MPs' expenses. How would we like it?

[Kinoulton]

I realise that the current mood amongst the population is to treat all MPs as pantomime villains.

But the retrospective moving of the goalposts over their expenses currently being undertaken, were it applied to any of us in normal life, would cause justifiable uproar.

I have to live on a well controlled budget. Don't we all? So even when I've been offered reasonably generous salaries to work in Croydon, Newbury, Birmingham etc, I have had to carefully weigh up the immense cost of travel, and how I will be accomodated whilst away from home.

In each case I came to a workable agreement with my employer that made the job worth doing.

In Croydon I chose a flat in the centre of town and the company paid. I was also allowed First Class rail travel from Leicester to Croydon, which is quite a boost on a Monday morning or Friday afternoon.

In Newbury I picked a decent Guest House which the company paid for and I was able to charge 40p a mile for my weekly journeys from Beverley to Newbury and back. A tidy sum, I'll admit.

But the point is, this was all part of me agreeing to take the job in the first place, and if some auditor was to come in after the event and say "your employer was a bit generous there, you need to pay £12k back", then that auditor would be found at the bottom of the River Hull with some pike sniffing around his concrete boots.

[JonJon]

Honestly, I have a certain amount of sympathy for them, but not too much considering;
1. You, me and everyone else presumably have to submit expense claims for every penny with receipts, rather than being able to say 'oh I spent about £200 on food and stuff last month, where's my cheque?'
2. We have to pass a red face test when submitting our expenses - would we charge for a duck house in our pond whilst on a contract somewhere?
3. We'd probably accept that our main home (where we live) would stay our main home and we wouldn't change that designation to our second home (where we work) just to get the mortgage paid off.

Is it a bit unfair on them? Yes.
Do they deserve a bit of hardship and public opprobrium? Yes
Should we let them get back to doing a difficult job* for a ridiculously low salary? Yes

* Difficult for those who try to do it properly.

[Hull Fan]

I suspect he would have a fair bit of company at the botton of the River Hull!

[Bill W (2)]

The MP's Expenses system assumed that MP's were gentlemen and ladies of honour.

Their abuse of the system proved that many of them are not.

To many pigs and troughs spring to mind.

As in Rugby many of the ills occur because of badly formed laws, poor refereeing and biased disciplinary panels. In this case the legislature, law enforcement agency and judiciary are all the same - MP's

[Kinoulton]

I don't disagree Bill, but as an example from the private sector (I'm sure there are scores of other examples):

A friend of mine worked for one of the big high street banks, and every year all the senior management from a certain department would be hauled off to some sunny location on the Med, for their annual "Conference".

It was an all expenses paid trip, even to the extent that the company settled all of the room bills pretty much regardless of what the delegates had charged to their rooms.

As a result, it was the done practice that on the last day of the conference, each delegate would enter the entire contents of the mini-bar into their luggage.

They would therefore arrive home with lots of small toblerones and chocolate bars for the kids, a little bottle of Champagne for the wife, and numerous miniatures of brandy, vodka etc.

Given the rather inflated prices of mini-bars, each little stash probably cost the bank in excess of 150 euros per delegate, over and above the already enormous cost of the conference.

The point of this story is that although my mate steadfastly refused to take part in this practice, he was invariably the only person amongst an entire party of delegates that didn't indulge, and the others all thought he was being rather daft.

So yes, our MPs may have enjoyed an easy ride on expenses, but they are certainly not the only pigs in the trough.

[me2]

Well first of all, all that has happened is that certain elements of the expenses claims have been revised downwards retrospectively to what would be deemed a "reasonable" level.


This includes capping gardening (at their second home remember!) at £1000 per annum & cleaning at £2000 per annum.


I would not say that such levels are particularly punishing and if your gardening bill is greater than £1000 per annum then you really should look for a cheaper gardener...especially given that the purposes of the second home is supposed to be simply a crash pad for when the MP is at Parliament & not not as their main residence.




Secondly, it's not "their employer" who agreed their expenses limit as it would be for you & I. The MPs historically set their own expenses limits (via a committee) and then had the claims assessed by civil servants. They effectively chose themselves what they thought they should be allowed to claim though & then asked someone else to make sure that those claims were OK.

Only now is somebody independent of the MPs themselves getting involved with the setting of the limits.

[tigerburnie]

I recall working for a large multi national company and being told one year that we would be getting little by way of a pay award that year.In the accounts the following year we noticed that "emoliaments" were payed to the bosses for............gardening,decorating etc. , etc.
Seems that this a common practice for the priveliged few that has carried over into parliament.
Come the revolution comrades the first thing up against the wall will be..........expenses and emoliaments and un earnt bonuses

[Littletigress]

When I claim my meagre mileage allowance each month, the telephone number for the National Fraud Line is prominently displayed. I always notice it even though my claim is perfectly accurate.

I'm afraid I have little, if any, sympathy for these MPs. They receive a generous salary and a lot of them are wealthy anyway. I wouldn't mind their 'Summer' break considering it extends well into October!

It seems Jacqui Smith just has to say 'sorry' and that's OK. She doesn't need to repay the £100,000 she shouldn't have claimed.

The one thing that really does need changing is this 'flipping' of houses to avoid capital gains tax etc.