MPs expenses and other political scandals

[Androsphinx]

An incredibly amusing series of stories in the UK over the last week or so has steadily come from the Daily Telegraph, who paid (allegedly) up to £300,000 for details of MPs expenses. Most have been fairly dubious without being directly criminal (claiming for a second-home allowance to decorate a house before selling it on, that sort of thing).

Yesterday, they got round to the Conservatives, whose best expenses claims include (Link from the Indy

*Sir Michael Spicer, chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, claimed £5,650 in nine months for his garden to be maintained. He also claimed for the costs of hanging a chandelier in his main manor house.

*Douglas Hogg, the former Agriculture Minister, submitted a claim form including more than £2,000 for the moat around his country estate to be cleared. The taxpayer also helped meet the cost of a full-time housekeeper, including her car, work to Mr Hogg's stables and for his piano to be tuned.

*James Arbuthnot, chairman of the Commons Defence Select Committee, made a series of claims to maintain a country residence he rented before buying a £2m home without a mortgage in 2007. He announced last night that he would be repaying money he had claimed to clean his swimming pool.

*David Davis, the former shadow Home Secretary, claimed more than £10,000 for home renovations and furnishings, including a new £5,700 portico, at his Yorkshire home.

*David Heathcoat-Amory, a former Minister for Europe, claimed for more than £380 of horse manure.

*Michael Ancram, the Marquess of Lothian and a former deputy Tory leader, claimed more than £14,000 a year in expenses while owning three properties, none of which have a mortgage and are worth an estimated £8m

*Sir Alan Haselhurst, the Deputy Speaker, has claimed £142,119 for his country home over the past seven years, despite having no mortgage. He has charged the taxpayer almost £12,000 over five years for gardening bills at his Essex farmhouse.

*Stewart Jackson, a front bench spokesman on communities, billed the taxpayer for more than £11,000 in professional fees when buying a new home in Peterborough, more than £300 for work on a swimming pool and hundreds more for work to a "summer room".

Beyond stereotype.

[Dartzap]

Indeed. Time for the bastards to dissolve parliament and have an election, or for Queeny to arrange for a caretaker government that has no goats, toffs or other assorted reptiles in it.

[Darth Wong]

Not to defend people like this, but it's funny how this kind of story draws much more public ire (especially that which is directly focused at the officials in question) than bad policy decisions by these same officials, many of which may cost the taxpayer vastly more money than these dishonest expense accounts do.

[Intio]

I was under the impression that Douglass Hogg paid for the moat-cleaning out of his own money - but included all his own expenses on the same form as those to be paid for by taxpayers.

I could be wrong, but you should notice how many journalists, in different newspapers, are listing improvements paid for by the MP's themselves alongside those paid for out of the public coffers - without explicitly stating which is which.

The journalists seem to be blatantly conflating those two categories together, then scurrying behind the safety of the fact that they haven't explicitly stated that everything listed is coming out of our pocket.

[Androsphinx]

I think it's the other way round - the complete forms were submitted, and some of them (the moat-cleaning -!- for example) were rejected.

The point here, insofar as it's more than just juicy scandal, is that almost all the major figures in the current and next governments (Hilary Benn and Alan Johnson are amongst the few exceptions) behaved in a manner which may have technically been legal, but whose shameless venality tells us a great deal about their lack of personal honesty.