Expenses scandal: House of frauds

TIMES ONLINE: May 17, 2009

‘Cheer up,” said a Labour backbencher to his glum colleague nursing a pint of bitter in a House of Commons bar last week. “You don’t understand,” replied the second MP. “My wife, she doesn’t do budget. It’s the conservatory she ordered.”The first MP said: “Don’t worry, mate, a lot of us have conservatories.”The second MP shook his head: “You haven’t seen the size of my conservatory.”

Such laments were repeated a hundred times in the Palace of Westminster last week as once-proud parliamentarians contemplated the demolition of their careers and the trashing of the Commons as an institution. Amid publication of the excesses and abuses of MPs’ expenses, the mother of parliaments stood revealed as the mother of all fiddles. Phantom mortgages, moat cleaning, antique rugs, £8,000 television sets, gardening bills, horse manure, flipping, double-dipping and plain ripping off – the politicians who lay down the laws of the land were shown to be all too grasping and vain. Heads began to roll. Shahid Malik, the justice minister, resigned pending an inquiry into the peppercorn rent he was paying to a constituency landlord while claiming £66,000 on his London home. Elliot Morley, a senior backbencher, was stripped of the Labour whip after “forgetting” that he had paid off his mortgage and improperly claiming more than £16,000.

Yesterday brought more humiliation. Sir Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, had charged the taxpayer £1,851 for a rug imported from a New York antiques centre and had tried to claim £8,865 for a plasma television set. Tam Dalyell, the former Father of the House, had attempted to claim £18,000 for bookcases two months before he retired as an MP. More seriously, David Chaytor, a backbencher, was suspended from the parliamentary Labour party after admitting an “unforgivable error” in claiming £13,000 for a mortgage he had already repaid. His constituents in Bury North were aghast. One said: “People have been jailed for less than that.” Another added: “I think they should be sacked. It’s across the whole spectrum, it’s everybody, not just one party.” Indeed it is. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, was forced to sack Andrew Mackay, his senior political adviser, after he and his wife, a fellow Tory MP, had claimed allowances for both their main and second homes.

Yesterday it emerged that Anthony Steen, a Tory grandee, had claimed tens of thousands of pounds on his country estate, including the cost of a forestry expert to inspect his trees. Like others, Steen merely blamed the system: “It is not a question of feeling we have done something wrong. It is just the system which is wrong.” Two dozen MPs from all parties have paid back more than £145,000 for expenses claims that do not stand up to public scrutiny – from repairs to a swimming pool and designer furniture to mole hunting.

The scandal is tearing through Westminster like a tornado, even at cabinet level. Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, appears fatally compromised over her dubious claims. Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, has become a national joke over hers – oh, I’ve done nothing wrong, she breezes, but here’s a cheque for £13,000.Both women now face the sack when Gordon Brown reshuffles the cabinet, which he is expected to do after the European elections next month.

Voters are so outraged that MPs have become figures of ridicule and contempt. One Tory MP said he went into his local butcher to buy a leg of lamb only to be told: “I suppose you’ll be charging this to the taxpayer.” Other customers in the shop began pointing and laughing, leaving the backbencher, who normally has plenty to say for himself, speechless.