MPs CLAIM THEY ARE UNTOUCHABLE 

MPs who are being investigated for expenses fraud are trying to argue a case that they are protected by the 300-year-old Bill of Rights that gives MPs Parliamentary privilege. Lawyers for the MPs are looking at whether the 1689 act could protect them from prosecution. If the Commons rule book, which has for years governed the expenses claims of MPs, is found to be covered by privilege then it could severely hamper attempts by prosecutors to bring MPs to court. However, it is unlikely that the MPs will succeed in blocking any possible prosecution using the device.

It is understood that the Speaker’s Office believes privilege has been waived by exempting MPs under investigation from the process of payback being overseen by Sir Thomas Legg. It is understood that as many as 400 MPs have been asked to pay back money but some are refusing and as many as one in four MPs have appealed against the judgments they have received. Sir Thomas, a former civil servant, has already received about £1 million in repayments.

These include more than £12,000 from Gordon Brown for cleaning and gardening claims deemed to have been excessive and further repayments from David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the Conservative and Lib Dem leaders. MPs who are aiming to stay in Parliament are likely to have money automatically taken from their pay packets. However, it will be more difficult to recover taxpayers’ money from those members planning to leave the Commons, often because of questionable claims. (Source: Sunday Telegraph, Jan/10)

MPs are set to claim they are “untouchable” when it comes to having their expenses investigated by police. A group of Labour MPs is said to have warned Scotland Yard that any criminal probe into possible fraud could be a breach of “Parliamentary privilege”. The group believes that two critical reports on the arrest of Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green in connection with leaked documents mean the police will have to tread carefully. The move would be seen as a bid to protect the investigated MPs’ names.

Parliamentary privilege is normally understood to mean that MPs cannot be sued for what they say in the Commons. Lawyers believe that claiming their documents, records and even themselves are “privileged” is unlikely to work but stubborn MPs are likely to attempt to use it as a defence. The revelation comes just days after four detectives travelled to Scotland as part of a probe into Labour MP Jim Devine. He is said to have claimed £2,157 for getting his London flat rewired using an allegedly fake invoice and another £2,326 for shelving and joinery work supposedly done by the landlord of his local pub.

Mr Devine has already been barred from standing again for Labour. Meanwhile other MPs were threatening to sue over demands by independent auditor Sir Thomas Legg that they should repay some of their expenses. Labour backbencher Diane Abbott said MPs were “furious, absolutely beside themselves,” about Sir Thomas’s requests for repayment. “People are talking about going to court about it,” she said. Others considering their legal position include sitting Labour MP David Chaytor and ex-MP Ian Gibson.

Both have been barred from standing again as Labour candidates. Tory leader David Cameron has told any Tories who refuse repayment that they will be barred from standing for the party at the next General Election. One of the MPs named as a “saint” for making minimal claims during the initial investigation into expenses said he would refuse to pay £7,000 demanded by the Legg auditors. Former minister Frank Field has been asked to repay £5,000 in housekeeping and more than £2,000 in other household bills despite consistently claiming only a small fraction of the available second-home allowance.

He said, “My concern is that nowhere has Sir Thomas explained why he has changed the rules which have resulted in his recalculations.” Meanwhile Justice Secretary Jack Straw was forced to deny a report that he and other senior politicians cooked up a plan to try and hide expenses claims. He was said to have led an all-party delegation of senior MPs which urged Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, to turn down requests by journalists to release details of MPs’ second-home expenses. Mr Thomas backed down, delaying the eventual release of information. (Source: Daily Express, Oct/09)

The 15th Viscount of Falkland pocketed £200,000 by claiming a home he did not even own as his main residence. He registered a two-bedroom oast house in Kent, owned by his wife's aunt, as his main home, despite not even being on the electoral roll there. In reality, he lives in a three-storey Victorian townhouse in fashionable Clapham, South London, just three miles from the House of Lords. By saying his primary residence is near Maidstone, 50 miles from Westminster, he is entitled to subsistence payments, for which no receipts are required, of £174 a night. In 2008, Viscount Falkland, whose family name is Lucius Edward William Plantagenet Cary, claimed £21,528. He has been making similar claims for at least a decade but he defended his actions, saying he was just 'an impoverished peer'.

He and his wife Nicole bought their £500,000 London house in 1990, own it outright with no mortgage, are both on the electoral roll there, and use it as the official address for their company directorships. Neighbours say they rarely seem to be away. Members of the Lords whose main residence is within Greater London cannot claim the night subsistence allowance. Asked about his main address, Wellington College-educated Lord Falkland said, "It's a moot point. You're certainly right that I'm here in Clapham over the period when the House of Lords are sitting. I have a wife who works and has to be in London, so I also have to be in London quite a lot in the recess. What I was doing was making use of an address I have in the country, a small oast house owned by my wife's aunt, going down there and claiming for that within the rules."

Between 2001 and 2008, when he attended Parliament up to 160 days a year, Viscount Falkland was paid 'night subsistence' allowances of a total £125,000. Adding on the preceding years and the months from this April to the end of July, the total is believed to be around £200,000. Lord Falkland said he stopped claiming the allowance at the end of July, two months after the expenses scandal broke. He said, "I didn't do it to make £125,000, I claimed the expenses in order to be able to meet the expenses of my life. I haven't got another income. You might say I'm an impoverished peer. My family over many hundreds of years have been noted for their poverty." (Source: Daily Mail, Nov/09)

MPs who have admitted breaking expenses rules have been offered secret Parliamentary deals to repay the money without being identified. Dozens of MPs are understood to have paid back money without their names or abuses being disclosed to the public following the fast-tracked inquiries into their conduct. The disclosure about the secret justice system will add to growing concerns over the safeguards in place to punish MPs found to have misused public funds. The behind closed doors system means voters are not being told if their MP has inappropriately claimed thousands of pounds for their second home, office or travel. The loophole was introduced in 2005 under the auspices of Michael Martin, the discredited former speaker.

John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, has begun the widespread use of a controversial “rectification procedure” which undermines pledges from party leaders to give the public “transparency” over their MPs’ expense claims. It can disclosed that Janet Anderson, a Labour MP, was allowed to secretly repay almost £6,000 last year for over-claiming “petty cash” on her taxpayer-funded expenses. But 16 MPs also made secret repayments in the 2008/09 financial year and there are fears that dozens of politicians embroiled in the expenses scandal have agreed similar arrangements. The Parliamentary Commissioner is traditionally regarded as an independent figure who considers complaints made against MPs by members of the public.

He has been inundated with complaints made in the wake of the expenses scandal. Mr Lyon usually conducts a investigation then reports his findings to a committee of MPs who consider what action to take. They then publish a detailed report setting out their response and any punishment for MPs. The threat of being publicly censured is one of the major deterrents for MPs not to break the rules. However, it has now emerged that Mr Lyon is taking advantage of a little-known Parliamentary rule that allows complaints about financial misconduct to be settled behind closed doors.

The deals are made available to MPs who are willing to admit they have broken the rules and offer to make voluntary repayments. They have to privately apologise to the Committee of Standards and Privileges, the group of MPs overseeing the conduct of politicians, but their misconduct is then not made public. It is not clear why the identities of those making repayments are not made public in the same way that criminals pleading guilty who do not face a full court trial are named. Mr Lyon has sharply increased the use of this “rectification procedure” since being appointed in January 2008. He has allowed 16 cases to be dealt with in this way last year, compared to an average of just three a year during the tenure of the previous commissioner.

A spokeswoman for Mr Lyon refused to disclose how many MPs had been privately allowed to repay money or who they were. She also refused to say how many MPs were being investigated and their identities. The Metropolitan Police are also understood to be growing frustrated by Mr Lyon’s intervention in cases involving potential fraud. The secret deals have only come to light after this newspaper learnt that Mrs Anderson, the MP for Rossendale and Darwen, had paid back almost £5,750 after admitting to Mr Lyon that she regularly claimed twice as much petty cash as was permitted. MPs were allowed to claim £250 a month in the “no questions asked” allowance. But on 23 occasions, Mrs Anderson claimed it twice.

When the overclaim was first uncovered she said that she had believed she was entitled to the payment for both her Westminster and constituency offices and did not think she should have to repay the money. However, a complaint was lodged with Mr Lyon by a member of the public. In his confidential response to the complaint, Mr Lyon said, “It is fair to point out … that the House authorities did not question her claims even when the forms clearly showed two claims for £250 in a single month. Mrs Anderson has accepted, however, that the final responsibility lay with her. She has agreed to pay back the sums involved. I consider that this an acceptable resolution of this matter and have closed the complaint on that basis.”

Mrs Anderson insisted she had been unaware that the repayment agreement had not been publicised by Mr Lyon. She said, "I don’t have any objection to making it public, but I don’t know whether he would. I will check with him whether he’d have any objection.” In his last annual report Mr Lyon wrote that he typically considered using the procedure “where there was no clear evidence that the breach of Commons rules was intentional and it was at the less serious end of the spectrum.” However, the order says that no official report on an expenses overpayment is necessary “if the Commissioner has with the agreement of the Member concerned” arranged “appropriate financial reimbursement”. (Source: Daily Telegraph, Jan/10)

Even by the standards of Quangoland the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority offers astonishingly bad value for money. In its first year, 2009/10, its accounts shows it spent £2.9 million. Its workload was that it 'received, validated and paid over 3,800 claim forms'. So its budget didn't include the cost of the MPs expenses themselves, just the cost of administering them. Any Human Resources Department of any private company would regard that level of productivity as staggeringly dismal. But isn't it all worth it if the MPs are forced to clean up their act? If the corrupt element know they will no longer get away with it?

The answer is that the MPs have shown more restraint over their expenses than previously, claims are down to £800,000 a month from over £2 million a month. But that is due to the requirement for transparency which came in anyway, nothing to do with IPSA. But the IPSA, despite its multi million pound budget and crystal clear brief to cleanse the augean stables, is a soft touch. It's allowing 31 MPs more MPs to claim second homes, rules of travel expenses for family members are being relaxed. More staffing costs, more office costs, a greater range of items which can be bought on credit cards.

IPSA adds, without irony, that changes should only increase the bill for MPs expenses by 'a few million'. So IPSA is proposing to push the expenses bill back up again. It's supposed to be 'independent' but being paid all that taxpayers money for doing nothing very much means it doesn't want to queer its pitch. The Speaker's Committee, with MPs from all parties, made the disgraceful decision last year to allow IPSA spending without as Speaker Bercow put it 'exercising its statutory power to modify the estimate' but it did add some noises about the costs being high.

Ultimately the paymasters for IPSA are the taxpayers but the reality is that their effective paymasters are the Speaker's Committee. So they will not want to rock the boat too much. The Chairman, Professor Sir Ian Kennedy is paid £700 a day. The Chief Executive Andrew McDonald is paid 'between £105,000 and £109,999' a year. What does he do for the money? Presumably he is too grand to check any of the grubby receipts himself. The 'Director of Policy' John Sills is paid £85,000-£89,999.

IPSA's policy seems to be to go soft on MPS in the hope that MPs will go soft on IPSA. There is also a Director of Communications, etc, etc. They should just employ people to check that the exes are legit. The farce can't go on. IPSA is part of the problem not part of the solution. Even if MPs were paid an extra £10,000 each on their salaries there would be still be a saving for the taxpayer if IPSA and the MPs expenses were abolished as part of the deal. Until this decisive change is brought in this humiliating mess will continue. (Source: Daily Mail, Mar/11)