Is your MP milking the public teat?

Good Day Readers:

Ever since earlier this week someone sold British MP's detailed expense receipts to the Daily Telepgraph newspaper, the resulting scandal has outraged the public so much so politicians of all stripes are now being booed publicly.

We wondered, is it possible to get a listing of our Member of Parliament's expenses? If so how - anyone know? Now there's some usful information they could include in their ineffectual constituent Parliamentary Reports.

Sincerely,

Clare L. Pieuk
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MPs' need for free moats, candy and porn cripples British politics - Gordon Brown's Labour Party will be hurt the most

DOUG SAUNDERS
Globe and Mail
May 13, 2009

LONDON — When the election comes, will you vote for the party that charges taxpayers for its MPs' chandeliers, helipads and moats? Or for the one that bills the public purse for supplies of diapers, soft porn and Kit Kat bars?

That, in essence, is the decision now facing British voters. As a lurid parliamentary expense-account scandal expands to ridiculous proportions, with revelations Tuesday that MPs billed swimming-pool plumbing, castle moats, country-manor helipads and $25,000 gardening bills as parliamentary expenses, some very telling realities of British politics have begun to emerge.

Beneath the embarrassing claims is a revealing portrait of Britain's two major political parties, one that demolishes the public images they have spent the past decade constructing.

The opposition Tories, it turns out from their personal receipts, really are a party of luxurious country gentlemen, and the governing Labour Party really is a group of petty chiselers willing to put anything on the public tab — ancient images that both parties have spent the past decade trying to banish.

With an election certain within a year and a grave debt crisis hitting many voters, the image of freeloading parliamentarians has crippled politics.

The scandal, which has exploded across the broadsheet front pages after someone sold a complete set of MP expense-account receipts to the Daily Telegraph newspaper for a "six-figure" sum, has exposed embarrassing acts of petty corruption and fiddling committed by almost every minister and MP.

They range from $3.93 charged for Tampax by a (male) Tory MP to a $4,000 king-sized bed billed by the leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats to $252,000 billed by the Tory deputy speaker for expenses related to a country house he owns mortgage-free.

The corruption itself is possibly the least interesting element.

True, it reveals a deep flaw in the financial management of Britain's Parliament at Westminster, possibly the only legislature in the world to reimburse every MP, and there are 646 of them, for any expenses related to procuring and keeping one house in London (for easy access to Parliament) and another in their constituency, on top of their original house (most British MPs are assigned ridings by their party, and expected to buy a house there), and for the travel between those three houses.

Far more telling, and possibly even more embarrassing, is what it reveals about the true nature of Britain's two embattled political parties.

The Tory MPs, whose expenses were exposed Tuesday by the Daily Telegraph, emerge as the perfect image of the "squierarchy," a band of rural aristocrats who live in castles, go on fox hunts and have little interest in public affairs beyond enriching their own luxurious lives.

Tory Leader David Cameron has spent the past five years trying to eradicate this image and replace it with the more modern, urban, environmentally conscious voice of "Notting Hill" Tories. The expense-account leaks have undone all this in a day.

What can he say about Douglas Hogg, a former agriculture minister, who submitted a claim for $4,000 for cleaning the moat around his estate, as well as similar amounts for the cleaning of his stables and the tuning of his piano?

Or Sir Michael Spicer, who billed $11,300 for nine months of gardening, including something listed as a "helipad." Or Oliver Letwin, who charged $4,000 for replacing a pipe beneath his tennis court. Or David Heathcoat-Amory, who billed $674 in horse manure.

This is particularly embarrassing for a party whose leader, Mr. Cameron, has repeatedly pledged to put "responsibility at the heart of our society, thrift at the heart of our government."

But it is Gordon Brown's Labour Party that will be hurt the most. As the governing party, they have had 12 years in power to clean up Labour's old image as grasping trade-union elites trying to milk the public teat. They were largely successful, after Mr. Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair, eliminated union control of the party and Mr. Brown introduced modern monetary policies. This week's expense-account claims have sealed that reputation.

A senior cabinet minister, Hazel Blears, claimed $4.43 for a Kit-Kat bar from a hotel minibar. A junior minister expensed taxpayers $10 for Pampers. Another senior minister, Jacqui Smith, billed $20 a month for a subscription to the Playboy Channel, apparently on behalf of her husband.

Mr. Brown himself hasn't escaped the scandal: He got caught paying his brother, a bank executive, $11,650 for the cleaning of his London flat during two years he was living in Downing Street. It was a legitimate claim, and smaller than the $37,192 billed by Mr. Cameron for his London flat, one of three properties he owns.

Even though they are less grandiose than the Tory expense claims, Labour's are almost certainly more damaging. They have rendered re-election all but impossible.

A month ago, Mr. Brown emerged victorious from the G20 summit, where he was widely seen as the financial mind behind the reforms to the International Monetary Fund and the world's lending system that might have staved off a far worse collapse.

Many Labour veterans expected him to capitalize on that public-opinion boost by calling an election immediately. Instead, he waited, in characteristic style, and within days the expense-account scandal broke, first with news of Ms. Smith's TV-porn claim, then with far wider details.

At other moments, this would be a minor scandal, but in the midst of a deep recession, with millions of Britons losing jobs and homes and facing enormous credit-card debts, the image of MPs writing off petty items on the public tab — and avoiding the sort of expense-account squeezes faced even by bankers — will be hard to overcome.

Tuesday, a Labour MP made a show of writing a $30,000 cheque back to the Treasury, and Mr. Cameron ordered all his MPs to pay back their expenses pronto. But the scandal, much like a champagne cork, will be awfully hard to put back in the bottle.