Osborne facing sleaze probe over expenses
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Independent Minds
Shadow chancellor George Osborne is to be investigated by a sleaze watchdog over his second home allowance claims, it was revealed today.
Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards John Lyon said he would look into complaints lodged by a Labour activist related to his claims for mortgage interest.
In a letter to Laurie Burton, the chair of the local Labour Party in Mr Osborne's Tatton constituency, he said: "I have accepted your complaint and am inviting his comments."
In his letter, Mr Lyon said he would look into a claim that "Mr Osborne claimed for mortgage payments that were not necessarily incurred, contrary to the rules of the House".
It is alleged that Mr Osborne took out a mortgage of nearly £5,000 more than the reported price of his house and claimed Commons allowances to cover interest payments on the whole debt, rather than just the cost of buying the house.
"Since your complaint involves allegations relating to events of over seven years ago, I have consulted the House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges and they have agreed to me initiating an inquiry into this part of your complaint."
He said he put the claims to Mr Osborne, adding: "When I have received his response, I will consider best how to proceed."
The Commissioner said he would not launch an inquiry into Mr Burton's other complaint - that the shadow chancellor had "flipped" his second home and avoided paying capital gains tax.
"This is a matter for HMRC (HM Revenue and Customs)", he told him.
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Comments
I appreciate that Osborne is one of Cameron's mates (public school et. al) but we need people who are capable of both doing the job decently and comng across well - and Osborne is weak at both. Just compare what he has done over the last year, when financial stuff isd continually in the news and just compare him to Vince Cable. Tories need better than Osborne.
Cameron and Osborne are in this together and neither will dump the other willingly. Cameron has had plenty of time to beef up his frontbench team but Osborne will not be ditched without the leader himself falling victim to his own mortgage issues.
In an ideal world we would ditch the lot - as Brown got rid of his miscreants - but I don't think Cambo has it in him to destroy himself alongside Osborne. If he did it would show he was above the "team" but Osborne going would destabilise the whole Bullingdon Boy edifice and cast doubt on Cameron's own affairs. Sadly Osborne will remain in place until the Tories themselves collapse. I hope this is fairly soon, so we can have a more robust and long-term Tory government rather than a one-term-wonder, but sadly, no dice here.
Vince Cable and his soulmate former student Gordon Brown are disasters for Britain. One is irresponsible. The other is nasty liar.
So....... exactly why has there been no police investigation to go with the similar non- investigation into the Smith frauds, the Conway frauds, the McNulty frauds...... etc......etc.....etc......?
Does becoming a bent MP somehow innoculate you from being subject to the law of the land?
I repeat ..... why is this matter being handled yet again by an 'in-house' organisation which has not exactly shown itself to have any real ambition to bring fraudulent practices by MPs to book. I believed an errant member of the Lords understood this inactivity when suggesting that there will be lots of 'jumping up and down' but 'they can't DO anything really!'
Check out the non-investigations completed so far over the last few years on the parliamentary website. Some of the conclusions reached beggar belief!
As a taxpaying citizen, I want no-one who has anything to do with this Fraudsters' Parliament 'investigating' anything. As a taxpaying citizen, I do not want MPs or anyone connected to this Fraudsters' Parliament, to have 'ownership' of the rules' or anything to do with 'investigating' the frauds. In much the same way as I do not want the local burglar fraternity to have ownership of my house keys, my car keys, or the keys of any 'main' home I may have been designating for the purposes of defrauding the taxpayer of even more money!
Why are MPs allowed to buy another house, at public expense, and then sell it keeping all the resultant profits?
I don't see why capital gains is the only issue here, I would like to know why we as taxpayers have been conned into giving them this enormous extra bonus without a word being said about the ethics of it.
By all means have a 2nd home expenses system - help with a mortgage etc - that seems fair to me, but allowing the profits of the 2nd home to be entirely kept by the MP strikes me as wholly immorral, underhand and utterly at odds with any sense of fair-play.
No wonder they refer to it as a 'little nest egg'.
I can see no reason why they ought to be allowed to hold on to 100% of the profits if the 2nd home was 100% funded by the taxpayer.
If the ratio is less than 100% then fair enough, by all means let them pay a capital gain on the 2nd home (no flipping) and they can keep the share they paid for.
It's little surprise people have little faith in any of them.
How Osborne has the nerve to accuse the Chancellor of supposedly flipping his primary home to avoid capital gains when he has done exactly the same thing himself is beyond belief......and it speaks volumes aboput Cameron's poor judgement that he has remained silent on these matters - when it involves more than a token ritual sacrificial offering of one his closest.
Shameful.