It's time to change the system

Swimming pools. Helicopter pads. Moats. Duck Houses.

These are just some of the extraordinary claims filed by MPs who – believing they are underpaid – have deliberately 'boosted' their income through expenses and allowances. Some MPs have used the system to build a mini-property empire. Others have made big profits when they have sold homes bought with taxpayers money.

The scandal has exposed just how rotten the system has become, and how out of touch our MPs are.

Many politicians still employ members of their family on top salaries at taxpayers' expense. And an amazing number have second jobs or are directors of companies. We pay MPs a generous salary, and being a politician is a major responsibility – MPs have to make the nation's laws AND fight for their constituents' interests. It's a full-time job. It should be the MPs ONLY job.

Any job which pays at this rate in the public or private sector usually comes with 'performance targets'. Yet many MPs either rarely turn up to vote, or are rarely in their constituencies – or both. As their employers, we should demand MPs do their job properly – and we should be able to monitor how well they are doing it.

MPs currently vote their own wage increases through, and agree their own rules on what and how much they can claim on expenses and allowances. That needs to change. As does the whole system of how MPs work, and how they are answerable to us.

We need new rules. And we need them now.

Click here to sign the petition: 

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-mps-sleaze.html

You can also join my Facebook Group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=191206590071&ref=mf

"It's within the rules"

The excuse we've heard time and again from MPs during the current scandal is that they did nothing that broke the rules governing allowances and expenses. The MPs rarely mention that it was they that made their own rules. But that aside, are claims for gardening, cleaning swimming pools, maintaining helipads and dredging moats etc REALLY within the rules? Here is what "The Green Book" - the official guide to MPs' allowances - says:

Section 1: Principles governing Members’ allowances

The principles are:

• Claims should be above reproach and must reflect actual usage of the resources being claimed.
  
• Claims must only be made for expenditure that it was necessary for a Member to incur to ensure that he or she could properly perform his or her parliamentary duties.
  
• Allowances are reimbursed only for the purpose of a Member carrying out his or her parliamentary duties. Claims cannot relate to party political activity of any sort, nor must any claim provide a benefit to a party political organisation.
  
• It is not permissible for a Member to claim under any parliamentary allowance for anything that the Member is claiming from any other source.
  
• Members must ensure that claims do not give rise to, or give the appearance of giving rise to, an improper personal financial benefit to themselves or anyone else.
  
• Members are committed to openness about what expenditure has been incurred and for what purposes.
  
• Individual Members take personal responsibility for all expenses incurred, for making claims and for keeping records, even if the administration of claims is delegated by them to others.
  
• The requirement of ensuring value for money is central in claiming for accommodation, goods or services – Members should avoid purchases which could be seen as extravagant or luxurious.
  
• Claims must be supported by documentary evidence, except where the House has agreed that such evidence is not necessary.
  

I'll leave you to make your own mind up.

Why disgraced MPs must go NOW - not next year

In an editorial published on May 30, 'The Guardian' argues against “a staccato series of by-elections” in constituencies where MPs have been forced to stand down at the next election because they “will not convince anyone that the place has been fixed”. Perhaps not. But it will rid voters of the burden of supporting politicians who have plundered the public purse to their own ends, and who will be lame duck MPs – if you pardon the pun – until the general election.

Take my own MP, Gosport's Sir Peter Viggers (someone, please – take him). He has yet to surface in his constituency since the scandal broke, and is currently holed up in his French chateau. He has refused to speak to reporters. He is not going to be able to do his job as a constituency MP very well if he is too worried about local voters' reactions to set foot in Gosport. As for his role as a parliamentarian - Sir Peter sits on the Treasury Committee that castigated top bankers over their pay and bonuses. How they must be laughing into their champagne flutes now.

Whilst taxpayers are waiting for Sir Peter to step down at his convenience (not something you or I could do if we were caught fiddling our expenses), we are expected to fork out another £200,000 for his pay and expenses, a virtually tax-free payment of £32,000 to help him “adjust” to life after Westminster, and an appropriately-named ‘winding-up’ allowance of £40,000. To add insult to injury, we are then asked to hand him another £43,000 a year in gold-plated pension payments. Press reports estimate his total pension pot stands at more than £1 million. He may be able to withdraw large lump sums tax-free from that pot.

So yes, a by-election alone may not convince people that anything has been fixed. But throwing an MP like Sir Peter out on his ear, forcing him to forfeit his golden pay-off and pension, and stripping him of his knighthood would be a good start.