To think that the MP's have a point?

[wannaBe]

now don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily they should have been allowed to claim for all the things they were allowed to claim for, although I do think that some was justified.

But the fact is, they were allowed to claim these expenses, so they did so, legitimately. And I think that anyone told they could claim for things as part of their job would do the same.

Now I think that expenses should have been reviewed and what MP's can and can't claim for should have been changed. But I can see why they are annoyed at being told to pay back retrospective payments for things they weren't actually wrong for claiming at the time.

People switching second homes to avoid tax/claiming mortgages that had already been paid etc is of course another matter and should IMO be being dealt with in court.

My MP in Cornwall had very reasonable expenses and not all of them have claimed to excess as AutumnLady points out; but, for those who did have excessive claims, they should pay it back.

To add, when I worked for NGOs in Brussels we used to fiddle our expenses the other way - trying to save our organisations as much money as possible by staying with friends, catching red-eye flights or squashing into tiny hire cars instead. We knew that ultimately the more we spent on our subsistence the less would remain for our projects and campaigns.

The irony was that our accounts had to be approved by the Commission, who were known to be extremely fierce on the expenses of the NGOs that they supported.

I'm sure that it's quite possible that Hazel Blears did correctly and by the rules classify those London properties as her second home.

However there are fundamental principles laid out in the Green Book that govern every single expense claim that they allow.

One rule is that "the Additional Costs Allowance (ACA) reimburses Members of Parliament for expenses wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred when staying overnight away from their main UK residence (referred to below as their main home) for the purpose of performing Parliamentary duties. This excludes expenses that have been incurred for purely personal or political purposes."

Another is that "you must avoid any arrangement which may give rise to an accusation that you are, or someone close to you is, obtaining an immediate benefit or subsidy from public funds."

What does moving homes three times, getting us to pay for them to be refurbished and avoiding paying the capital gains tax by telling the taxman they were her main home while claiming expenses as though there were her second suggest?

Was moving three times, at our expense and her profit, "necessarily incurred" "for the purpose of performing Parliamentary duties" or rather for "purely personal" purposes?

By the very fine detail of individual rules MPs might claim that they have not broken anything.

However many of them have completely ignored the overriding principles that govern the entire expenses system.

Don't be distracted by the details of individual rules but look instead at the Principles that they chose to ignore. That's the key to all of this and it is for ignoring those very principles that they are being asked to pay the money back.

And as to the MP that claimed for a Duck House, a floating one at that, consider that they are also told that "you should avoid purchases which could be seen as extravagant or luxurious."

That speaks volumes as to their attitudes to the expenses system.

The whole thing is a boring distraction from far more serious issues. The discragraceful incompetence in procurement costs in everything from defence to the NHS is orders of magnitude more than this storm in a teacup. But it doesn't make such good copy.

YANBU, OP. If anyone else in any other walk of life tried to retrospectively change rules and claw back money from employees as a result everyone would be advocating that the employees fight it all they way. Resetting the rules, and coming down like a ton of bricks on anyone who did break them as they stood at the time is fine, but retrospective changes are ludicrous.

I think we need to distinguish between two sorts of claims here...

1. claims that were clearly fraudulent - such as the MPs who continued to claim mortgage paymenst after the mortgage had already been paid off

1. claims that fell within the rules at the time, were approved at the time but now, on closer scrutiny, seem "questionable" - such as trouser presses.

The first sort should be dealt with in the courts, because they are clearly criminal.
The second sort.... personally, I tend to think we should draw a line under the whole affair. AFAIK, once an expense claim has been approved by an employer, the employer can't than ask for the expense to be repaid unless the claim was actually fraudulent.

Funny how Tony Blair's expenses claim forms accidently got shredded when he retired as MP .

No because whether it was within the rules or not they still were and knew they were taking the piss.

The truth is just because something is allowed doesn't mean that we should do it or would do it, I would not furnish my house with public funds and neither would a lot of decent MP's

With teh duck islands and moat cleaning, I think YABU. These people are supposed to ahve some idea of miorals and intelligence (yeah yeah I know....)

With other stuff then maybe vaguer so I would have some sympathy if administered in a brief 'you tried it ton, you lost, livewith it loser' sort of way.

However I amazed at the ones threatening court action.... I take it theya re looking to retire, then?

Agree wannabe.

There were many greedy scumbags but most of them were greedy scumbags within the rules.

As long as we change the rules now, and those that broke the rules as they were pay it back, that is enough.

But that's the point, while they were often careful to follow to the letter and the £ what individual items they could get away with claiming they did break the guidelines governing all claims.

Amazing how they could pay such close attention to the detail yet managed to miss the principles entirely...

if we did this in our normal work, not only would you get an investigation, you'd run the risk of HMRC crawling all over you claiming you had personally benefitted from this and wanting to whack a large amount of PAYE/NI on you

if those expenses weren't wholly for the purpose of parliamentary duties and they are not paid back, then HMRC should get their claws into them like they do with every other taxpayer.

I doubt normal people would get the option to pay personal expenses back either - we'd just get issued with a massive additional tax bill from HMRC.

Except that the MPs don't have an "employer" as such - they are our elected representatives.

My elected representative claims 2nd home allowance, yet doesn't have a house in my constituency. And we're only 40 minutes at most from the Houses of Parliament by train, so I'm fairly that he "needs" 2 homes anyway, let alone a home which requires taxpayers to fork out £2k per annum for gardening.

OP, it's not as simple as you make out. The rules may have been followed to the letter, but the rules were written with an assumption that people would make good moral judgement. Unfortunately, this shower don't make good moral judgements.

You can follow a rule to the letter or you can follow the rule in spirit. That's what this lot have missed. That's why they're morally bankrupt and no one trusts them any more.

My MP came out as a bit of a prat under all this (I din't even know you could spend that much on cutlery in IKEA...).

I think it should be administered as it was when I worked in London a lot for a charity.

Lunch provided (sarnies,crips etc). £30 (was 2001 so some inflation allowed) per meal,second class rail ticket and a night in a holiday inn type palce covered which they wuld arrnage.

If you wanted to top that up you were free- at your own expense,many did esp. for rail travel.

I fail to see issues with that. Similar sort of moral code tbh, working with other peoples cash.

I love this from ACA REVIEW : THE REVIEW'S APPROACH TO THE ACA RULES

"Further, except where there is an obvious and sensible justification on the face of
the record, MPs will be recommended to repay the cost of over-frequent replacements of household equipment."

That would be those three tellies a year then .

I repeat - I see this less as a 'moving the goalposts' and more of a 'give it back and we won't take this matter any further'.

On the one hand I do see that being asked to pay back money they spent within the rules is galling.
However just because there was no cap on what an MP could spend on cleaning and gardening doesn't mean they didn't have a moral obligation to keep it reasonable. Getting both your homes cleaned everyday is a piss take. Those MPs did it because they could regardless of the public purse issues.
Ditto gardening.
Most of the country mow their lawns on Sundays. MPs should do the same.

Catholic derives from the word for Universal, and some CofE Churches use it to refer to all Christians under God, though it's a touch old fashioned. Some other brances refer to themselves as Catholic as a part of their belives that they alone keep the proper and unversal Church created by the Apostles.

Roman Catholic is, as far as I know, the correct term for those that follow the Pope.

So perhaps I should have said...

All Roman Catholics are Christian.

Not all Christiands are Roman Catholic.

Wrong forum, oops.....

YANBU
For sure castle polishing and swan grooming are pretty but anything claimed within the rules should not be clawed back retrospectively.
My heart doesn't bleed - but it does concern me slightly that they might try similar tricks on other public servants (just as there are fears that govt might renege on pay deals).

YABU.
I was heavily pregnant and on maternity leave when this story broke, so spent many hours poring over this stuff in the paper. Grrrrrrrr. Don't get me started!
I could go on for ever, but will limit myself to a couple of points.

Firstly, only some of the expenses have to be paid back, so if your MP had only claimed reasonable expenses they will have nothing to repay.

But what really annoys me is that it seems to be one rule for MP's and another for everyone else. If you are overpaid state benefits then it is simply deducted from the very modest amount you receive from the state. No negotiation. It matters not if you were not aware of the overpayment, or that you acted in good faith. You pay the money back. Think of all those people who were, through no fault of their own, overpaid Family Tax Credits and had to repay thousands of pounds, much reducing their modest family income for months or years.

Now I'm not saying that all MP's acted in bad faith (although some clearly did). But I bet a lot were thinking something along the lines of "bloody hell this is good I get up to £400 per month to spend on food, won't bother taking sandwiches to Parliament today". It seems to me this is the reason they are so cheesed off about having to pay it back - it is money they wouldn't have spent if it had been coming out of their own pockets.

It's not so much about moving the goalposts as it is about letting MPs know that while they did get the ball between the posts they should have followed the rest of the rules witht he same vigour and not claimed a goal after driving through in a tank squashing the defenders in the process.

Rules were broken and guidelines ignored.

{grin] at BadgersPaws

It's the logic I find baffling. I had this discussion last night with 3 year old DD who asked why she couldn't have chocolate on the basis, 'well, you gave me some at lunch...'

And this is the extent of the argument by MPs re: expenses. They are annoyed that since they had been able to claim previously, then it was fine.

Agree that they may have stuck to the rules but missed the principle. In effect they were trusted to authorise their own expenses. If this was a normal employment situation the authoriser should be taking the heat for this. Well that's them, isn't it?

lol at swan grooming
(please tell me that was a joke!)