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Police should revisit MacShane's expenses case, says Yvette Cooper

Oliver Wright
Sunday 04 November 2012 23:30 GMT
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Labour has turned on its former MP Denis MacShane, calling for police to look again at whether his abuse of the parliamentary expenses system broke the law.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow Home Secretary, said the former Europe minister's case should be re-examined in the light of "very severe condemnation" by the Commons Standards and Privileges Committee. "I think it is right that the police should be looking again at this," she told the BBC. "They have said they are doing that. The Crown Prosecution Service have to make their decisions independently."

Mr MacShane had faced a 12-month suspension over the affair but quit on Friday after 18 years as the MP for Rotherham, triggering a by-election. The committee found he knowingly submitted 19 false invoices that were "plainly intended to deceive" the expenses authority. It added it was impossible to say how much Mr MacShane claimed "outside the rules" but it "may have been in the order of £7,500".

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