband when he was Foreign Secretary for the
Labour administration at which time it cost the taxpayer £600,000 a year.
That price tag went up when Hague took residence and over the first three years
of his tenancy he has cost the taxpayer £2,170,018. Considering the
personal fortune he made from various activities since stepping down as Tory
leader in 2001, I think he should be footing some of the bills in this time of
austerity, don’t you?
Disgraced ex-Tory MP Patrick Mercer managed to milk
more than £34,000 in expenses since he was caught in a lobbying sting. He
was caught last June accepting £4,000 to do some lobbying on behalf of business
interests in Fiji but still kept on claiming expenses until he was forced to
quit after being found to be guilty of one of the worst breaches of the MP’s
code of conduct in history[2].
In just two months (last August and September), MPs
managed to make 35,000 claims totalling a huge £4.58 million[3]
including:
- Despite describing himself as an "ex-politician", Gordon Brown claimed £1,012.75 for the rent of his constituency office. A bit rich for someone you hardly hear from anymore.
- William Hague, ex-minister Chloe Smith, Angela Eagle, Nicholas Soames and Peter Bone all claimed for unexplained legal costs each charging the taxpayer £577.70 at a time when Legal Aid is cut off from most people. How dare they with the money they earn?
- And Hilary Benn claimed a hire charge of £1,291.17 for a photocopier! Surely it would have been cheaper to get an office runner to go to a shop with a 5p per copy photocopier service?
In September 2013, Sky News reported that expenses
claims soared to almost £100 million which was more in MP’s personal costs and
office costs than in the run-up to the expenses scandal in 2009[4].
Part of the problem is the hiring of family members as
office staff, something Nadine Dorries knows all about having hired her
daughter Philippa for £40,000-45,000 as office manager, followed by her sister
Jennifer as senior secretary with a salary of £30,000-35,000[5].
November 2013 brought us the scandal of the 340 MPs
who claimed for heating their second homes. The biggest culprit?
You’ve got it – millionaire Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi who claimed a staggering
£5,822 in just 12 months to power and heat his £1million constituency home in a
sprawling 31-acre estate[6].
Talk about living in another world!
Other culprits include:
- Ex-Labour Cabinet minister Peter Hain who claimed £4,571 on his designated second home in his South Wales constituency.
- Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg put in expenses for £254.
- Dame Margaret Beckett, who has been Labour MP for Derby South since 1983, claimed £3,960 on gas and electricity on her constituency home.
- Culture Secretary Maria Miller, master scrounger, claimed £2,011 on electricity bills in the 12-month period on a £970,000 constituency home in Basingstoke, which she rents.
Not all MPs are such rogues as The Telegraph reported
in 2009 that: “The best-value MP is shown to be Philip Hollobone, a
backbench Conservative who has no staff at Westminster and handles all his own
casework.
“He had the lowest expenses claim of any MP last
year while maintaining an attendance record that was well above average.”[7]
Well, if Mr Hollobone could do it, why can’t other
backbenchers?
George Galloway was reported as being rated the
worst-value MP in the same article, having turned up for only one in twenty
votes, far fewer than any other MP, yet claiming £136,000 in expenses.
In May 2009, Chris Spivey published a list of the MPs
that The Telegraph had been investigating the expenses claims of[8];
here are a few choice titbits:
- Gerry Adams and four other Sinn Fein MPs claimed more than £500,000 over five years even though they refuse to attend Parliament
- Bob Ainsworth claimed nearly £6,000 for the redecoration of his designated second home
- Danny Alexander claimed £2,000 for work on kitchen and £2,000 for sofa and chairs. Also received £1,140 for the cost of alcoves, shelving and a desk for flat
- Ed Balls and wife Yvette Cooper “flipped” the designation of their second home to three different properties within two years. Mr Balls, the then Schools Secretary, also attempted to claim £33 for poppy wreaths
- John Bercow “flipped” his second home from his constituency to a £540,000 flat in London and claimed the maximum possible allowances for it. Bercow, a candidate for next Speaker, “repaid” £6,500 capital gains tax on the sale of two properties. He also twice charged the public purse for the cost of hiring a chartered accountant to complete his annual tax return
- Tony Blair re-mortgaged his constituency home and claimed almost a third of the interest around the time he was buying another property in London. He also put in a claim for almost £7,000 of roof repairs just two days before stepping down as Prime Minister
- John Butterfill paid no capital gains tax after making a £600,000 gain on the sale of his taxpayer-funded house which he told the parliamentary authorities was his designated second home
- David Cameron limited his claims to mortgage interest payments and utility bills. He also paid off a loan on his London house after he took out a taxpayer-funded £350,000 mortgage on his designated second home
- Nick Clegg claimed the maximum allowed under his parliamentary second home allowance
- Caroline Flint claimed £14,000 for fees for new flat
- George Osborne was forced to deny taking advantage of the expenses system following claims he “flipped” his designated second home from London to his constituency farm house after taking out a £450,000 mortgage on the rural property. Separately, he was rebuked by the Commons authorities for using public money to fund his “political” website.
- Sir Peter Viggers included with his expense claims the £1,645 cost of a floating duck house in the garden pond at his Hampshire home.
In 2010, The Guardian published three league tables of
MPs travel expenses for October to December 2009[9]
and there isn’t much to argue over most of the entries as most of them come
from the most distant areas of the country and, therefore, would be expected to
claim the most. There is, however, one name that sticks out on the league
table for the top ten claimers for family travel during that period - Conservative master scrounger Maria
Miller, Basingstoke, who claimed tenth place with a claim for £605.
Now I
realize that these stories come from all over the place in terms of time but it
just goes to show that now, as it was back in 2009 during the big expenses
scandal under Labour’s administration, the problem of MP expenses still exists
and is still an expensive drain on the nation’s coffers.
It seems
that as much as people would like to blame the people on benefits for
everything that’s wrong with the economy and call them ‘scroungers’, there are
an awful lot of scroungers who are very well paid but still want to supplement
their lifestyle with money from the public purse. Some of them, like
David Cameron, have personal fortunes. Some of them, like Iain Duncan
Smith, live rent free on large estates. So why do we allow such people to
claim such large amounts of money when they are quite capable of paying out at
least some of their expenses from their own very deep, capacious pockets?
This isn’t
just a Tory problem. This isn’t just a Labour problem. It’s all
pervasive. I’m not saying that every MP is a parasite but a lot are and
it’s about time we came up with a system that stops this parasitism, once and
for all.
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