MP's Expenses: It's all too easy to poke fun

1.53.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 21st May 2009

It's all too easy to poke fun at most MPs, including our own MP for Chesham & Amersham.

That well known Conservative supporting newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, has revealed that local Chesham & Amersham MP Cheryl Gillan claimed Parliamentary expenses for feeding her dogs. The Telegraph revealed that "she charged taxpayers for one £3.69 bag of Iams Senior Chicken dry meal meant for older dogs, and two 39p cans of Cesar chicken and turkey meat, along with food and drink for herself." She has since agreed to pay back the cost of the dog food.

The much bigger scandal is that the local Conservative MP for Chesham & Amersham, who can easily commute to central London, has been able to claim nearly £90,000 of tax-payers money over the last four years for a second home in Battersea! (She also claimed £3,384 in car mileage expenses from her Amersham home to Westminster, a subject to which we may return....). The MP for Chesham & Amersham is, of course, not alone in this situation, as evidence the recent disclosures concerning MPs with constituencies even closer to Westminster.

Given the excellent transport links to our constituency and closeness to the capital, there is no reason why our local MP should need to have a second home in central London subsidised by the taxpayer. That's why our prospective parliamentary candidate Tim Starkey has already made it clear that if he were elected at the General Election he would not have a second home in London.

Tim says to ordinary workers who travel to London each day "If you can work in London without claiming a second home, why can't your MP? Thousands of constituents commute every day to central London. Not only that, several MPs representing constituencies that are further from London get by without any second home allowance at all (including MPs for Reading, Cambridge, Hemel Hempstead and Windsor)" So Tim has made a simple promise: "If elected MP for Chesham and Amersham I will not make a claim for a second home. I will simply get on the train at Chalfont and Latimer and commute to London. I hope this would be a small step towards creating a system based on need, not greed."

Of course, whatever action individuals take it is the whole system that needs to change. On 9th April 2009 Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg set out a detailed blueprint for reform (see www.nickclegg.com/2009/04/mps-expenses-reform/ ) including:

• All expenses have to be justified on the basis of enabling MPs to do their job.

• Second homes allowances to be rigorously tested to make sure they represent value for money.

• Designation of first and second homes to be independently approved.

• Second home allowances to be restricted to rental agreements (no help with house purchases), utility bills and council tax. (In other words no manure, work on repairing moats etc…)

These rules would end the scandal of MPs doing up homes at the taxpayer's expense, then making a killing selling them on. As an immediate step Nick Clegg has ordered that Lib Dem MPs repay any profit made on second home sales to the taxpayer (an action no other party leader has taken). There is simply no defence for a system which results in all of us subsidising a MPs second home to the tune of £90,000 over 4 years, only for any eventual profit on the sale of the property to be pocketed by the MP and not to be paid back.

Having tried and failed three times to become an MP, I am astonished at four things.

One is the sheer brass neck of so many MPs who have been blaming "the system" rather than admitting that they have used "the system" so callously and, bluntly, greedily.

Second, and related to the first, how can they honestly expect us to believe that these are "mistakes"? How many of us would fail to notice an extra £16,000 (or whatever) arriving in our bank account?

Thirdly, having worked in private industry all my working life (32 years and counting), do these people not realise that most of their claims would not be entertained by any ordinary business? If I claim for, say, a computer for my work, that computer is thus paid for by the company and belongs to the company. Frankly if the tax-payer is paying for houses, sofas, chandeliers and manure, in regular business then the tax-payer would own the houses, sofas, chandeliers and manure. The idea that someone else pays for something that then becomes yours I find very hard to stomach.

And finally, in any regular business expense claims are signed off by one's senior manger. What is happening in the House of Commons, apparently, is that senior MPs are taking their claims straight to junior clerks and saying "pay this". Of course all the claims are being paid without question. Maybe that's something else that they need to consider.

Peter Jones

Chairman, Chiltern Liberal Democrats

May 2009