Legg Kicks Parliament!
Sir Thomas Legg’s report into the MP’s expenses audit, released today, has been highly critical of Members of Parliament and of the culture that allowed the systematic abuse to continue unchecked.
The figures at the heart of the report are damning for our parliamentarians: 390 MP’s have been told that they must pay back £1.12million; the figure was originally £1.3million but was reduced after a number of successful appeals by MP’s. This means that well over half of all our Members of Parliament made excessive expenses claims that transgressed official guidelines.
Sir Thomas opens his report by saying that “The system (of expenses) could not be properly used as a supplementary form of income"but that many MP’s seemed to use it for precisely this reason and saw expenses as an integral part of their salaries. In one of his most damning statements, Sir Thomas derided a ’prevailing lack of transparency’ in the expenses claims, with the implication that there had been deliberate obfuscation.
It was not just our elected representatives who are criticised within the report. Sir Thomas attacked the people whose duty it was to process and approve the expenses claims, saying that “Officials had a culture of deference towards MP’s"and that “the system is deeply flawed.”
The largest repayment due is from Labour MP, Barbare Follett who must pay back £42,458 but there are many more MP’s who are being compelled to return tax payers money into five figures.
It is hard to imagine how the Legg report could have been more critical to the very people that we elect to set the laws of our land. The MP’s however do not seem to be in the mood to take their medicine quietly and forget about their previous excesses. There is a growing anger within Westminster, with many Mp’s feeling that they are being unduly punished for using a system as they were encouraged to do so. With one Labour minister already saying that he will leave Parliament at the next election it could be that there will be an exodus of the great and the good from public service.
Conservative leader David Cameron MP has taken the hard line stance of saying that MP’s who refuse to pay back expenses must have it taken directly from their salary but this is likely to further blacken the mood in an already despondent House of Commons. Many Members of Parliament are angry and bemused in equal measures but with public opinion firmly against them, they are likely to seethe quietly rather than be too vociferous in their fury.
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