Leading article: A flipping sense of entitlement
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Independent Minds
It is the details that do the damage. To be blunt, none of the MPs whose expenses were exposed last week has benefited unfairly from the public purse to anything like the extent of Sir Fred Goodwin, the former boss of RBS. His pension fund, paid for by the taxpayers that now own the bank, is worth £17m.
And some of the details are unfair. Phil Woolas, the Immigration minister, is pilloried for claiming for nappies and women's clothes. He says he did not claim for them – they were on receipts that he submitted, although he did not need to, in order to claim up to £400 a month on groceries.
Like many of the trivial items for which MPs have claimed, however, they expose a system that is unsustainable. Jacqui Smith's 88p bath plug had already become an object of national ridicule and television satire. To it can now be added the 26p wooden spoon, the £599 bill for servicing a ride-on lawnmower, the £2.50 KitKat and the £10 bag of horse manure, among others.
No one doubts that most MPs and nearly all ministers work long and antisocial hours, but any temptation to sympathy is dissipated by the culture of entitlement that has been revealed by some of the correspondence that now sees the light of day. Such as the temporarily anonymous Labour MP who said that "natural justice" required that he be reimbursed £3,100 for a 40-inch TV because he had not realised there was a price limit.
Such presumption on the part of MPs was matched, it would seem, by the culture of deference on the part of the Fees Office. Michael Brown, the former Tory MP, said yesterday that it was always "anxious to err on the side of the MP".
It was one of the best arguments for freedom of information law that such a culture would not survive the sterilising sunlight of openness. One by one, the indefensible elements of the expenses regime have been destroyed as they are held up to the light of public scrutiny.
The employment of family members and nannies is now checked, and MPs now have to submit receipts for groceries (although there is still the question of why they should claim for them at all).
But the outstanding issue is that of second homes. This is the real story forced into the open by Heather Brooke, the journalist and author of Your Right to Know whose freedom of information request led to the publication of detailed expenses. The most important revelation last week was the scale and extent of "flipping". MPs, from Alistair Darling, Geoff Hoon and Hazel Blears downwards, have arbitrarily designated their homes as "main" and "second", in a way that maximises the refurbishment for which they can claim. The bath plugs and wooden spoons are only details from shopping sprees on the "John Lewis list" for furnishing these second homes that add up to thousands of pounds. Large claims have been made for building work, which helped to pay for properties that could then be sold for a personal profit of thousands more.
Of course, the cost of Sir Fred's pension is greater than that of the Additional Costs Allowance for all MPs added together, which comes to £11m a year. But the system is rotten and needs a complete overhaul.
The Prime Minister almost got it right last month – too late, needless to say – when he announced a reform on YouTube. It would be fair to replace second-homes expenses with a modest flat rate allowance for MPs representing out-of-London seats: a sort of anti-London weighting. MPs who wanted to live in an expensive home, lavishly furnished, could pay the extra themselves. Gordon Brown's mistake was to try to gain party advantage. Because he failed to consult other party leaders, who might have warned him, he also unwisely tied the flat-rate allowance to attendance at the Commons, thus making it look as if MPs would be paid extra simply for turning up for work.
The Daily Telegraph's decision to devote its first two days of reports to the Government gave the unfair impression that Labour MPs are more guilty than Conservatives. But Mr Brown has not helped the governing party's case.
It ought not to be beyond the wit of reasonable people – in this case, Sir Christopher Kelly, parliamentary standards commissioner – to devise a system that a majority of MPs, their minds focused by open accountability to voters, will accept. But to leave it so late is, for the health of democracy, the worst of all worlds. MPs, who may not be really corrupt and whose greed may be modest by the standards of the Sir Freds of the City, have been dragged, kicking and screaming, towards simple decency by the unforeseen and long-delayed consequences of their own Freedom of Information law. What a moral fable for our times.
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Comments
And the only recourse voters have is the ballot box. It harldy seems appropriate punishment for these people.
Might some agree with me that a more medieval punishment is the right answer - drive these people through the streets of London so we might throw rotten fruit at them. I would be happy at this form of naming and shaming.
Really. I thought he had chosen the right people although he was chosen wrongly.
Logic, sir, logic.
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla.
Would you call Robin Hood a good man, as he was entitled to steal, albeit that is his policy to rob rich and give to poor? Theft is a theft it is not entitlement, it is a theft. One by one, the indefensible elements of the expenses regime have been destroyed as they are held up to the light of public scrutiny.
Enron lady destroyed all the documents and the top guys were caught. If USA can do this like Iraq and Afghanistan, why cannot UK? Crazy this sound but we are good followers you have to admit
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla.
All I ask is it is not decided to be some silly all-points descent on London, as this would be a public order nightmare, unfair on the capital and require a ton of folk to use cash and carbon to get there.
Id suggest a minute of silence for our countrys kids lost futures, in designated local town squares nationwide at a suitable lunchtime period that does not interfere with trying to survive and play into the hands of funded extemists without jobs to worry about.
All coordinated online and with images in a patchwork quilt in some kind of Pixel Protest like those ad spaces, in the manner of a FaceBook group. I am sure even the local plod could provide halfway accurate crowd size estimates for once.
And if the numbers add up to what more than half the voting population who turned out at the last election, then I think it would be valid that a new one be called forthwith.
This is an outrageous statement--I have read many accounts, criticising the small number of days in a year (around 165) that MPs attend Parliament.
They are the ones who created antisocial hours and who knows why. Perhaps they are in the bar for cheap booze.
They certainly weren't bothered about Israel's unjustified and murderous attack on Lebanon, at the end of Parliamentary sessions, in 2006. Margaret Beckett closed the door after the unconscionable crowd went home. No time to call for a cease fire, while Beirut was being demolished.
Why too, if so much work is done by these MPs, is Britain so misruled and dysfunctional.
Why so poor in Education and Health Services?
I doubt very much that, they work hard for the British Taxpayer--feathering their own nest, maybe.
http://uc.princeton.edu/main/images/sto
And bump up all MPs annual salaries by 15,000 pounds.
Do away with all other grants and expenses.
It will encourage MPs to keep living expenses and inflation in London low for everyone -- which is what they should be doing for the greater public good.
You can't justify MP's abusing their expenses simply because they allowed a banker friend to get away too. Parliament is living in an alternative universe where natural justice and common decency are no restraint to them filling their pockets with loot like some modern day Viking plunderers.
Listening to our avaricious money grabbing disreputable politicians lecture us on financial proberty and justice will give every elctor a strong desire to wretch. Won't they be telling us about the hard times ahead - but not for them. To be caught so badly with their trousers down and loot filling their pants, not only shows contempt for those who elected them, but also severe misjudgement.
No MP will get my vote unless he has proven publically that he hasn't been treating his expenses like the conveyor belt off the old Bruce Forsythe game show.
I doubt many current MP's will survive the next election.