Expenses system worthy of hate, not MPs
Under-fire communities secretary Hazel Blears says she understands public ‘hatred’ of the parliamentary expenses system after admitting she did not pay capital gains tax on profit from the sale of a London flat.
Ms Blears is the latest minister to be caught up in the furore over expenses, although in this case she says she complied with Commons and tax rules by not paying capital gains on a property registered as her main residence with the Inland Revenue but as a second home with parliamentary authorities.
“I understand entirely why the public hates this,” she said outside her home in Salford today.
“The system is wrong, it needs to be changed… We’ve got to get it sorted out as quickly as possible.”
Ms Blears made a £45,000 profit when she sold the flat in question, in south London, in August 2004.
Just four months previously she had told the Commons authorities that the flat was her second home; claiming expenses of £850 a month on mortgage payments.
MPs from both sides of the Commons have been hit by more damaging allegations about their expenses claims on Sunday, including a Labour minister who asked the parliamentary authorities to “please pay as much as you are able”.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, which obtained details of MPs’ claims weeks ahead of their official publication in July, Burnley MP Kitty Ussher spent £20,000 on repairing her dilapidated south London Victorian home.
Adopting a line taken by ministers throughout the week, a spokesman for the parliamentary under-secretary of state for pensions reform said: “All her claims were in line with the relevant House of Commons rules and guidance and have been approved by the Fees Office.”
Latest developments
- Five Sinn Fein MPs claimed £500,000 in second home allowances over five years despite not taking up their seats and paying double the rental market values (Sunday Telegraph)
- The Sunday Telegraph editorial says the publication of Gordon Brown paying his brother £6,500 for a cleaner was not designed to show “impropriety”.
- Former shadow defence minister James Gray claimed expenses on Remembrance Day wreaths (News of the World)
- Immigration minister Phil Woolas and Labour backbencher Margaret Moran have threatened legal action over the veracity of expenses claims published in the Telegraph
Labour MP Sir Stuart Bell today revealed that an independent body would be set up to validate MPs expenses and eventually transferred to the private sector.
The furore over expenses, which comes during the middle of the country’s worst post-war recession, is expected to see voter anger reflected in upcoming European parliamentary and local elections.
Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says that the “clawing greed” on display has seen parliament’s moral authority at its “lowest ebb in living memory”.
“It is not just the clawing greed of painstaking claims for such minor items as tampons, barbecue sets and bathrobes, but also the egregious way some have transferred allowances from one second property to another – enabling them to refurbish homes at public expense, then sell them for profit,” he told the News of the World.
“Coming at a time of financial crisis and political betrayal of the Gurkhas, this threatens to be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back.”
