Labour's parliamentary candidate & expenses

The West Sussex County Times carried a letter in May from a Peter Hillman about our parliamentary candidate's statement on MPs' expenses.

Our prospective parliamentary candidate and the Chair of Horsham Labour Party both had letters published in the same paper this week in response to the original letter.


In the original letter, published on May 8th, Mr. Hillman wrote:

Andrew Skudder, the prospective parliamentary candidate for Horsham Labour Party is happy to promise not to abuse the expenses paid to MPs should he be elected as he is safe in the knowledge that there is as much likelihood of that happening as the tooth fairy eloping with Father Christmas!

He also added:

Just out of interest - why does the local Labour Party select a Crawley resident to represent the interests of the people of Horsham?
Do they have no members who reside in the actual constituency who could fill that role?

Our first reply was from Andrew Skudder, who wrote:

Your reader, Peter Hillman, is absolutely right that it is very easy for me to say that I would not abuse parliamentary expenses, but at least he does not doubt my sincerity. If Horsham were to somehow provide the next election's "Portillo moment" there is no part of that promise I would regret having made. If there is any doubt about that I can point at my time as a councillor when, in four years, I claimed for some child-minding if evening meetings clashed with my wife's shift work at the time, and had one single expense claim for a train journey, despite regularly representing the council at meetings of the LGA in London and travelling to a summer school in York at my own expense.

It is part of the democratic process that all candidates can state what they believe in and what they would do if elected, and manipulating the expenses system and treating parliament as a part-time job happen to be things I feel strongly about, to the extent that when I met one of the few MPs in my party who have an additional job I made myself very unpopular by sharing my views with him.

As to why I was selected over the candidates from within the constituency, that is really a question for the constituency members, although it is a question that could equally be asked of the Tories isn't it?

David Hide, Chair of the CLP, wrote to respond to the final point:

I would like to thank Peter Hillman, (letters page Friday May 8th) for providing me with the opportunity to explain to your readership why Horsham Labour Party selected Andrew Skudder to be our Parliamentary Candidate.

First and foremost we selected Andrew because, as a result of a democratic process involving all our members, Andrew came top of the ballot. We could have selected someone with a Horsham postal address but on the night the strongest candidate lived just outside of Horsham.

Andrew lives within 100m of the constituency boundary and closer to Horsham town centre than much of the electorate and considerably closer to both Horsham and Westminster than our current MP.

The current MP would face immediate disqualification under Peter Hillman’s criteria of being ‘local’ having been born in Oxford and owning a second and third home in London.

Being from the constituency you represent, has never been the principal reason why a political party selects a candidate to fight an election, it is all about the qualities of candidate and his or her commitment to stand up for the local electorate.

Again I can reassure the residents of Horsham that Andrew will be very happy to remain living within 100m of Horsham constituency boundary at his own and not the tax payers expense.

Andrew could have added that the recent exposure of Francis Maude's systematic abuse of the parliamentary allowances scheme, the evident public disgust about his behaviour, and Maude's continuing stance of insisting that his expenses were all within the spirit of the rules and that he is 'good value' even while promising not to do it any more, makes his election just a little bit more likely than before if Francis Maude decides to stand again, and is allowed to.

However, Peter Hillman seems to be suggesting that Horsham will continue to vote Tory , even if the Tory has been caught out in behaviour most of his voters consider dishonest - that the constituency would rather have a bad Tory than no Tory at all.

Sadly this may be true, and we wait to see if David Cameron's promises to clean up his party will result in any sort of de-selection or resignation (or even just paying back the ill-gotten gains) or whether he considers it good enough to just promise not to do it again.

If Peter Hillman is right then, unfortunately, the only people who can decide who our next MP will be are the Horsham and Crawley Conservative Association members, and so the decision is in the hands of fewer than 1000 people.

That is not a glowing endorsement of the democratic process is it?