Parliamentary expenses scandals
As usual the British governing class is making heavy weather of what is actually a very simple problem. Every organisation in the private and the public sector has formal arrangements for paying their employees’ expenses “necessarily, reasonably, and exclusively” incurred in the performance of their duties.
Each time a claim is made the claimant has to sign that this is true. The parliamentary Green Book requires something very similar of MPs. What MPs have to do is learn to obey this fundamental rule, without seeking cover for outrageous claims from their Fees office, which by any standards seems to have acted without any sense that the money they have so gaily doled out is taxpayers’ money not Parliament’s.
But we the taxpayers will have to be very vigilant that there is not another dereliction of public duty in the offing. Some of the claims that have been made are not one-off “mistakes” but on the face of it serious contraventions of the Fraud Act 2006, if not the Theft Act 1976, perhaps even section 32 of the Larceny Act 1916 which refers to “obtaining by false pretences”.
All of these carry maximum prison sentences of 5 to 10 years. Most people would think that claiming mortgage interest on property on which there is no actual mortgage, or for a property which one spouse in a married MP couple is simultaneously claiming as their primary home,while the other spouse MP is claiming it as their second home and vice versa so they get mortgage interest and other household expenses on both their properties, would come under one or other of these Acts.
We need to see that the authorities pursue these matters at least as rigorously as they did the “cash for honours” allegations. A simple initial check is to ask every MP to state which address they have cited as their home address on their passport and driving licence and then compare this with the one they have claimed as their principal residence in their expenses claims month by month.
An essential background to all this is for MPs to see that working away from home regularly is a necessary part of many jobs, especially professional ones, and MPs need to get hold of the fact that their situation is not unique in this respect.
