We're looking for a Mumsnetter to represent us at a 'News Comment Special' about MPs' expenses

[GeraldineMumsnet]

Editorial Intelligence in association with Sky News are inviting a Mumsnetter to attend a panel and group discussion, which will be podcast.

Here's a pdf of the invite so you can see the date/location/panel etc (which includes Helena Kennedy, Norman Baker and Derek Wyatt).

Please throw your names/nominations into the hat. We'd want whoever goes to blog or twitter, or something suitably modern, about the proceedings. It's next Wed, so it needs to be decided fairly swiftly.

For employees, the definition of expenses in the taxes act is that expenses should be incurred "wholly, exclusively and necessarily". So furnishings etc would fail to meet this definition. It's a well-known standard that is universally applied.

Would Mumsnet invite Heather Brooke for a webchat? Please?

I am disappointed in Tam Dalyell, thought he had more decency than that.

Agree with edam about Tory MPs who've built careers by displaying their contempt for 'benefits claimants'. They'd better not have the gall to try that one again.

Hi PW, how did your other gig go? I missed the memo!

Yes, I was v disappointed in Tam.

No no, I've heard nothing!

Agree that the whole second-home allowance thing needs a major overhaul though.

It went well thanks MT (at least I thought so ) - there are a couple of threads in Site Stuff from April 1 and 2 that give the low-down.

Are there other, comparable, jobs for which two homes are arguably necessary? What expenses arrangements do they have to offset the costs of extra household. I.e. support for second household ok in principle, but what precedents are there for establishing reasonable limits?

Agree artichoke. Payment of interest is presumably to ensure MPs not out of pocket -- that they build up an asset without additional cost of interest and can offset its cost entirely though eventual sale. If sold at profit this rationale breaks down.

Not two homes, but jobs requiring one to stay away from home on a regular basis (at the same place, as opposed to transport workers where they could end up anywhere). Trade union reps at a national level for instance. Unions usually have a cap on living expenses, and they are published annually.

There's going to be a demo in Westminster on Wednesday (this is taken from the Liberal Conspiracy site):

WE, THE PEOPLE, DEMAND THE DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT.
DEMONSTRATION. HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.
WEDNESDAY 20th MAY. 12 Noon till 2PM

Mrs Allison Edwards a housewife from Telford, Shropshire, mother of a severely autistic 12 year old son, furious about the battles for resources she has endured for years, has decided to act. She has been granted permission by police to hold a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday 20th May, from 12-2pm during PMQ?s to call for Parliament to be dissolved.

?We need a public demonstration declaring ?no confidence? in this Parliament the present politicians will never recognise the true impact the behaviour of some MP?s over expenses has had upon us all?.

The trust is gone!

All are welcome to join in a peaceful demonstration of people power.
Contact : Mrs Allison Edwards Email address: [email protected]

Am I the only one who thinks "the public" are getting a wee bit silly about this now? I have no problem at all in paying for my MP to have somewhere to live when in London on parliamentary business (which should be fairly often I would have thought?). Anyone who objects to this on principle, as opposed to objecting to those MPs who take advantage, is just plain unreasonable and jumping on an ever growing bandwagon.

It would be entirely wrong, and not in the country's best interests, for only well off people to be able to become MPs because of the need to fund two homes (including one in London) on one modest salary. However, this seems to be what most of the public want now. Bizarre.

I feel profoundly depressed about all this. It's corrupt but who will stop the corruption? Not the MPs, that's for sure.

It is depressing. At first it's insulting -now it's depressing.

Even if there was a revolution and parliament was disolved - really, what good would it do? Who would replace them? Another shower.

Party politics. Am sooooo over it

Twinkle, I agree there is an element of truth to what you say: of course MPs need adequade expenses to cover a bilocational life, and staff,etc. And of course public scrutiny can easily get sensational and gleefully faultfinding -- that is presumably the respectable element of some MPs' desire to keep their spending secret.

But that shouldn't draw criticism away from the genuinely unacceptable parts of their spending.

The best way to damp down public faultfinding would be to have a sensible expenses system in the Commons. The current system is so lax and cynical that the MPs can't have failed to notice, despite the suddenness of their conversion to morality.

The difficulty is the sovereignty of parliament, which has to be maintained. In any business, the expenses would be controlled by the entity whose money was being spent. In this case that means control by the taxpayers. The Treasury, I suppose, is responsible for keeping a tight rein on spending public money. But parliament can't be answerable to a government department: it has to be an independent check on govt.

Still, I imagine that some sort of arm's length Treasury body (or Treasury/Commons hybrid body) should have control of the pursestrings for MPs.

And I agree with treedelivery -- party politics is decadent, bankrupt. All the good people are campaigning in pressure groups.

It's a bit like discovering an affair; it isn't so much the sex, as the lying. MPs have not been open and honest, and have fought tooth and nail not to have their expenses made public record.

And when someone is trying to ensure something stays secret, then there's usually something corrupt.

"WE, THE PEOPLE, DEMAND THE DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT."

This must be from the socialist worker lot is it?

I wouldn't be able to tell wonk anything about politics or fashion but being Robespierre I could go as her mass-showtrial-and-public-executions adviser.

The thing is, parliamentary sovereignty is pretty much a fiction anyway, with the lobby-fodder there and the

(hit post too soon)

...increasingly anti-liberal attitudes of govt. So the members compensate for that by asserting their dignity in other ways -- big expenses, and (as artichokes points out) the pointless self-preening use of staff to generate pseudo-scrutinising questions to ministers

it is revolting that any MP should go on about 'benefit cheats' when they have been abusing the system for their own benefit as a matter of habit. And agree that a second home should be sold and revenue put back into public spending pot when MP's job ends.

I don't think it's quite true that decent people are only to be found in pressure groups; here's a Google spreadsheet of what we know about MPs' expense claims. Note the ones in blue - they didn't claim additional costs allowance, even though they are entitled to. (Admittedly, there aren't many of these: Philip Dunne (Cons. Ludlow); Malcolm Wicks (Lab., Croydon North); Martin Salter ((Lab., Reading West); Rob Wilson (Cons., Reading East); Geoffrey Robinson (Lab., Coventry); Anne Milton (Cons., Guildford); Richard Benyon (Cons., Newbury); Adam Afriyie (Cons., Windsor))

Note the ones with relatively low expense claims, even though their consituencies are distant from Westminster. Note the ones right at the bottom of the list: Philip Hollobone, Cons., Kettering; er, Tony Blair (I guess this is because he hasn't been around much); Dennis Skinner (Lab., Bolsover); Michael Martin and Alan Williams (Speakers - not sure why this is); Dr Richard Taylor (Independent, Wyre Forest); Sir Nicholas Winterton (Cons., Macclesfield); Virendra Sharma (Lab., Ealing Southall and good egg IMO); Desmond Swayne (Cons., New Forest West); David Winnick (Cons., Walsall North).

It would be unjust to write off all MPs as corrupt bastards just because some of them are. How many have the Telegraph named directly now - fewer than 100? Out of 650. So unless the Telegraph is holding a lot back, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that it didn't find anything very terrible on about 5/6ths of MPs?

I agree with Marina Hyde that we could do with a lot more independents. Party politics stinks.

Another useful measure is those who opposed the proposed exclusion of MPs' expenses from the Freedom of Information Act in January this year. This was a parliamentary order proposed, shamefully, by Harriet Harman (and I don't enjoy writing that, I like a lot of what she's done) after lobbying from the Conservative 1922 committee.

Those on the record as opposing the exclusion: LibDems (Conservatives supported it at first and then changed their minds); see list on the right of this page