This week parliament published the long-awaited details of parliamentary expenses and Horsham's MP included a link to his expenses on his web site. The intention of all this was to provide greater transparency and for us, the public, to see how our money is being spent.Having looked at the available information, Horsham Labour Party still has some questions and concerns about the levels of expenses claimed by our MP.
First of all, we have to say that we recognise that an MP must maintain an office, or even two, and has to employ staff to deal with the caseload of the job, and would expect any MP to spend as much as necessary to equip and staff their office. All our concerns relate to the personal expenses claimed.
Perhaps one exception to this is the inclusion of £2,200 a year for subscriptions to something called "European Research Group" which we believe to be an organisation created by Tory MEPs giving the appearance of using UK taxpayers' money to fund a party-political organisation.
In May, Francis Maude promised to publish details of his expenses on his web site. Following the publication by parliament of all MP expenses, he has included a link to the official publication, which have been heavily criticised for their heavy-handed censorship. He has not taken the opportunity to provide any extra detail at all.
What extra details would we have liked to see?
- Travel costs
In the seven years from 2001/2 to 2007/8 Maude has claimed £27,231 for travel between his constituency and Westminster, an average of £3890 a year. We would like to know the number and dates of those journeys, which is the bare minimum any normal employee provides to his employer when claiming expenses.
- Other costs
During the same period, Maude also claimed £10029 in 'other' expenses, including £7,000 in 2001/2. These fall outside the allowances published and there is no explanation of what they represent. - Claims before 2004/5
Parliament has published claims from 2004/5 onwards, but there is nothing to stop an MP voluntarily publishing a breakdown of earlier claims.
One item in the published expenses has caught our attention: in the documents for 2005/6 additional costs allowances it looks like the same phone bill has been claimed for twice!
On June 30th he claimed £71.24 for a June 2005 phone bill (page 9 of the PDF file). In January 2006 he claimed another £71.24 for an overdue reminder for the June 2005 phone bill. Obviously this is only a small amount compared to the rest of the £145,850 claimed in personal expenses over seven years, but there are two principals here:
Firstly, the most obvious one: the second claim is wrong and fraudulent - even though it is almost certainly unintentional.
Secondly, the first claim is not correct either. On every expense form that MPs fill out it says very clearly "You can only claim for costs you have actually paid". The fact that an overdue reminder was sent, suggest that the original phone bill had not been paid when Maude claimed for it.
Our more general objection to Francis Maude's claims remain:
- That over seven years he has claimed an average of £20,000+ a year to enable him to live in London and travel there, which is well beyond what is necessary - especially given his poor record of attendance in Parliament.
- That he has claimed at all for living in London, when a London address appears more necessary for his other activities than for his parliamentary ones. Evidence for this is the fact that he lived in London before being elected.
- That he has claimed so much for travel
You may only claim for:As you see the bills relating to £18,000 a year for mortgage interest or £4,000+ a year for service charges, ask yourself if this is all absolutely necessary for a job in Parliament - which only sits for about 36 weeks of the year, often for only three or four days in the week, not all of which are late night sittings, and less than half of which are attended by our MP.
- Costs you have actually paid
- Addition expenses wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred to enable you to stay overnight way from your only or main home for the purpose of performing your Parliamentary duties.
Although we are not satisfied with the limited information that has been provided on expenses, we look forward to the next debate (on outside interests) with some anticipation. If the Times is to be believed, many Tory frontbenchers are shedding directorships before the deadline for disclosure.
We thought that Tory frontbenchers had no shame. Apparently we were wrong, but we will wait until publication to see what happens.