Tuesday, April 21, 2009
MP pay & allowances - action now please!
I'm glad that Gordon Brown has announced that he is pushing ahead with major reforms to the system for MP and allowances, and that he will be asking Parliament to vote on them next week. I haven't seen all the details, but they seem very similar to the ones I called for on my website a few weeks ago. Here's a link to the full proposals from the government. (I see that the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life has warned against a 'quick fix' - I beg to disagree - the issues are really quite simple, and they do need to dealt with asap to repair the damage done not just to MPs but the whole political process). I don't think the public will want to wait too long.
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19 comments:
The issues are simple - the public want MP's to stop receiving public money in addition to their salaries. There are many better options, the most obvious is to just stop pocketing our money.
The current proposals simply replace a housing allowance with a daily allowance. You can still turn a profit, you can still employ family members at our expense? How is any of this better?
Direct payment to a supplier removes any doubts as to how or indeed whether the money is spent. These proposals are pitifully poor, you should not support them.
No doubt other MP's will be happy enough to keep the gravy train going, hopefully you'll show some integrity. Any MP who continues to claim these ludicrous allowances is simply taking money that they don't deserve.
Indeed not only is this not better, it's worse.
If this change is put through then MP's will never have to put receipts. They'll simply pick up the cash for turning up.
With this new rule, we would never be able to find out that , for instance, the prime minister is getting the taxpayer to pay for his sky sports subscription, or the employment minister is claiming money for a house he hasn't lived in for 7 years or the home secetary is buying bath plugs and charging them to the taxpayer.
Incidentally this is the same home secetary who wants to give herself the right to read everyone elses email and check their internet usage but the minute it becomes public her husband,whose salary is paid for by the taxpayer, is getting us to pay for his porn starts bleating about privacy( and claimed she made a 'mistake' as in 'i thought no one would see this').
If MP's want to pick up more money that they've already being paid then their employers (ie the voters) should be given all the claims and all the receipts.
Thats the way it works for everyone else and everytime the politicans try to change this it's almost certainly because their snouts are in the trough and they don't see why the voters and taxpayers are important enough to be allowed to see exactly what their representatives are up to.
Still all all we have to do is wait, this government is the political equivalent of a dead rat in the basement . All that's left is the stinking smell of it's rotting corpse.
I noticed that you were speaking in the House of Commons in the Budget debate earlier this afternoon.
What surprised me was that I could only see you, two other MPs and a Government minister on the Labour benches. I did not see how many MPs were on the opposition benches but I assume that the numbers will have been similar.
Given the particular significance of the Budget debate this year, where were all the other MPs whose salaries and expenses that we, as taxpayers, are paying?
Quite how you can be "glad" that Gordon Brown has rushed out some pathetic proposals is a bit of a mystery; we know the other parties disagree with them, and to go by the reporting in eg the Scotsman - http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/-Brown-faces-expenses-vote.5206604.jp - many Labour MPs can see these for the rubbish that they are too.
There's a cynical and sarcastic take on Brown's proposed reforms at the Daily Mash - http://tinyurl.com/c539e8
To quote a key early paragraph,
"Mr Brown has proposed abolishing the controversial £24,000 a year second home allowance and replacing it with a £25,000 a year dragging-your-fat-(behind)-into-work allowance."
Aren't you just a little bit embarrassed by that?
Make the claims fully public in the first place. Use common sense. If you commonly reside in two places, one of which is a house in your constituency where your husband and children live, and one a room in your sister's house ... your main home is the former.
If you'd be embarrassed by a claim you're making becoming public knowledge - then maybe that's a hint that you're claiming the wrong thing.
Be honest, be open, and stop trying to milk the taxpayers yet more.
I have just listened with disbelief to the Prime Minister's interview with Channel 4 news today (http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1184614595?bctid=21696905001).
I'd be interested to read your comments Mark because the interview seems to me to completely contradict what was said previously (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8010034.stm).
As the interviewer says the Prime Minister is trying to change history.
OK, I can see problems with the PM's plan after al - although to be fair, I also suggested that it should be linked to a reduction (a real one) in the amount that could be claimed). Anyway, the issue of 'second homes' is now going to the independent Kelly review - I just hope that it reports quickly so all this can get sorted out!
SCEDIS commented on the Budget debate and the fact that there weren't many there. Leaving aside the unkind possibility that it was because I was speaking (and in fact you are right, except for the opening and closing speeches that day there were only about 12-15 in the chamber at any one time) the truth is that is not a-typical of debates. And it will be because many members will have been in committees, informal meetings, or just answering correspondence and emails. Some might have been skiving, but if that was true it wil only have been a handful. It is genuinely the case that across the parties MPs do an immense amount of work, and only a little of that is reflected in the business in the Commons chamber.
"OK, I can see problems with the PM's plan after all"
Was that after his toe curlingly awful youtube performance? And his realisation that if he put forward his 'plan' in the commons, it would lead to a humilating defeat?
Or had you decided to support him and then realised that not even his own party did and then did a typical New Labour retreat where you simply claim you had never really supported him ?
Look like the latter.
Forget what i just posted. I've just been to the bbc website
The Prime Minister paid his brother £6000 for "cleaning services" and claimed it back off the tax payers .
The PRIME MINISTER?
Meanwhile The justice minister is getting us to pay for a FULL council tax when he's getting a 50% discount
Christ your entire party is a bunch of thieving corrupt scum isn't it?
No wonder you supported hiding it.
I'll be very interested in checking out your receipts.
How many relations are on the public teat in your household i wonder.
And please no crap about “It has since been corrected” or "good faith" or "within the rules" or some such crap.
Please do this country a favour and take you and your government and resign.
In the words of another "I don't believe it!". The best that you - Parliament - can do is to call in the cops to find out who is leaking your allowances details. And this is information that should have been in the public domain last year. Apart from the obvious issue of integrity, what bothers me are the silent voices of all those, many presumably decent, MPs who have sat on their hands. This is why I'm writing as I wouldnt want you to think I wasnt bothered by it all. You have shown yourselves as incapable of fairly managing your own affairs. MPs need housing but they shouldn't be able to profit from it at public expense. House staff should be empowered to adopt a more critical approach.
In the words of another "I don't believe it!". The best that you - Parliament - can do is to call in the cops to find out who is leaking your allowances details. And this is information that should have been in the public domain last year. Apart from the obvious issue of integrity, what bothers me are the silent voices of all those, many presumably decent, MPs who have sat on their hands. This is why I'm writing as I wouldn’t want you to think I wasn’t bothered by it all. "Honourable Members" have shown themselves as incapable of fairly managing their own affairs. MPs need housing but they shouldn't be able to profit from it at public expense. House staff should be empowered to adopt a more critical approach.
9.5.09
The system for claiming expenses must be changed.
However, irrespective of that, if MPs want to regain the trust of their constituents, Gordon Brown should use his so-called 'moral compass' and ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament immediately. MPs can then let the voters decide whether they have done anything wrong.
Do I think that will happen? Never, because Gordon Brown doesn't have the guts!
When will you let us know what your views are on the ludicrous expense claims that have been made Mark?
I'd be rather surprised and disappointed if Mark actually had been on the make with his expenses, like Margaret Moran's dodgy dry rot claims - as much as I may not agree with him on various issues, he does come across as a pretty decent and honest politician (I know, contradiction in terms!) trying to do what he thinks is the right thing.
It's just a shame that he apparently feels obliged to give us the Labour Party line so often!
We are of course in absolutely no danger of getting a General Election in a hurry - Gordon Brown knows how to read opinion polls (guess why we got no early General Election after he managed to avoid actually having to contest an election to become Labour Party leader) and I can't imagine he's in any hurry to have a General Election where - on the basis of recent opinion polls - he'll lead the Labour Party to a performance that makes Michael Foot's 1983 outing look pretty competent ;)
As to expenses - I don't have a problem with the basic principle of covering the costs of an MP maintaining a second home, but dear lord, what an achievement the current system has been in fouling things up.
Claim for what costs you reasonably incur. Publish the lot. If there's no howls of "Get tae f..." from the public, you've clearly gotten the right idea of what's fair to claim for. :)
We are all getting screwed....
Mark - any chance you'll be supporting the cross-party motion to encourage Michael Martin to step down as Speaker?
He seems to have been a pretty consistent block in the way of opening things up and publishing information, and I think it's fair to say that a 'new broom' with a mandate to clean things up is needed now.
Jeez and last week i said :-
'And please no crap about “It has since been corrected” or "good faith" or "within the rules" or some such crap.'
And what do we get this week from you?
"within the existing parliamentary rules"
as you offer to pay back some of the taxpayers money you've helped youself to.
We aren't some moneytree that exists for guys like you to simply shake anytime you feel like paying a bill.
If MPs had even a twinge of integrity they would ask the Queen to dissolve parliament this week and allow the taxpayers to kick the lot of you out of office.
Clearly that wont happen because almost all MP's are a bunch of cheap shysters whose main aim is to extract as much money from the taxpayer as they can.
Mp's are highly paid , they've the most generous pension scheme in the country and that still wasn't enough for them.
Please just go. All of you.
Mark, as one of your constituents I read your statement with qualified approval.
Expenses claims are allowable in any job - no one should be out of pocket for work-related expenses. There is no doubt that the MPs expenses system has rules that are too broad - and that too many MPs have overshot their already-wide boundaries for what they can claim without ever being pulled up.
I watched Question Time last night and it was proposed that Parliament should simply have bought a block of flats, within walking distance of the House of Commons: on becoming an MP, you get the use of one flat, either rent free or as a benefit in kind: on ceasing to become an MP, you no longer have the use of it. In effect, an MP would be a tenant in a tied house with notice to quit on losing their seat.
It would seem that it's not just expenses but also hiring practices that need to be regulated when an MP needs an assistant or a secretary and their wife, husband, or civil partner gets the job.
Finally, I think one key improvement would be to require a detailed accounting of all expenses claimed to be published at the end of every financial year and - as far as possible - made immediately available whenever an election is called, whether a by-election of a General election. I think the Telegraph's publication was politically motivated and the means used were dubious, but it cast light into an area where MPs have evidently been used to cosy privacy for a long, long time.
"Why on earth am I bothering to pay back the money? That's actually the view which has come back from a large number of people I have been in contact with"
I take it that those other people are other MPs?
How about you're paying back the money because otherwise you're a thief?
I guess you've realised that given your majority then at the next election you are history, so you might as well just grab as much cash from the voters as you can before you have to go and get a real job.
You've only got another few months to stick your snout in the trough and there's no down side to being a pig so oink oink.
So is mark a cheat like every other MP ?
yes he is. Yes he claimed he wass going to return the money ,but hes decided that he's hanging on to it.
He's spent the last 10 years sticking his pig like face into the trough and he's not going to change it now,
After all when his party tried to destroy parliament or start a war , or bring in ID cards, He simply
voted for whoever his party told him to and now we're expected to believe anything a lying scumbag like Lazarowicz tells us.
Well guess what. It's not happening 'oinky boy' .
You seem to have gone very quiet, Mark?
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