Brown 'sorry' as MPs told to stop fleecing the taxpayer

Published on Monday 11 May 2009 22:11

MPS were yesterday ordered by the Commons Speaker to immediately halt abuses of the expenses system.

Michael Martin said it was no excuse simply to claim to have acted within now-discredited rules and that "serious change" to the expenses regime was required.

It came as Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, apologised on behalf of all parties and pleaded for MPs to unite to reform their expenses.

Addressing a nursing conference, Mr Brown said: "I want to apologise on behalf of politicians, on behalf of all parties, for what has happened in the events of the last few days.

"We must show that, where mistakes have been made and errors have been discovered, where wrongs have to be righted, that that is done immediately."

However, a new poll last night showed revelations about MPs expenses have hit support for the two main parties.

The poll, carried out by Populus, shows support for Labour down by four points since early April to 26 per cent.

It also puts the Conservatives down by four points to 39 per cent. The poll puts the Liberal Democrats up four points to 22 per cent, with 13 per cent saying they will cast their vote for minor parties including the SNP, Plaid Cymru, UKIP, the Green Party and the BNP.

Meanwhile, the Tories were hit last night by further damaging revelations, including three Tory MPs who have used their expenses to clean their swimming pools – James Arbuthnot, chairman of the Defence Select Committee, former deputy leader Michael Ancram and shadow communities minister Stewart Jackson.

Backbench MP David Heathcoat-Amory claimed more than 380 for horse manure, Douglas Hogg, a former agriculture secretary, spent more than 2,000 clearing a moat on his Lincolnshire estate, and Sir Michael Spicer, chairman of the powerful Tory backbench 1922 Committee, spent 5,650 having his garden maintained.

Earlier it emerged after the body that advises the Commons on expenses said it would work "as fast as humanly possible" to publish MPs' expenses claims between 2004 and 2008. However, this was not expected until June, a month earlier than planned.

The members estimates committee, which held an emergency meeting under the chairmanship of the Speaker, also saw Mr Martin issue guidance to MPs to follow the "spirit of the rules" and not simply their literal meaning.

In a statement to the Commons, he said: "Working to the rules and the rules alone is not what is expected of any honourable member. It is important the spirit of what is right must be brought in now."

He made clear his annoyance that MPs had last year rejected proposals to reform the system of allowances – typically worth around 135,000 a year to MPs – and lambasted Labour MP Kate Hoey and Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who had criticised the decision to ask the police whether to investigate the leak of confidential expenses files.

There were also further suggestions yesterday that MPs were "flipping" the designation of their first and second properties to secure the maximum benefit from the parliamentary second homes allowance, now worth 24,222 a year.

Tory leader David Cameron, who followed after the Prime Minister in addressing the Royal College of Nurses conference in Harrogate, said it was "not just morally desirable but politically essential" that MPs set a good example on allowances claims.

"As everyone can now see, politicians have failed to uphold their responsibilities," he said.

"It is the responsibility of those we elect to behave properly. Not just legally, not just within the rules, but to the highest ethical standards."

Meanwhile, pressure intensified on Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, who appeared to have avoided paying 18,000 capital gains tax after making a 45,000 profit on the sale of a London flat she had designated as her second home for expenses purposes.

Labour backbencher John Mann said: "Any Labour MP who isn't paying capital gains tax should not be a Labour MP. Tax avoidance in the Labour Party is unacceptable."

Yesterday, the trick of MPs "flipping" between addresses was strongly condemned by the man heading a review into theexpenses system.

Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said he was "pretty furious" at the way MPs had switched their main and second homes and said the sheer scale of the practice was "clearly a cause for concern".

Downing Street urged him to complete his report as quickly as possible, but Sir Christopher said he was not prepared to avoid the mistakes of the past, blaming a "patch and mend" approach for the current problems.

He said he would look at good practice from the Scottish parliament. "My committee is determined to do the job properly – and do so through a process in which the public can have confidence, not sit in a smoke-filled room in conversation with the party leaders."

In the Commons, the Speaker rounded on Ms Hoey, MP for Vauxhall, for calling it an "awful waste of money" to ask the police to investigate the leak by a Commons employee of a computer disk containing MPs' claims.

PM's brother was 'just helping out'

GORDON Brown's sister-in-law leapt to his defence yesterday over claims he had misused his expenses by paying his brother to pass on wages to a cleaner the two men shared.

Clare Brown insisted the Prime Minister was "extremely scrupulous and conscientious in these matters" and that she and her husband Andrew had just been helping out during Gordon Brown's bachelor years in London.

Mr Brown paid his brother, a senior executive with EDF Energy, 6,577 over 26 months for a cleaner. Mrs Brown said she and her husband had only been keeping "a bit of an eye on him on the domestic front".

The brothers lived near each other in London at the time.

She said they began sharing costs for the cleaner because Mr Brown was so busy. "We lived round the corner, she (the cleaner] was keen to extend her hours, so we told him we would sort it out," she recalled. "We are a close and supportive family and those were the kinds of things we could take off his plate.

"We thought we were doing him a small service in that way – it seems we weren't."

Ross Lydall: 'We expect the Tories to do this kind of thing, not the socialists'

THE ongoing expenses scandal has damaged both major political parities, but has been particularly damaging for the Tories, mainly due to the embattled state of Labour.

John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said last night: "The Tories are suffering."

He said: "We have had two polls so far that were at least in part conducted since the expenses story broke. One of them was a YouGov poll that had Labour on 27 per cent. That was exactly the same figure that Labour was on (in a previous poll].

"On that basis, the Labour party is already in so much trouble, you wouldn't expect them to get into any more.

"The second poll, by Bpix, was released on Sunday, which put Labour on 23 per cent, which was equal to the lowest it had fallen.

"We need to bear in mind the average Labour party rating. The Damian McBride (smear] e-mail scandal was what really did it for Labour recently – it lost three points in the week of that story.

"But it isn't quite back where it was last summer (during fevered speculation about Mr Brown being forced to quit].

"But this might be the final nail in the coffin.

"Labour are already in very serious electoral trouble. This is not necessarily a story that is going to change the mould. It is more likely to confirm the public's existing view: that politicians need a reality check if they think people trust them in the first place."

However, Prof Curtice downplayed claims that extremist parties would profit from the damage inflicted on mainstream political parties by the expenses scandal, and said that the effect on voter turnout in the forthcoming European parliament elections.

He said: "Polling does not provide any evidence the BNP is going to profit from this, but it's early days. As for turnout, I think the degree to which a lack of trust in our politicians would mean we wouldn't vote is exaggerated.

"Yes, it's true that there are people somewhat less likely to vote, but we are only talking a few percentage points.

"If we didn't vote because we didn't trust politicians, we would have stopped years ago. Turnout is already down at 60 per cent. We are already in a world of low turnout."

Prof Curtice added: "The thing that is different about this is that no party is shooting the other party.

"There is shooting within parties – for example, between inner London MPs, who can adopt a 'holier than thou' attitude, and other MPs (as inner London MPs don't get the second homes allowance]. "This is not a case of one side of politicians firing at the other. They have all been caught at the same time with some of their fingers in the till.

"What this also does is show a government that is unable to control events. How will party supporters react?

"The only serious reaction would be that we expect the Tories to do this kind of thing, but we don't expect the socialists to do this – so it puts off Labour activists more.

"It's possible that the Labour party might be judged by somewhat higher standards."