Just been reading about Labour MP Harry Cohen claiming £300,000 for a second home.
Cohen told the Press Association that the arrangement had been cleared with the House of Commons authorities. He said that the former Conservative minister John Moore had told MPs "go out boys and spend it" when he introduced a big uprating of the allowance in the 1980s to head off a pay revolt by backbench Tories. Quite sickening really.
As far as I'm concerned, MP's should try and set some sort of example. The likes of Cohen bring them into disrepute. I recall Hazel Blears comments that bloggers were damaging the political process. Maybe she should look a bit closer to home.
David Cameron has been strangely silent on this issue. It may not make his exisiting backbenchers too happy, but he really should show some moral courage on this issue. That would force Gordon Browns hand.
What sickens me is that in his defence he also claimed to be the best MP ever to have held the seat of Leyton & Wanstead. Winston Churchill would be spinning in his grave.
ReplyDeleteHe is such an odious self serving man but it's what I've come to expect from the policial classes.
Rog
ReplyDeleteThe reality is that many MPs, of all parties, have their snouts in the trough and they are all running scared of being exposed. I have long admired Eric Pickles, but he made a complete idiot of himself on Question Time last week. The problem is that many MPs simply cannot see that what they are doing is wrong. They completely fail to understand that it is totally unacceptable for them to receive a tax free benefit which is denied to the rest of us.
Mr Pickles genuinely believed that he was being asked to endure some terrible hardship having to commute 35 miles each day. There are too many politicians who are just totally detached from the real world, and frankly the only way to reconnect them is to return them to the real world at the next election.
Most people would accept that MPs who live in far flung constituencies, need to have a base close to Westminster during the week and the cost of that second home is a legitimate expense. But when an MP is able to charge the cost of blue movies to the taxpayer, then the system has failed.
Parliament has two choices. It can either buy/build a block of flats for qualifying MPs to live in during the week, the cost of which can be controlled, or each MP receives a non transferable voucher which can be redeemed at the nearest Holiday Inn or Travelodge. If MPs don’t like that arrangement, they are free to seek employment elsewhere. They will soon discover that there are many willing applicants for their seats should they not find the offer acceptable.
David,
ReplyDeleteI also suspect that there are many who don't. Either way the day have gone when a blind eye was turned.
I think expenses should compensate you for money spent doing the job. The way they have been turned into an earner is disgraceful. If an MP's second home is subsided, they should pay a percentage of the profit back when it is sold. If they stay in a hotel, then that is fine, so long is it is not overly expensive.
The problem is that Turkeys don't vote for Xmas.
Luv the block of flats idea Rog - why don't we find a nice council barrack-block skyscraper for them in nearby Hackney or Islington, perhaps? And alternate each flat with a council tenant, so they can understand what real inner city struggle is all about?
ReplyDeleteTrouble is, as you pointed out, turkeys don't vote for Xmas. The best deal the public will ever get out of this is Tony McNulty's idea that the Tory shadow leader of the house agreed with - add the allowance to their pay. Which means we the public are kind of shooting ourselves in the foot really, since that would be giving them the WHOLE allowance - at the moment, even if they're fiddling, they're only claiming PART of it!
Yes I saw Pickles, and took great delight in blogging it to Rachel! In a way his naive honesty was quite touching esp as a politician will never make that mistake again! See her blog on McNulty, who for the record is one helluva constituent MP, who has done Harrow proud since he got in, and who does actually OWN that house in Harrow (he does not, I believe, own the one in Hammersmith - it's his wife's and she already had it before he met her so there is some mitigation).
British politics - luv it!!
PCS Will