Jennifer James on lies, damned lies & expenses claims
The Insider has been following the scandal of MPs' expenses claims with bated breath. As treasurer of the Young Solicitors' Group (YSG) way back in the Dark Ages, I was tasked with scrutinising expenses claims and can vouch for the fact that it does not improve one's popularity one iota.
I have been trying to track down the Parliamentary equivalent of YSG Treasurer, the person responsible for checking these claims. Typing “oversight” into Google simply brings up a plethora of bleats along the lines of “I claimed for a fully equipped hovercraft to cross the moat at my second home due to oversight; as soon as the papers got wind of it…I mean, as soon as my error was pointed out to me, I repaid the money”.
Coming clean
Some of the claims are worthy of Marie Antoinette (summer-house for the ducks, anyone?) some are probably inept rather than bent (Gordon Brown paying his brother, a senior executive with EDF Energy, some £6,000-odd for cleaning services is apparently due to the fact that bro was paying the cleaner direct and then billing Gormless Gordon for his share) but some are definitely worthy of the “F” word.
Not “F'ing Nora! £18m for bookshelves?” F is for Fraud and if anyone outside Parliament had claimed £13,000 towards mortgage payments on a property no longer in mortgage, they would be expecting a visit from the boys in blue. It remains to be seen whether those within the Palace of Westminster whose Swiss-cheese like brains apparently enabled them to “forget” having paid off a mortgage while claiming expenses for it, will be charged with anything.
Premier league
You may remember that David Mills, the estranged husband of British Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, was sentenced to four and half years in jail for taking a bribe of $600,000 (£387,000) from Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi so that Silvio could avoid conviction on corruption charges and hang on to “huge profits made from the conclusion of illicit corporate and financial operations”.
Ms Jowell has always asserted that she knew nothing about the money even though it was used to pay off a mortgage, something one would normally expect a loving husband and wife to rejoice about together. The fact that they separated some days after this all came to light may show that she knew nothing about it and was rightly incensed; certainly it appears that the police took her word for it and she has never been implicated as anything more than a remarkably incurious spouse.
If the authorities are prepared to take her word over such a large sum, logic must surely suggest that, if MPs' and ministers now state they “forgot” this and that, or that claims for far smaller sums were a mere “oversight” it is hard to see how their word cannot be taken at face value without some very fast footwork and double standards coming into play.
Privy to the scandal
I have been lucky enough to secure an advance copy of some forthcoming material to be printed in next week's Daily Telegraph newspaper, regarding MPs' expenses claims, and it makes shocking reading. The roll-call is long and dishonourable; only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
The dishonours list
Dirk Drapolene (Lab: East Grim Oop North) Two tickets to Tosca at the Royal Opera House, Scarborough—£500.00 (MP's annotation: I 'ad to take the missis to summat cultural after she saw that Cranford on telly. Bloody awful it were —'ole bloody thing were in Italian. I was in that Italy after the war. Bloody awful it were, every meal ravi-bloody-oli. It's worse than that France, at least y'can get chips there.)
Major Harold Essington-Smythe (Con: Cosyshire) Plasma screen television, Home Cinema System, Hi-Fi, two “La-Z-Boy” massage recliners in faux zebra hide, de luxe model wine cooler, two cases of Lambrini £35,000 (MP's note: Do what you can, dear heart. I simply cannot be seen in “that” kind of cinema and one must have some entertainment, don't you know?)
Hortense Whittlebury (Green Stop The Drax Power Station, free school milk Alliance) The entire Spring collection from Ghost, £15,000 (MP's note: I simply MUST wear ethically-sourced cloth, dear heart, of course, one WOULD go vintage, but with one's eczema, if it's ever been washed in biological powder, and of course there's the child labour issue. Do help, there's an angel.)
Dwayne Pipe (BNP: Home Counties) 5-by-10-foot poster of Enoch Powell, 10-by-15 foot Oswald Mosley ditto, small engraved cigarette case with image of Adolf Hitler, one copy of Windows for Dummies, one adult literacy course, £5,000 (MPs note: Fanks for the picshures, they looks grate in my orfice. Yu can proberly rite off the litracy corse, when I got darn there it wuz in the Nelson Mandela center!!! No word of a lie, guvnor! Yu coudn't make vis stuff up!!!)
