Brown faces a furious backlash from MPs told to repay expenses
Commons protests grow as auditor appointed by the Government is accused of not staying within remit
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More than 300 MPs will today be asked to pay part of their expenses or produce evidence to back up old claims.
Politicians will return to Westminster this morning – after an 82-day summer recess – to scenes of anger and recrimination, as all 646 MPs receive individual letters from Sir Thomas Legg, the retired civil servant called in to carry out an audit of MPs' expenses, going back five years.
Gordon Brown will face a furious backlash from MPs, including from within his own party, who say they are being punished over their expenses claims when they did only what the rules allowed them to do at the time. The timing has dashed the Prime Minister's hopes that he could use Parliament's first day back after the summer break to begin a fightback against the Conservatives over economic policy.
Instead, he will return to a Commons seething with rage over Sir Thomas's inquiry, and with some Labour MPs still hoping that they can organise a coup to remove Mr Brown from office before the election. This evening, the Prime Minister will face the weekly meeting of Labour MPs and peers, where protests are expected about the scale of the Legg inquiry.
Yesterday, Downing Street defended the decision to call in Sir Thomas. Mr Brown himself is expecting a letter today calling on him to repay part of the £6,577 he claimed for cleaning bills for his London flat. The money was paid to his brother, Andrew, who arranged to have the flat cleaned.
The hundreds of other MPs likely to be caught in Sir Thomas's net include many who "flipped" from one second home to another to make the most of the £24,222 second-home allowance, a practice that was permitted at the time but is now banned.
The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, flipped four times in four years on three different properties. Geoff Hoon, who resigned from the Cabinet in June during a reshuffle, flipped his second home and did not pay capital gains tax on the sale of London property.
The Tory MP Sir Patrick Cormack is expected to be asked to repay thousands of pounds from the £11,212 he claimed in four years for cleaning his Westminster flat. The Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews claimed £118,000 over seven years for second-homes expenses, including stereo equipment and Kenyan carpets.
Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, described the Legg inquiry as "the solution not the problem". But other MPs have protested that Sir Thomas, a 74-year-old barrister with a long civil service career, has gone much wider than his original terms of reference.
Sir Stuart Bell, a member of the Commons Members Estimate Committee (MEC), which is overseeing the Legg inquiry, forecast yesterday that aggrieved MPs "will have in their breast pockets a letter from Sir Thomas, dated 2 July, saying that this review would be carried out in accordance with the rules at the time". Speaking on BBC Radio's The World This Weekend programme, he added: "Many MPs feel he has not stayed within that remit. He is not respecting the decisions that were made by the Fees Office in accordance with the rules."
Another MP, who asked not to be named, forecast that there will be "consternation" and "stupefaction" among some of the MPs who are told by Sir Thomas that they should repay money that they thought they had a right to claim.
One unnamed MP was investigated by the Commissioner of Standards, John Lyons, and cleared of wrongdoing, after a constituent had complained about newspaper reports about his expenses – and is now furious to discover that Sir Thomas has effectively overruled the Commissioner and wants him to repay some of the money. But Sir Thomas has decided that because the rules were so badly drawn up and easily bent, it is not acceptable for MPs to argue that the expenses they claimed were agreed by the Fees Office and within the rules.
MPs will have three weeks to reply to the letters they receive today from Sir Thomas. Those who are hoping to stand for re-election next year are likely to pay up immediately. But Sir Thomas's hit-list includes dozens who have already announced that they are standing down, and a small number who have already left the Commons. Others are now expected to stand down rather than weather the public storm when the full details of Sir Thomas's finding are published in December.
Disputed cases will go to the six-strong MEC, which is chaired by the Speaker, John Bercow and whose leading member is Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House. Some MPs who feel especially hard done-by may engage lawyers and try to fight Sir Thomas in the courts.
A very civil servant: The quintessential insider
Sir Thomas Legg, 74, has been a public servant for so long that when he joined the Lord Chancellor's department (now the Department for Constitutional Affairs), aged 26, the Beatles had not yet released their first single.
In 1998, he led the official investigation into allegations that British mercenaries had supplied arms for a coup in Sierra Leone, and cleared the Government of blame. This provoked Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, to describe him as "the Establishment Man's Establishment Man: as unctuous a piece of slime as ever slithered around the corridors of Whitehall".
He was embarrassed in 1993 at the Commons Public Accounts Committee after misleadingly denying judges were complaining about legal-aid cuts, when two senior judges had written to him saying just that. Since retiring from the Civil Service, his work has included stints on the House of Commons Audit Committee, and the chairmanship of the Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust.
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Comments
Each and every one of the hundreds of MP's involved in this expenses scandal should have been prosecuted months ago. To allow them the opportunity to pay back what they have stole and fraudulently claimed is a travesty of justice. In their high powered positions and miss use of trust, a lengthy prison sentence is a must.
These MP's should be made an example of.
If any other employee had made such claims, they would be summarily dismissed. Someone on benefits, (what more complex rules exist?), would have been prosecuted, fined, had benefits stopped for up to six months AND have to pay the money back!
Ignorance of the 'rules' or law would be no excuse.
MPs earn almost three times the median wage. They should pay up or shut up. Clegg, Cameron and Brown should stand united and face down their MPs.
We have to tighten our belts and get by. So can MPs.
Still it's nice to reopen this wound especially after the world cup results and strictly come dancing is no longer a nice smoke screen. Selling off the assets too, Brown should consider what damage the previous sales have done and just where did all that gold go.
Funny old forum this what with unlimited advertising as well.
Why are the two dishonourable gentlemen who fraudulently claimed thousands for non existent mortgages still walking free? By their own admission they are clearly criminal suspects.
As for the hard done by, teflon coated Mps, they still don't get and never will, to hell with them !!!!!!!!!!
'No reward for failure' was the mantra from this vacuous gov. Remember at the heart of this expenses fiddle was a Speaker, the first to be hounded out in 300 years, who set the attitude and atmosphere for this not only to take place, but encouraged it. So what happened 15 seconds after Parliament was again activated with the expression 'Order Order', Harman stood up and proposed that Martin is made a Lord.
It's long passed due that all those who fiddled their expenses were sacked and prosecuted. But I guess that, in the end, a few scapegoats will be thrown to the lions and the rest will keep their heads down... until it's safe to start ripping-off the public once again...
The rules state that claimed expenses much be necessary for their role as an MP. You do not need mock Tudor beams to be am MP (as Prescott seems to think), you do not need a massage chair to be an MP, etc. Thus these claims (and vast numbers of similar) are outside the rules and that the Fees Office paid them does not change that. Maybe some of teh problem was with the old Speaker who both ran and milked the system - and was rewarded with a Lordship for his failure (despite Brown's "no reward for failure" it was still Brown who "rewarded him for failure").
Tell it to the IT contractors forced to pay tax as employees whilst getting none of the benefits.
Tell it to the social work departments screwed down year on year so that they are barely functional through lack of resources, staff absenteeism and low morale.
Tell it to the soldiers injured and dead through lack of armour and suitable vehicles to do their job in Afghanistan and Iraq (their job being to prop up Bushes oil regime but let's not go into that).
In short, I cannot imagine what would make me feel sorry for that bunch of corrupt parasitic hypocrites. They have sown, and what a joy it is to me to watch them reap. Squirm you b***ards, squirm !
So, almost half of the UK's MPs fiddled their expenses in some way.
So glad to know that such a trustworthy bunch are leading the country...
How can a Chancellor who flips 4 times, charges for accounting advice and can't get his treasury accounts past the NAS have any credibility.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/pl
Only 10 days of fun left in this petition.
They should be prosecuted, plain and simple. If the commons thinks this "pay back" scheme will exonerate them in the eyes of the public, they are sadly mistaken.
The fact of the matter is we are governed by a thoroughly corrupt Houses of Parliament. The fact none (let alone the majority) have been charged, prosecuted and imprisoned proves it.
If this is the calibre of MP's in the three main parties, it's clear none of the three main parties should be re-elected.
I have thought for some time that the Mps are not the slightest bit interested in what we think, do, or say. If they were concerned at all, they would not have behaved in the way they have. Maybe at the next General election, the voters may just catch their attention. Don't worry about Malik, as he said himself, " I have been a million per cent within the rules ". Straight as a telephone pole, salt of the earth.
We are within likely 6 months of the next General Election (sooner would be better), and out of what some 660 MPs, at least 300 and possibly a lot more will be be new "first time" MPs are the rules they must adhere to fully "nailed down ?" Also in what is going to be an age of austerity, are MPs to be banned from following "outside interests ?"
The real issue with MP's pay and Allowances can only be set against a reduction in the number of MPs because obviously and at the National Level, we are massively over-governed and we need to strengthen local Democracy if we are to switch away from everything being directed by central government. If David Cameron becomes PM, he has said that there will be a 10 percent reduction in MPs which is good but not quite enough.
What we could really do with is a cull that reduces the numbers to around 400-450 but when you stop and think about it for a moment, a problem arises. If you redraw the boundaries, obviously you end up with bigger constituencies but you also end up with a more diverse electorate and that may make it necessary to replace First Past the Post with some sort of PR arrangement with perhaps two MPs being returned from each constituency which doesn't really help in reducing costs.
After 12 years of often quite bossy and silly Government, it was obvious that the "Expenses Scandal" became an ideal way for the public to get back at their tormentors but I would suggest that we the public need more out of this than just revenge, not overnight but carefully debated, we need to look at our Governance in the round and insist that a transparent and simple to understand new system evolves else sooner or later we will face a repeat in one way or another.
It is perfectly obvious that many of the expenses claims were either ludicrous or bordering on the insane but the origins of all of this go back to Prime Ministers of all parties not being prepared to pay salary upfront and instead feeding in these spurious allowances and expenses as compensation which then became seen as "of right" to MPs. We need to get something better out of this than just "All sound and fury signifying nothing..."
And, indeed, how to be governed more efficiently, too, given that this lot have brought us to the point of flogging off bridges for the toll income; and student debt too, which sounds as dubious an asset as subprime mortgages!
Not to mention threatening to strip local councils of their assets to flog them too, despite apparently having no legal power to do that; but still, they'll doubtless pass a law to make it OK, they're just so good at doing that.
If we have to flog stuff to pay the national debt, can't we find anything more ... impressive?!
Ah, I forgot - Mrs T flogged all those off last time round, so, the family silver having been flogged, I suppose there's only the the national junk and knick-knacks left.
Yet another demonstration of the truth that, like the little houses on the hillside made of ticky-tacky, both the main parties, once in office, pretty much "all look just the same".
Anyone want to buy a subprime nation?
The real problem is as someone pointed out the other week, the real truth behind reducing our national debt is that taxes have to rise first. Apparently the logic is simple, unless you put people out on the streets immediately in some form of modern day version of the Land Closures, it takes at least two years to wind down each public spending programme.
People often forget that when Thatcher came to power some 30 years ago, they had to increase taxes and the situation wasn't as bad then as it is today. Obviously, it was the Falklands that got her re-elected.
People ask for "The Truth" but I wonder whether they have the stomach for it which leads to Osborne being frank but even so only modestly, 7 Billion won't scratch the surface. Whilst Brown insists on sticking to the "it's all right' message, the problem of which is that people will mainly choose the easy option rather than face the truth - that's frightening !
1] The Tories will screw you BUT they are at least UP FRONT about it and you will know that prior to
voting for them
2] The Labour shower will also screw you BUT they will do so whilst accusing the Tories of doing so.
Looks like the ones who've decided to go don't care, and might be resolving to thumb their noses at everyone, refuse to pay anything back as Legge has no teeth, and depart with as much loot as they can gather. Their local parties might be wise to lock up anything of value in the constituency office right now! Seems, so far, to be Labour in the forefront of that. One for all and all for one, eh?! As usual, fat lot they care about how that response is going to affect the chances of their "brothers" who want to stand again ...
But Jackie Smiuth DOES want to stand again, And yet she makes an apology hardly worth the name - except in respect of hubby's little trangression! Grudging, half-hearted, insincere - and she's got a majority of less then 3,000! Does she seriously think her electors will swallow that meekly?
You look at some of them, and you're bound to wonder - are they thick, as well as amoral?