As I was an MP until I retired from the Commons in 2005, my allowance claims for the previous year were examined by Sir Thomas Legg and his team. I received my letter from him at the weekend, giving me the all clear. He wrote “I have not identified any payments made to you under the ACA during the review period which I consider call for any repayment or further supporting evidence to be provided by you. Accordingly, my conclusion is that no action is required from you in this matter”.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! Colleagues in the Commons reckon that Legg (and his Price Waterhouse advisers) have made mistakes in up to 1/5th of their investigations. At least in my case, his only error was in addressing the letter to Mr Paul Tyler MP (a figure who has long since left the building!). Others have been the subject of much more substantial folly. MPs who had no mortgages, and recorded that fact, have been asked to provide their mortgage interest details. One of my colleagues was asked to produce statements from a period during which she wasn’t even a Member of Parliament. And the apparent obsession with gardening and cleaning (for which the questionable principle of retrospective limits has been introduced) has detracted from the much more substantial questions about ‘flipping’ second homes to maximum advantage. Gardening claims might be excessive – and as The Times puts it, Legg seems to have decided, “your house can be too clean but not too large” – but the second home shenanigans indulged in by a minority of MPs on the Additional Costs Allowance, is by far the most serious issue at stake. It is an immense missed opportunity that Legg’s inquiry has enlarged the trivial and diminished the serious.
The original “revelations” by the Daily Telegraph included some major mistakes, as I can confirm from personal experience, but one expects that from newspapers. Facts were not allowed to spoil a good story. I wrote “Please let me know if I can help with any other information”, but the Telegraph journalist translated that into “he declined to say”. I am inclined to agree with my grandmother, who always referred to the “Daily Teluhalf”.
But we expect that from papers who are desperately trying to staunch their loss of readers. No so, one hopes, Government appointed inquiries. What should we anticipate when the spotlight turns onto the indefensible allowance system for members of the House of Lords ?
We can only hope that the investigation proves more thorough, more aware of the need to promote fairness as well as transparency, than the questionable Leggy performance.
Oh dear, what is that high pitched squeal I can hear ? Is it the sound of the world’s smallest violin I hear playing ? Or is it a well-to-do Lord fiddling while Rome burns ?
Do me a faavah, guv’nor…
Lord Tyler,
I am more free to criticize my country’s fault’s here and now than I often have been. Recent events have given me a tinge of desperation. I would warn you that the spirit in what you are complaining of has no intrinsic limits. In my opinion we have countless real threats to the integrity of our system but at the same time our rules presume that every legislator and politician at every level might be inclined to betray his country for a nice glass of whiskey and a decent steak. I doubt you find this credible but it is very near the sober truth.
There is no retrospection. None what so ever. Politicians keep going on about retrospection but you haven’t said at all what the rule was that allowed these excessive claims, and what the new rule is that applies.
Legg has just done an audit, and he has done the audit on the basis of the Green Book in force at the time, and the Code of Conduct for MPs.
The relevant rules are
(a) necessary for the perfomance of their Parliamentary Duties
(b) Not extravagant or Luxurious
(c) in accordance with the Nolan priciples of selflessnex, accountabilty, honesty and leadeship
(d) strictly in accordance with the rules governing the allowance
(e) above reproach
(f) to account of the need to get value for money
(g) avoidin any appearance of benefit of a subsidy from public funds, or a diversion of public money for the benfit of a political organisation.
These principles amount to a general requirement of propriety.
It is not a source of supplementary income
All those rules were in force at the time. The money bar any errors in audit falls under those rules. Every payment so far that I have seen requested has failed those tests. If it hasn’t the MPs have the right and have been requested by Legg to get back to him with any discrepancies and they had three weeks to do it.
So when you say
“for which the questionable principle of retrospective limits has been introduced”
What is the new rule? Which of the above rules wasn’t in force at the time?
You’re right howver on the Lords. As Andrew Neil said the other day, “The Lords expenses are a spit roast in comparison”
It’s coming.
It is an immense missed opportunity that Legg’s inquiry has enlarged the trivial and diminished the serious.
Of course it is. However the reason is that MPs gave themselves an exemption in law. Legg isn’t allowed to change the law. MPs.
They can always have a vote and remove their little tax perk retrospectively. Then they would have something to complain about.
However, it hasn’t stopped MPs implement retrospective taxation, and the Lords haven’t prevented those laws being passed. One of the Lords must have stood up in the Chamber and said that the finance act was in line with the HRA so perhaps you can ask them why they have implemented retrospective taxation?
Oh for gods sake Sir high and mighty get into the real world. Us ordinary plebeians have to go through posturings by the ruling/political classes and often have no recourse.
So Legg made an administrative cockup by geting your name wrong (big deal). The fact is you all, who draw from the taxpayers purse, do not want to be seen to be doing so, and for what purpose? To hide your taxual accountability?
For too long you all, in both houses, want something for nothing, which you all accuse the general public of but now the tables have turned.
You don’t like the heat then…go back to being a nobody lord who doesn’t make the rest of our lives a misery!
Lord Tyler: “I received my letter from him at the weekend, giving me the all clear.” Congratulations! However the tone is naturally defensive given what is happening.
Our Constitution is based in part on de facto practice. However, there is no prescription that defines how long such a practice has to occur before it is accepted as a constitutional freedom.
Therefore, can it be said that retrospective accountability of MP’s expenses is unconstitutional? In my view it is and sets a precedent that paves the way for the Treasury to apply retrospective taxation generally.
There is some talk on the blog by the politically naïve about doing away with the HoL. In contemporary terms this has merit least of all because those who govern/rule us ‘do not oppress’. This is now, but will it be so tomorrow?
The constitutional design of the US Senate is revealing:
James Madison, paraphrasing Edmund Randolph, explained in his notes that the Senate’s role was “first to protect the people against their rulers [and] secondly to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.”
The US could have chosen a unicameral arrangement but they had direct experience of British tyranny and a HoL that had too much power and influence such that the dividing lines of ruler/defender became blurred.
Although the HoL is weakened it fulfils its prime directive of protecting the people against its rulers by ensuring that legislation and other matters serve the best interests of the nation in defiance of government.
We should always be mindful of the adage: ‘Parliament will have its say but Government will have its way’.
Hard times beckon and the HoL cannot defend us where money matters are concerned. At least the US Senate has emptied a non-money bill and inserted a money bill’s contents as a workaround to its constitutional straight jacket.
Ref: Constitutional Design of the Senate, 1787; Para 1
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Origins_Development.htm
One has to query the latest pronouncement.
Apparnently Lords didn’t specify a main home, so there cannot be fraud on second homes.
My take is that if they haven’t specified a main home then claiming second homes allowances isn’t allowed.
Perhaps all the Lords who’ve claimed it are now vulnerable for large amounts of cash
“It’s the rich wot get the gravy, it’s the poor [MPs] wot get the blame..”
http://order-order.com/2009/10/20/rennard-flipped-main-residence-2007-clerk-no-definition-of-main-address/
“Ain’t it all a bleedin’ shame..”
This ain’t over ’til it’s over..
Oh, and by the way Lord Tyler – I wouldn’t get too cocky about the not being an MP thingy.
I was listening to Today In Parliament last night, and it seems that some Lords will be ending up in the ‘Other Place’, or indeed The Lordships’ House will be seen as a strictly ‘time-limited’ privilege.
Pride comes before a fall, so sit up and eat up your porridge and take your elbows off the table, because if you don’t beee–have you may soon be back on the green benches..
@ Wolfgang- “Perhaps all the Lords who’ve claimed it are now vulnerable for large amounts of cash”, Perhaps all the Lords who haven’t claimed it are now eligible for large amounts of cash (retrospectively).
Not at all. Rennard has been let off because he didn’t specify a main address. None of them did.
If they didn’t specify a main address, no second address. No second address, no second home expenses.
Unless they change the rules so they can retropsectively claim.
Just like the rule change that went through for the attorney general’s expenses.
http://toryardvaark.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/are-there-no-lengths-brown-will-not-go-to-save-patricia-scotland/ for details
The London Evening Standard is now on the case.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23759129-lords-using-loophole-to-claim-cash-for-second-homes.do
Oh chit cynic, don’t mention that word…retrospectively, the rulling classes don’t like it, us plebs have to accept it though.