MPs’ expense claims shredded Monday, Jun 9 2008

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THE House of Commons has shredded more than 1m documents detailing expenses claims by MPs that were due to be revealed to the public. The Commons authorities said last week they had destroyed all documents for MPs up to April 2004, even though official guidelines state that such records should be kept for six years. Martin Bell, who was elected as an independent MP on an antisleaze platform in 1997, said: “I think it is likely that some racketeering by some MPs has been so outrageous that, if it was revealed, they would be under pressure to resign.” In the most recent year for which records are available, to April 2007, MPs claimed an average of £135,600 of expenses each, which includes staff costs. Among the many controversial claims were those of Tony Blair for mortgage interest payments on his constituency home, while Margaret Beckett claimed more than £6,500 for gardening at her constituency home.

Some of Blair’s claims, which the High Court had ruled should be made public, were shredded after The Sunday Times requested them. It is a criminal offence deliberately to destroy documents requested under freedom of information laws. During the legal battle over MPs’ expenses, the Westminster regime was exposed as lax and open to abuse. About £200,000 in public funds was spent trying to block disclosure of the expenses, but the Commons’ authorities relented after the High Court ruling last month. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development recommends that salary and expenses records are kept for six years. The government requires businesses and “corporate bodies” to keep such records for the same period. The House of Commons said its “retention policy” complied with the law and had been drawn up in consultation with HM Revenue & Customs.

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Mp’s splash our cash while we scrimp Thursday, Jun 5 2008

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TAXPAYERS were forced to pay nearly £6,000 for redecorating Gordon Brown’s kitchen and bedroom, it was revealed last night. The supposedly “prudent” Prime Minister has also been using public money to fund his satellite TV bills and buy him more than £200 worth of food a month. He even claimed £15 for lightbulbs. The shocking details of the Westminster expenses gravy train will amaze voters at a time when ordinary families are struggling to make ends meet with escalating food, utility and petrol bills.

It explains why MPs waged a three-year, £100,000 legal battle to try to keep the records secret. They reveal that Mr Brown’s predecessor Tony Blair claimed more than £10,000 for a new kitchen, £515 for a dishwasher and also used House of Commons allowances to help raise a £260,000 re-mortgage deal. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott pocketed £7,000 in expenses for sprucing up his mock Tudor mansion in Hull. Close Blair ally Peter Mandelson claimed nearly £3,000 to revamp a bathroom. Junior Pensions Minister Barbara Follett, wife of millionaire novelist Ken Follett, claimed more than £1,600 for window-cleaning at their London home – at £94 a time. And former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett claimed a total of £12,170 for house repairs. Details of the lavish use of the controversial MPs’ Additional Costs Allowance for second homes were finally disclosed after Commons authorities surrendered to Freedom of Information requests.

Around 450 pages of claim forms and receipts were released to journalists last night. And the details appalled campaigners against Government waste. Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It’s clear that this allowance pays for much more than just a base in London. MPs use it to fund a lifestyle far more comfortable than their constituents enjoy.” The documents show Mr Brown had his London flat, a short walk from Downing Street, refurbished in 2006. He claimed £4,471 for work on the kitchen. Another bill for bedroom redecoration work was £1,396. Mr Brown also claimed £36 for his monthly Sky TV rental and up to £214 a month for cleaning. Every three months, he put in a claim for £650 for food and over £1,000 a year in council tax. At the same time, his predecessor Mr Blair claimed £10,674 for refurbishment work on the kitchen of his constituency home in the North-east. The Blairs re-mortgaged the house in Trimdon, Co Durham, during 2005.

Their outstanding debt with Cheltenham & Gloucester stood at nearly £270,000 at the end of 2005, to be repaid over a 23-year term. They had originally bought the property for just £30,000 in 1983. Taxpayers funded a new dishwasher for the Blairs in 2005 costing £515, including installation. Mr Blair’s TV licence was paid for and he regularly claimed cleaning bills of up to £162 and around £1,300 in council tax. Embarrassingly, copies of household bills also revealed that the Blairs were occasionally sent reminders for late payment. In November 2005, Northumbrian Water sent Mr Blair’s wife Cherie a reminder notice for an outstanding bill of £147.11. Two months later, Mr Blair was warned that a £284 British Gas bill was overdue. Mr Prescott, who was Mr Blair’s deputy at the time, claimed £6,707.06 in July 2005 to spruce up his turreted Hull home, known locally as Prescott Towers. Files include a note from a Commons official recording a phone call from Mr Prescott asking about payment of council tax on his grace-and-favour Admiralty House flat in London.

And the records also appear to suggest that at one point in 2005 Mr Prescott got temporarily behind with his gas bills. Tory leader David Cameron restricted his claims to payments for mortgage interest on his constituency home in Witney, Oxon. Claim forms show he was paid £1,741 a month. And Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague was ticked off by Commons authorities in October 2005 for not providing documents to back up his £1,876.59 “service/maintenance” claim. In total, expenses for 14 current and former MPs were released. Full details of spending by the rest of Westminster’s MPs are due to be published in the autumn. Shadow Leader of the House Theresa May said: “We must ensure that the systems in place see that money is properly spent.”

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House of Lords to get £100m office complex Thursday, Jun 5 2008

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The House of Lords is to get a new £100 million office complex opposite Parliament, complete with wine cellar and art store.

The nine storey property, at 1 and 2 Millbank, was bought for £65 million but will cost a further £32.9 million to refurbish. And the price of the development could double if proposals to build an underground tunnel linking the offices to the Palace of Westminster are granted.

The plans represent the biggest overhaul of the Lords estate in a generation, but already they have been criticised for being too lavish. Only 117 peers, out of 733, will be moving into the building, equalling a cost approaching £1 million per member. The works department has estimated the cost of repolishing oak joinery at £70,000; chandeliers, which have not been finally agreed, are estimated at £129,000. Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay is the first peer to speak out against the cost. He said: “The whole House should take a long, hard look at whether this really is value for public money.

“With millions of families struggling to pay their mortgages, should we really spend £130,000 on new chandeliers, not even in the Palace of Westminster but in offices over the road?” But Baroness D’Souza of Wychwood, the convenor of the crossbench peers, said when considered in the long-term it does represent value for money. “The building itself is going to be a project that will last for the next 100 years. If the eye-popping costs are divided by the number of years the building will be used for, it is far less eye-popping,” she said. The work is scheduled for completion in 2011.

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MP cautioned for walking over a van’s bonnet ordered to pay up and apologise to the owner Thursday, Jun 5 2008

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A Labour MP has been cautioned for criminal damage after admitting walking over the bonnet of a white van blocking him from getting on a bus. Rob Marris, MP for Wolverhampton South, was ordered to pay the van’s owner almost £350 to cover the cost of repairing two dents in the bonnet after admitting the offence. Under the rules of his conditional caution, he will also have to write a letter of apology to the owner in relation to the incident in March. The MP had been due to appear at Coventry Magistrates’ Court this morning accused of damaging the van at a bus stop in Wolverhampton. But the politician, 53, admitted to one count of criminal damage yesterday and accepted a caution. A West Midlands Police spokeswoman said: ‘We can confirm that Rob Marris attended Bilston Street police station on June 3 and accepted a conditional caution, having been charged with an offence of criminal damage.’

District prosecutor Colin Molloy said the van had pulled up in Jeffcock Road, Wolverhampton, where it was delivering goods to a business. Other people waiting for the bus had walked through a small gap between the van and another vehicle but the MP had walked over it, creating two small dents in the bonnet, he said. ‘There were two vehicles parked in front of a bus stop with a small gap between them. The van was not parked to his liking,’ Mr Molloy added. A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said today: ‘He admitted to the charge of criminal damage. That’s why we decided to give him a conditional caution. ‘A conditional caution is appropriate to someone who we feel will not commit further offences.’ Mr Marris, a trained solicitor and son of a magistrate, said he was ‘pleased’ police had decided not to take the matter further. He told the Express and Star: ‘I accept that what I did was rather unconventional, but the small van was parked illegally, and was needlessly preventing safe access for boarding the bus.

‘I am sorry that, when walking across the bonnet of that van, to get on the bus, I damaged the van. That was never my intention. ‘Many people have asked me if the van driver was also charged, for parking in a marked bus stop. I do not know.’ Police investigated the incident for 10 days before deciding to charge the MP, who – by coincidence – was once employed as a bus driver himself. He initially denied being involved in the incident and said he intended to plead not guilty. At the time, he said: ‘This is a personal matter which has no bearing on my Parliamentary duties.’ Born in Wolverhampton , Mr Marris was initially educated at the £10,000 a year Birchfield Preparatory School near Wolverhampton before boarding at the £25,000 a year St Edward’s School in Oxford. He then moved to Canada and spent some years working in Canada as a lumberjack before gaining a first in History and Sociology from the University of British Columbia. He returned from North America nine years later and qualified as a solicitor before being elected to Parliament in 2001.

Last year he became Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Rt Hon Shaun Woodward MP, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Mr Marris describes himself as an ‘avid supporter of Wolverhampton Wanderers’ and has worked not only as a bus driver but as a truck driver, firefighter and labourer.

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Commons speaker Martin runs up £170,000 bill in failed attempt to hush up MPs’ expenses Wednesday, Jun 4 2008

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The Commons Speaker spent at least £170,000 of taxpayers’ money in his failed attempt to keep MPs’ expenses secret, it was revealed last night. The House of Commons Commission – chaired by Michael Martin – spent three years fighting in the courts to keep details of claims made by 14 MPs out of the public eye. They were eventually forced to reveal the details under the Freedom of Information Act after the High Court ruled there was no justification in keeping the details secret.

So far, the Commons has paid out £82,673 in legal fees to appeal the Information Commissioner’s verdict that taxpayers had a right to know what MPs spent their second home allowance on. On top of this, the House had to pay the litigation costs of campaigners who appeared in court to argue the case for disclosure. An interim figure of £39,363 has been agreed. There is also a bill of £48,847 covering advice relating to other cases connected to MPs’ expenses. The total is £170,883 – and the commission admits the figure is expected to rise. LibDem MP Norman Baker, who campaigns for members’ expenses to be made public, said the costs added ‘insult to injury’. ‘The public will think this is a disgraceful use of money to defend the indefensible,’ he said. The second home expenses receipts, when published, showed that Gordon Brown had claimed £4,471 to smarten up his kitchen. Nick Harvey, who sits on the commission, said the legal fees were justified because issues had been raised that needed testing in the courts. The figures do not include £20,000 spent by the Speaker to pay lawyers to act as spokesmen over a series of negative headlines over his own expenses.

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As WE all feel the pinch, MPs demand 60% increase to £100,000 a year Thursday, May 29 2008

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MPs are demanding an extra £38,000 a year each under plans to stamp out abuse of expenses. The move would take their annual salaries to nearly £100,000 – at a time when millions are struggling to cope with soaring living costs and police, nurses and teachers have received below-inflation wage rises. The politicians want a pay increase of £15,000 each.

Commons Speaker Michael Martin is also considering giving each MP an extra £23,000 a year to replace the controversial second homes’ allowance. It would bump up their annual pay from around £62,000 to just under £100,000 – an inflation-shattering 60 per cent. Such extravagance will outrage hard-pressed families who are feeling the pinch as pay deals are capped while food, fuel and mortgage costs spiral alarmingly. It will also cause astonishment at a time when Gordon Brown is preparing to hit 18million motorists, including drivers of family cars, with road tax hikes of hundreds of pounds a year. But senior MPs say the move would bring them closer in line with the salaries of public sector staff such as council officers, headmasters and GPs. Derek Conway Derek Conway was one of the first MPs to be hit by an expenses scandal when it was revealed he employed his sons Sir John Butterfill, a Tory backbencher, said: ‘MPs’ salaries have gone up by substantially less than inflation each year since 2002. We are due a catch up.’ Another senior Tory said: ‘Civil servants and GPs get considerably more there is an argument for giving MPs more in their pay packets and scaling back on allowances.’

Labour backbencher Martin Salter, MP for Reading West, has also argued that there is a case for MPs to be paid more and then funding their London living allowances out of their income. But Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance pressure group, said: ‘People are angry that some MPs are already abusing taxpayers’ generosity – the last thing we want is to pay them even more.’ A £38,000 rise would place MPs among the most well-remunerated of Europe’s politicians. A backbencher receives a basic monthly salary – without expenses – of around £5,151, more than France (£4,138), Sweden (£4,521) and Finland (£4,671). The £38,000 rise would put them on about £8,166 a month, again without expenses. MPs on the House of Commons Commission, which is chaired by Speaker Martin, asked for the pay rise in submissions to a review led by Sir John Baker, head of the Senior Salaries Review Body.

He will present his findings to the Prime Minister within weeks, then MPs will be asked to vote on them. MPs believe that bumping up salaries by between £10,000 and £15,000 by 2010 would broadly bring them into line with council officers and headmasters. There was unhappiness at Westminster this year when MPs were cajoled into accepting a 1.9 per cent pay rise. Meanwhile, the Commons’ Members Estimates Committee which is overseeing a shake-up of Parliamentary expenses is expected to propose giving MPs a tax-free lump sum of £23,000. It would replace the additional costs allowance (ACA) of up to £23,000 a year. Although not all MPs claim the full amount, the perk is controversial because it allows MPs to run and furnish a home near Westminster. Because the new lump sum would be a ‘block grant’, MPs would not be forced to submit receipts. That has led freedom of information campaigners to fear the move would perpetuate the abuses of taxpayers’ money by shrouding what MPs spend in secrecy. MPs currently claim an average of £135,850 on expenses, including living, office and staffing costs. This does not include their pay.

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How working classes are betrayed by labour’s lunatic immigration policy Thursday, May 29 2008

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NOTHING exposes the hypocrisy of Left-wing politics more graphically than the issue of immigration.  Labour ideologues constantly tell us how much our society benefits from a mass influx of foreigners, both by strengthening the economy and adding to the richness of our culture.  But this is just empty propaganda. In reality mass immigration has deepened poverty, driven down living standards, pushed up taxes, promoted social dislocation, exacerbated crime and stretched public services to breaking point.

The winners from immigration are the corporate employers and the affluent, nanny-employing class who are insulated by their wealth from the breakdown in social cohesion. The losers are the very people whom Labour used to represent – the traditional British working class who find their communities dissolved, their jobs taken and their support networks shattered. Far from heralding a new era of prosperity, as the Labour Party claims, mass immigration has actually worsened the economic prospects of a large section of our society.  This is partly because wage bills have been forced down by ruthless competition at the bottom end of the employment market, where British citizens with family responsibilities and mortgages struggle against foreign newcomers who are able to accept far lower pay rates.   For all the Government’s boasting about record levels of employment, more than 80 per cent of new jobs go to immigrants while the number of Britons in work has declined since Labour came to power.

But there is another way in which immigration has entrenched poverty and unemployment. Just as the destruction of our borders has served the purposes of an unpatriotic, irresponsible brand of cut-throat capitalism so it has also reinforced the culture of dep­endency on the welfare state. While migrants fill most of the vacancies in our economy an army of benefits claimants has been allowed to remain on the economic scrapheap, devoid of ambition or skills. Labour came to power with a promise to “think the unthinkable” about the welfare state. Yet as the Cons­ervatives’ Work and Pensions spokesman Chris Grayling pointed out in a tough speech yesterday, immigration has been used by the Govern­ment as a substitute for benefits reform.  All Labour’s big promises about radical change of the benefits have proved hollow. Instead there has been only an extension of state bureaucracy through schemes like the New Deal or Sure Start. No scroung­ers have ever had their handouts withdrawn because of their refusal to take a job. 

Instead of reinforcing a system that encourages idleness, Labour should have copied the reforms of Bill Clinton’s administration in the Nineties in America which have meant that benefit claims are strictly limited to two years in succession or five years in total during a working lifetime. Contrary to predictions that Clinton’s plan would result in mass poverty, the measures have led to a dramatic increase in employment and fall in welfare rolls. That is what we needed in Britain but we have ended up with the worst of all worlds. Rather than being tightened the welfare system has been expanded remorselessly, with its annual cost now reaching £170billion. As a result, millions of claimants have been under no pressure to enter the world of work. Meanwhile, levels of migration have soared in response to demand from employers. Acc­ording to the Govern­ment’s own statistics, at least 500,000 foreigners are arriving here annually and that figure does not include illegal migrants and bogus refugees. It is the economics of the lunatic asylum to import millions of foreigners to carry out the work which could be done by the 5.5 million Britons who are paid by the State to remain unemployed. But it suits the institutional self-loathing of the anti-British metropolitan elite to maintain this perverse, almost schizophrenic approach.

For in this way the indigenous working-class can be portrayed as lazy slobs while immigrants are hailed as industrious heroes, full of self-sacrifice and diligence who take on jobs the feckless British will not. Such imagery fulfils the determination of the politically correct brigade to brainwash the public into accepting our trans­­formation into a multi-cultural land of immigrants. This manipulative agenda is, how­ever, shot through with holes.  The truth is that immigrants are far more likely to be unemployed than Britons. Indeed, many come here precisely because of the generosity of our welfare state, as demonstrated by the hordes of aggressive young men claiming to be refugees who gather in northern France in the hope of reach­ing the land of the cash payout.  In practice our benefits system is encouraging the import of poverty from the Third World. Moreover, the institutionalised obsession with anti-racism and diversity means that public-sector employers operate a deliberate bias against British applicants.  This is all too apparent in the NHS, for instance, where vast numbers of foreign staff are recruited and British-trained doctors and nurses often ­struggle to find work.

It is sickening that the British working-class, once the backbone of our country, should be derided as bigots simply because they object to the way immigration is dest­roying their livelihoods and neighbourhoods.  Living in the areas of high migration they are the ones who are really paying the price for social upheaval, not the smug affluent liberals who enjoy the benefits of cheap labour without having to worry about the consequences. In effect the British working class are being asked to celebrate the betrayal they have endured at the hands of the political elite.

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MP couple get £175,000 for a flat … and their house is just 30 minutes away Wednesday, May 28 2008

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A husband and wife who are both MPs have used £175,000 of taxpayers’ money to help buy a flat near Parliament – while they already have a constituency home nine miles away. Health minister Ann Keen, 59, and her husband Alan, 70 – who have been nicknamed Mr and Mrs Expenses – bought an apartment on the South Bank of the Thames using their generous second homes perk. They also took out life insurance policies worth £430,000 and claimed back the £867.57 a month premiums on their expenses.

The couple bought the flat, in a block with its own swimming pool and gym, under rules that allow MPs to spend £23,083 a year to run and furnish a home near the Commons. They qualified for the handout because they live outside inner London. Yet the Keens’ home is actually in Brentford, West London – about 30 minutes away by car. The details were revealed in documents after a three-year freedom of information battle in which Commons Speaker Michael Martin lost his bid to keep a breakdown of MPs’ expenses secret. Ten days ago the High Court ruled he must publish details of claims made under the additional costs allowance by 14 current or former MPs.
Michael Martin Speaker Michael Martin spent £200,000 on a legal battle to keep MPs expenses secret Mrs Keen, who represents Brentford and Isleworth, and Mr Keen, who is Labour MP for neighbouring Feltham and Heston, already effectively receive double the expenses of other MPs because they share a property.

But the manner in which they bought another home near the Royal Festival Hall will raise eyebrows yet again about the Commons expenses regime. The couple bought the flat in May 2002 after spending six months in a London hotel. In a letter to the Commons’ Fees Office informing officials of their changed circumstances, the Keens wrote: ‘Despite some advantages of hotel accommodation, overall we found it unsatisfactory and have borrowed…to purchase a flat within walking distance of Westminster.’ In an unusual arrangement, they used two mortgages. One loan was for £350,000 from HSBC. The other £170,000 was raised by re-mortgaging their property in Brentford, also through HSBC.

The couple argued that because the second home loan was used to raise equity for the central London flat it should be permissible on expenses. This was apparently nodded through by officials. The property would almost certainly now be worth at £800,000, according to experts. As well as the interest payments on their mortgage, the couple claimed £867.57 a month for ‘compulsory’ life insurance premiums attached to the home loans – a practice which has since been banned. According to the documents, they never submitted a single receipt. Instead, they
sent two sheets of A4 to the expenses department every month, claiming £1,643.50 each month throughout 2002-03 and £1,699 each throughout 2003-04 – almost the maximum payable.

In the five years since they bought the apartment, Mrs Keen has claimed £87,325 under the second homes allowance and Mr Keen has received £87,803 – a total of £175,128. In the last year for which figures are available, the pair claimed a total of £38,515 under the ACA, which covers mortgage interest, service charges, utility and food. If they had each separately taken the £38 taxi ride from Westminster to Brentford on every Commons ‘sitting day’ that year, the bill would have only come to £11,000 – £27,000 less.

There is no suggestion the couple broke the rules. However, their case will intensify pressure for reforms of the way MPs pay themselves expenses. Critics claim they lived so near to the Commons they should only be able to claim the London supplement of £2,700. The housing allowances system is now under review. A Department of Health spokesman stressed the Keens’ claims were within the rules. But Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers’ Alliance campaign group, said they were ‘unacceptable’. ‘The allowance should help MPs represent their constituencies, not pay the costs of life insurance or enable them to build up a lucrative property portfolio.’ The ACA documents also revealed taxpayers picked up the bill for Tony Blair’s interest-only £297,000 mortgage on his constituency home – amounting to almost £4,000 in 2005-06.

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What’s the difference between MPs’ expenses and stealing? Wednesday, May 28 2008

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This is going to be another one of those columns which begins: am I missing something here? According to parliamentary expenses smuggled out under the radar last Friday, Tony Blair remortgaged his constituency home in Geordieland for £300,000 – twice what it was worth. He then claimed back the interest payments from the British taxpayer. Someone please explain to me which bit of this isn’t stealing.

Even by the standards of Northern Rock, a 200 per cent mortgage is stretching it. Did Blair go to Peter Mandelson’s financial adviser? Yet those newspapers which have bothered to report this scam have given it little prominence, as if a former Prime Minister trousering hundreds of thousands of pounds which rightfully belong to someone else is no big deal. In her grubby little book, the Wicked Witch says that the Blairs paid just £30,000 for the house in Trimdon. So how the hell did they manage to raise a loan secured on the property for ten times that amount? By all accounts, it’s still only worth £250,000. Isn’t that what they call negative equity? If they can find a building society stupid enough to lend them that kind of money, fine. But why should the rest of us have to pick up the bill for their interest payments, or part thereof?

At the time, the couple were also negotiating to buy their £3.5 million house in London’s Arab Quarter. Were taxpayers stumping up the deposit through Tony’s exes? Whichever way you cut it, this was a massive abuse of the system. So why does no one else seem to give a damn? Blair’s spokesman says: “Everything was done in accordance with the rules.” That tells you everything about the rules. It turns out we also bought them a new kitchen, complete with Aga for £10,600 and a dishwasher for £515. Oh, and we picked up the gas bill, too. None of this money will have to be repaid when they eventually sell up. Still, the Blairs’ boot-filling is par for the course. We’ve also been charged for Margaret Beckett’s herbaceous border and Barbara Follett’s window cleaner. And when Gordon Brown’s not polishing his moral compass, he’s submitting a claim for his subscription to Sky Sports and Sky Movies. Since when was it part of a Prime Minister’s job to have free access to Pirates Of The Caribbean and Doncaster versus Leeds in the Third Division play-off final?

More to the point, what was going through Gordon’s head when he filled in his expenses form? This is someone who prides himself in being a financial genius, a political colossus, taking the right long-term decisions to get us through the global turbulence, etc, etc, etc. When he was whacking in a claim for whatever it costs to watch Sky Movies these days, didn’t it occur to him for a second that this extravagance might not play too well in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election? The fact that none of these claims is illegal proves that the system itself is bent as a nine-bob note. It also helps explain why politicians haven’t got a clue what goes on in the real world. They never have to put their hands in their own pockets. As someone said, Gordon Brown knows the price of a barrel of oil, but not the cost of a tank of petrol. He doesn’t even pay his own television licence. Or for his lightbulbs, come to that. What kind of cheapskate claims for lightbulbs?

At this point in an article of this type, I’m supposed to say that, obviously, our politics are Persil white when compared with. . . fill in your own other country. But then you read that Labour MPs Anne and Alan Keen have bought a flat at Waterloo using £175,000 of taxpayers’ money – even though they have a home just nine miles away near their neighbouring West London constituencies. It would be cheaper to get them a limo home from Westminster every night. They’re also claiming £876.57 a month for their £430,000 life insurance premiums. These are the kind of details which Gorbals Mick spent £200,000 of our money trying to prevent us finding out. It’s fashionable and sophisticated to pretend that our politics are pure as the driven snow. MPs’ snouts-in-the-trough expenses prove that’s a lie. Or am I missing something here?

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