I AM SO, SOO SORRY…

It came up a few times on the door step whilst I was canvassing on Saturday morning; exactly as it did in 2009, which did not surprise me one bit. To most indifferent observers, the current culture Secretary Maria Miller’s apology could be described as being an insincere apology at best. The public apology to the House of Commons, last week, came after a committee of MPs intervened to over independent investigators who had probed Maria Miller's expenses. The row over the culture secretary's expenses has dragged on since quietly since December 2012 when the Daily Telegraph reported she had claimed £90,718 in expenses towards mortgage payments on a house in south London that the MP shared with her parents. The parliamentary commissioner for standards, conducted an investigation into the culture secretary's expenses, and ruled she should repay £45,800 but MP’s on the House of Commons Committee on Standards, who have the final say on issues on ethics and disciplinary matters, reduced the amount that needed to be repaid to £5,800. 

An insincere apology at best...

The 13-strong committee which is largely made up of MPs has three independent members who are not allowed to vote. The authorisation of expenses was transferred to an outside body after a massive public outcry in 2009 about revelations about inappropriate claims made in the past. Despite the public anger, complaints about MPs conduct (including allegations they have abused the expenses system) are investigated by the parliamentary commissioner, who is overseen by the Committee for Standards. The Committee aside from ordering the culture secretary to pay back £5,800, also noted that Mrs Miller's submission of "incomplete" evidence to the inquiry had breached the MPs' code of conduct and said she should apologise to MPs "for her attitude to the commissioner's inquiries". The Committee also released emails which revealed Mrs Miller told the commissioner investigating her that she might go over her head to ask MPs to intervene. The row, if nothing else reveals that the public perception that their still appears to be one rule for some of them (MP’s) and one rule for the rest of us.  

THE FANTASTIC DR FOX!!!

Dr Liam Fox, the current (watch this space!) Conservative Shadow Defence Secretary, has lost his appeal against having to repay £22,000 in expenses (The Times, Tuesday 16th March) when Sir Paul Kennedy (the former High Court judge) clearly ruled that Dr Fox had significantly over claimed on his mortgage (oops!). The less than good news for David ("Call me Dave") Cameron's not so New Conservative Party, is that they may well be forced to clarify Dr Fox's political future (if he has one?) after he has been forced to repay the greatest sum of any member of the Shadow Cabinet.

Sir Paul Kennedy dismissed Dr Fox's appeal against the Legg Review’s finding that he was overpaid after he remortgaged his flat to pay for its redecoration. “What you claimed was not recoverable under the rules then in force,” he said. The news will significantly embarrass David Cameron, who has urged senior party members to comply fully with the audit of expense claims carried out by Sir Thomas Legg. I wonder if Lord Ashcroft is beginning to wonder what he bought or was sold - the phrase 'pig in a poke' comes to mind.

In truth, you could not make this up, embarrassingly for Dave, it is the sheer scale of Dr Fox’s repayment, something that has placed him well on top of the current Shadow Cabinet repayment list, that may cause some red faces or perhaps that's a side effect of a frightfully good claret. Dr Fox, however, is not so closely followed, by the next highest repayment, £5,229, which comes from Owen Paterson, currently the Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary.

The good news for us mortals is that the fantastic Dr Fox has already repaid the money he inadvertently claimed. It was found that Dr Fox’s claims were between £2,045 and £6,004 too high each year between 2004 and 2009, and he was paid twice for service charges in 2006 and 2007. Now Dr Fox challenged the Legg Report’s finding that he was overpaid by £22,476.03 after increasing the mortgage on his London flat from £120,000 to £300,000, using most of the capital to pay for a family home in his Woodspring constituency and to refurbish his second home.

Dr Fox, claimed that he thought taking out a higher mortgage was more cost-effective for the taxpayer than claiming for all the repairs individually - I think that my financial adviser might suggest a slightly different method of saving money. Sir Paul Kennedy, however, found that the money claimed by Dr Fox was not recoverable under the rules in force until 2006, under which allowances could not be claimed on additional mortgages secured on the same property.

And these people seriously think they can run the UK?

ANY REAL CONSEQUENCES

The fact that three Labour MPs and one Tory peer are facing charges under the Theft Act over their expenses claims should be more shocking than it is. What's more shocking is the faint whiff of tokenism that appears to surround the whole sorry saga - barely four - what about the rest of them?

At the end of the day theft is theft, and the law is the law. Any potential use of parliamentary privilege as a defense to allegation so theft is clearly unacceptable in the eyes of most ordinary people. Most ordinary people would end up ruined, sacked, imprisoned and unemployed if they fiddled their expenses on the same scale as some of the MPs at Westminster.

Employers would seek to recover their costs and their loses via the courts - it is important to remember that this is public money we are talking about. Any claims of ignorance or misunderstanding should be treated with a serious degree of scepticism as should the much heard plaintive bleat that everything that was claimed for was within the rules.

Theft at the end of the day is theft. Any MP who refuses to hand back any money they illegally gained should at minimum, if leaving the commons have the difference deducted from the lump sum they recieve when they leave parliament or have their assets sequestrated.

Gordon's Government was pretty quick of the mark to use existing legislation to seize Icelandic assets and Mrs Thatcher's Government was equally quick enough to seize the assets of various Trade Unions in the 1980's - so why not the assets of various MPs?

An ordinary member of the public guilty of mortgage fraud would be unable to use the defense of saying that they payed the money back to avoid any dire consequences, so why should MPs be able to get away with it? Even those MPs who are entirely guiltless will have a tough time on the doorsteps with voters and they would be best advised to forget about trying to defend an institution that has about as much of a moral reputation as piano player in a New Orleans brothel.

We are in for an interesting election and hopefully the electorate will remember what has occurred and duly exercise its options at the ballot to remove those MPs (regardless of Party) from office - if the voters do so then they will have done the country a great service.

HERE WE GO AGAIN...

Here we go again - collective parliamentary noses in the trough. The Westminster Parliament's website has published hundreds of thousands of pages of new claims from 2008-09 totalling more than £10 million. It may come as little surprise to more cynical observers that many soon to be retiring MPs have continued to squeeze the system despite pretty vocal public displeasure at the widespread abuse of the second-home allowance.

The cream of the current crop (so far) appears to be one Quentin Davies, the Labour MP for Grantham & Stamford, who slipped in an invoice in February for repairs to a bell tower and roof at Frampton Hall, his castle / mansion in Lincolnshire. The defence minister, who previously defected from the Tories (in 2007), was only reimbursed for 25% of his claim after it was ruled that he had exceeded the £24,006 annual maximum.

The Times points out that his claim would have exceeded the average pay of an army private, which is £20,449.

Some three months later (according to the Times) he then wrote to the authorities claiming that he had never intended to use public money to maintain the bell tower. Oddly enough this letter was sent some ten days after newspapers began to print (leaked) details of expenses.

The hopefully soon to be former MP was quoted as saying that it was "unfortunate" that a single invoice was issued for repairs to both his roof, which he regarded as a legitimate claim, and the bell tower, which he now says was not.

The Times reveals that claims, for April 2008 to June 2009, showed some 60 MPs had claimed the annual maximum of £24,006, including the Shadow Chancellor (George Osborne), whose submitted claims accidentally exceeded the upper limit, with the average MPs claim under the second-home allowance was £18,270.58.

Roll on Poling Day...