MPs Expenses
The busiest day of the week in the House of Commons as the Honourable (surely some mistake ?) Members queue to receive their money for expenses previously submitted and hand in their next lot of claims for purchasing the necessities of life such as wide-screen TVs, porn movies, pet food, bath plugs and garlic slicers and those relating to the maintenance and upkeep of their second (or even third) homes, duck ponds, moats, bell towers and garden sheds.
A link to Cabinet MPs' expenses as published in The Telegraph newspaper.
The following was compiled and written prior to the Telegraph's disclosures.
Although the phrase is probably regarded as insulting by pigs, 'Snouts in the trough' seems an appropriate description of what has happened with Parliamentary expenses. Official figures, published in March 2009, show that in addition to their annual salary of £63,291, the expenses claims of MPs increased by 6% in 2007-8, to just over £93 million.
Gordon Brown (Prime Minister) has claimed £115,000 on his constituency home in Fife since 2002 even although he has enjoyed a rent-free Downing Street flat whilst Chancellor and now, as Prime Minister. He claimed £17,000 in allowances towards the cost of staying away from his main home in 2008, despite the fact that he is provided with the accommodation at Downing Street and also has the use of the country retreat at Chequers, where he spends most weekends.
Michael Martin (ex-Speaker of the House of Commons) was also the Chairman of the Members Estimates Committee, the body which was charged with a 'root and branch' parliamentary inquiry into all aspects of MPs' expenses in January 2008 after it emerged that a Conservative MP, Derek Conway, had paid both his sons a researcher's salary of £10,000 while they were full-time students and his wife, Colette, as an assistant, at a salary of almost £40,000 a year.
In February 2008, a tribunal announced that details of how MPs spend the £23,000 additional costs allowance should be released. In March, Martin sanctioned a High Court action to stop these being disclosed, despite receiving legal advice that he was pursuing a £100,000 case that he could not win. He then issued a gagging order after Labour backbencher David Winnick blasted the attempt to keep details secret. Martin told MPs they could not debate the issue because 'This matter is before the court and therefore it is subjudice.'
Mr Martin, Labour MP for Glasgow North East at the time, whose salary was £138,000 a year, spent £1.7 million of public money refurbishing his grace-and-favour apartment in Westminster. He has also claimed £75,324 over a six year period (£17,166 in 2007) to help pay for the detached villa in Glasgow which he owns outright, having paid for it, in cash, nine years ago for £173,000 and is now estimated to be worth £400,000.
He and his wife Mary have enjoyed a total of 16 trips to destinations including Rome, Hawaii, New York and the Bahamas over the past six years. Each of the visits was was given approval by a cross-party Commons committee whose chairman is . . . Mr Michael Martin ! Mrs Mary Martin, although having no formal official role as the wife of the Speaker, has accompanied her husband on all but one of his 17 overseas visits since September 2002. Her travel bill alone for just 10 of the trips was £25,000. In 2008, Mrs Martin was at the centre of a row over £4,280 worth of expenses for taxis to buy food for (private) functions.
During the Easter parliamentary recess of 2009, Mr Martin and his wife flew business class, on a four-day taxpayer-funded trip to the United Arab Emirates. The two parliamentary officials in the entourage flew standard class. The bill for the 4 day trip, including flights and accommodation in a five-star hotel, was estimated at £8,000. He earned more than a million Air Miles on taxpayer funded trips to and from Glasgow but many of the air miles were used by seven members of Mr Martin's family. MPs themselves are banned from using Air Miles for personal trips but, within the rules, can use them for business trips.
Peter (now Lord) Mandelson, often regarded as one of the main players, along with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, of modernising the party and rebranding it as 'New Labour', has twice been forced to resign from Cabinet positions in 1998 and again in 2001.
Mr Mandelson (Trade and Industry Secretary) first resigned in December 1998 after revelations about an undisclosed home loan of £373,000 from Geoffrey Robinson (Paymaster General). Under Mr Mandelson's watch, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) had been examining Mr Robinson's business interests. When the news of the loan first came to light, Mr Mandelson denied any wrongdoing. Three days later, he resigned. The scandal also saw Mr Robinson quit his post. In October 2008, Mandelson was appointed Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform by Gordon Brown.
Srichand Hinduja, an Indian citizen, gave a £1 million donation to the Millennium Dome while Mr Mandelson was in charge of the project. Hinduja subsequent made application for a UK passport. In 2005, at the instigation of Keith Vaz, Mandelson made a phone call to Mike O'Brien (Immigration Minister) in an attempt to influence this. He initially claimed he had not made the call, then, 'at no time did he remember having made a phone call'. He was forced to reverse his story when Mr O'Brien contradicted him and on 24th January 2001, Mandelson announced his resignation. In November 2004, Mandelson became Britain's European Commissioner for Trade and in October 2008 it was announced that he would return to government in the re-drawn post of Business Secretary and would be made a life peer.
Keith Vaz (Minister for Europe) had been involved with the Hinduja brothers for a long time. He was present when they set up the charitable Hinduja Foundation in 1993. At that time, the Hindujas were enthusiastic Conservative supporters hosting Margaret Thatcher to their functions. When, in 1998, the brothers completed their conversion to New Labour and invited Tony Blair and Cherie Booth (Blair) to a £1,000 Diwalii soiree, Mr Vaz made the speech. In the Spring of 1999, Srichand Hinduja wrote to the Prime Minister complaining that there were no Asian MPs in ministerial positions. In July 1999, the next reshuffle after Mr Hinduja's letter, Mr Blair made Mr Vaz a junior minister in the Lord Chancellor's department. The passport applications of both Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja were approved in six months, a third of the normal time.
Geoff Hoon (Transport Secretary) ~ Whilst Defence Secretary and living rent-free for three and a half years in a grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty House, was renting out his London house (his 'main home' to the House of Commons authorities) to a private tenant. At the same time, he claimed more than £70,000 in 'second-home allowance' on his constituency home in Derby. This meant that during the Iraq war, and for three years afterwards, the man in charge of British forces had one free residence, another covered by parliamentary expenses, and a third, originally his second home, and therefore initially supported by the taxpayer, funded by rental income.
Jacqui Smith (Home Secretary) ~ Registed her sister's house in South London as her main residence and claimed £22,948 in 2007/08 in taxpayer-funded allowance, her husband and children live in the family home in her Redditch constituency. Her overall expenses in 2007/08 including travel, office and staffing was £157,631. Included in this figure is the £40,000 salary of her husband, Richard Timney, who is employed as her parliamentary aide.
Tony McNulty (Employment Minister) ~ Is to be investigated by a Commons watchdog over £60,000 he claimed as a 'second home allowance' for the house in which his parents live. He started claiming allowances for the house in his Harrow constituency in Northwest London in 2001 and continued to do so until January 2009 even though he moved out in 2002 after getting married for the second time. Since then he has lived in Hammersmith, which is just nine miles from Harrow and three miles from Westminster. Mr McNulty and his wife, Christine Gilbert (Chief Inspector of Schools) have a combined annual income of a third-of-a-million pounds.
Alistair Darling (Chancellor) ~ lives rent-free at No 11 Downing Street but gives his main home address as a flat in South London (which he rents out). His second home is in Edinburgh on which he has claimed £9,837 for a second home allowance.
Margaret Beckett (Housing and Planning Minister) ~ had been 'covering costs' when she rented out her London property while living in grace-and-favour accommodation.
Harry Cohen (MP) has claimed the maximum of £104,701 in expenses in the past 5 years for his £375,000 property in his Leyton and Wanstead, East London constituency on the basis that it is his second home. He lists a single-bedroom schoolhouse in Colchester, Essex and a caravan on nearby Mersea Island as his main home. He has pocketed £310,714 in total since 1990.
Other members of Nu-Lab who've been tainted by Sleaze ~ Clive Betts, David Blunkett, Stephen Byers, Dr Jack Cunningham, Lord Goldsmith, Peter Hain, Harriet Harman, Beverley Hughes, Lord (Derry) Irvine, Tessa Jowell, Lord (Cashpoint) Levy, John McTernan, Jon Mendelsohn, Jo Moore, Jonathan Powell, Des Smith, John Spellar, Jack Straw, Ruth Turner . . .
Angus MacNeil, the SNP MP for Na h-Eileanan an lar (Western Isles) first made the complaint, in 2006, which prompted the Metropolitan Police inquiry into the cash-for-honours allegations.
