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Posts tagged House of Commons
Pressure on Tories to name mystery MP who sabotaged anti-poverty bill
Mar 13th
Campaigners demand David Cameron names member who killed bill protecting developing world from vulture fund bankers
Pressure is growing on David Cameron to identify the mystery Tory MP who deliberately scuppered a landmark anti-poverty bill that could have stopped “vulture” bankers profiteering from the developing world’s debt burdens.
Debt campaigners have reacted in fury and disbelief to the killing of the bill and Labour MP Sally Keeble, one of the bill’s backers, has accused the Conservatives of “duplicity” by pretending to back the legislation and then sabotaging it at the last minute.
Campaigners are now calling on the leader of the opposition to clarify his view of the bill and asking whether the MP concerned will be identified. The international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, has sent a letter to Cameron demanding an explanation.
The frustration has been compounded by the secrecy surrounding the events in the House of Commons last night. During the reading, three Tory MPs were seen to huddle together on the benches before one shouted the word “object!”, which under parliamentary procedure effectively stopped the bill passing.
Three Conservatives were in the chamber – Christopher Chope, Andrew Robathan and Simon Burns – but none have admitted intervening. The Tory treasury spokesman David Gauke, who was on the committee which debated the bill, insisted the Conservatives had wanted to see the bill go through and that the MPs, two of whom are Tory whips, did not have the support of the frontbench. He said he did not know which one had made the objection. “We have our suspicions,” he said. “It is a pity. Our view was let’s go with the bill but that was not to be. Everyone recognises that this was a rushed process.”
But Keeble said that there had been plenty of time to debate the bill, both for two hours in the chamber and at committee stage. “All concerns that had been raised had been dealt with and the bill had been watered down already as a compromise to the Conservatives,” she said.
“It’s blatantly obvious that this was duplicitous behaviour by the Conservatives whose commitment to international development is deeply suspect. The three men went into a huddle and then no one can see who actually objects. It’s disgraceful behaviour.”
Nick Dearden, director of Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: “It is an outrage that one MP has taken it upon himself to effectively kill a bill which has the support of the vast majority of the House. His move will mean many of the poorest countries in the world will continue suffering at the hands of reckless and unethical investors.
“This action has destroyed the hopes of many people across the developing world that we might put an end to the appalling practice of vulture funds.”
Vulture funds buy up the debts of poor countries, often at a fraction of their face value, and pursue them through the international courts, in many instances despite agreements by other creditors to give the country debt relief.
Campaigners wanted the legislation to apply retrospectively, because it could help countries such as Liberia, which lost a £13m case in London against two vulture funds late last year. Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has urged parliament to pass the new law. The scuppering came a day after former Tanzanian President Benjamin William Mkapa backed the bill, saying: “I hope the international community joins hands to put an end to these deplorable activities of the vulture funds.” The bill also has the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Andrew Gwynne MP, who proposed the bill, said: “It is staggering the Conservatives are still unwilling to support even the most basic legislation to help reduce third world debt.”
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Your 10 questions for would-be MPs | Henry Porter
Mar 12th
As we prepare to elect the MPs who should safeguard our rights, what 10 questions on liberty would you put to party candidates?
In about eight weeks’ time we will be voting not just for a new government, but a new parliament of representatives, in whose hands will lie the future of our free society.
We want your help to draft a list of questions that can be put to all the candidates of the major parties to establish their credentials, not as party creatures, but as individuals of conscience who will stand for the values of a liberal and democratic society before any other political interest.
The dying parliament is among the worst in the past 100 years – corrupt, lazy, arrogant and dismissive of the public – but it also contained some good MPs who fought the tide of illiberal legislation and who are aware of the direction Britain has taken under Labour’s authoritarian government. We need many more like them to reassert parliament’s power and to hold the executive to account.
Ten key questions on liberty, rights and democracy is what we want you to be able to ask candidates with a view to getting their pledge of support on the record for all voters to see. Where support is not forthcoming, that should be made public.
Where do we start?
At an event last night to celebrate the launch of Keith Ewing’s book, The Bonfire of the Liberties – now the definitive text on Labour government’s attack on liberty and rights – we listened to a young man named Cerie Bullivant talking about his experience of being subject to the restrictions of a control order for two years without having been found guilty of a crime, or being allowed to know the evidence against him. The system of control orders seems to me one of the worst examples of arbitrary state power in modern Britain. I would ask – will you condemn house arrest of a person who has not been found guilty of a crime in a normal court of law?
Are you worried about trade union rights – the right of workers not to be catalogued on secret databases and blacklists, which affect their ability to gain work? What about the rights to assembly and free protest without being harassed and photographed by our militarised police? Last night we heard from Pennie Quinton and Marc Vallée, who have been prevented by police from carrying out their duties as working photographers. Their stories are part of an important battle over the control and regulation of public space. Should we ask all candidates to declare the commitment to the principle that anyone should be allowed to make an image in a public place without being questioned by the police, PCSOs or the numerous varieties of accredited busybodies?
Each year a very large number of innocent people are stopped and searched by the police who, according to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission report, exhibit obvious racism by picking on black and Asian people. One question might be, “Do you support a repeal of current legislation which allows police to stop and search hundreds of thousands of innocent people without having reasonable cause? And do you condemn the racist bias in stop and search policies, as well as the police national DNA database?
We should attempt to get the assurance of candidates that they will do everything they can to roll back the database state. ID cards and government policies to capture all our communications data and all personal details when we travel abroad are being rolled out. The government is putting pressure on NHS patients to allow their medical records to be uploaded to a database, which many experts believe is innately insecure. Records of all children in England and Wales are being compulsorily uploaded to the Contact database. You may feel strongly about these databases or about the Vetting and Barring Scheme, which some see as one of the symbols of a country that is fast losing the reflexive presumption of innocence. What question would encourage a candidate to explicitly reject the culture of suspicion and mistrust that has grown up in the last 12 years?
One worry is the way demonstrations are being oppressed by hostile police who have little regard for the right of people to engage in legitimate political protest and do everything in their power to photograph individuals for their secret databases. Another concern is the use of the Ripa laws and the growth of invasive databases, some of which have no basis in law – the police ANPR surveillance system, for instance, which captures and retains most vehicle journeys in the UK.
Or you may feel that you want to hear more general declarations about candidates’ fundamental political beliefs, principles they are prepared to sign up to and against which their voting record may be measured. My co-director of the Convention on Modern Liberty, Anthony Barnett, suggests that every candidate is asked to explicitly recognise that the threat to our liberty currently posed by government is greater than that presented by terrorism.
Over to you.
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The battle for women’s votes | Yvonne Roberts
Mar 12th
With working-class women abandoning Labour and political apathy on the rise, who will win women over in the election?
Thirteen years ago, many working-class women with a couple of children, a husband in a poorly paid full-time job, and a need to earn some extra money were wooed and won over by New Labour. During Blair’s reign, their bounty included a minimum wage, a national childcare strategy and better parental and part-time workers’ rights. Now we’re heading for another election, why are those same working-class women deserting Labour in droves?
The sociologist Geoff Dench, in a Centre for Policy Studies report published next week, believes he has the answer. Working-class woman have deserted Labourbecause their views, as mothers who “prioritise family life”, have been marginalised by a sisterhood of sharp-suited middle-class career women, whose outlook can apparently best be summed up in two words: Harriet Harman.
Anyone who lobs a stink bomb at the sisterhood has a certain audience on side immediately. However, when you look at Dench’s argument, drawing on statistics from the British Social Attitudes study, an alternative interpretation is that it’s not gender but class that’s at issue – and money, or rather the lack of it, not middle-class madams that might be causing many women to walk away from the charms of Gordon Brown.
Dench argues that over the past 20 years there has been a steady growth in the proportion of people who support no political party. Among men, the rate of support for “no party” has nearly doubled from 8% in 1986 to 15% in 2006 . (They have presumably been betrayed by the brotherhood). Among women who describe their occupation as looking after the home, the proportion describing themselves as “no party” has tripled from 8% in 1986 to 24% in 2006. Among working-age single mothers, the increase for the same period has been from 7% to 25%.
In 1986, 52% of working age working-class housewives said they supported Labour. This support had dropped to 27% in 2008. And they haven’t drifted to the Tories. Dench then leaps to the following conclusion:
“Women who value home and family life are becoming disenfranchised. The feminist ’sisterhood’ has clearly failed them, and the result is that they are withdrawing their support from the mainstream parties. Politicians of all parties should be concerned about this… because… the proportion of young women who prioritise home and family has been growing steadily in recent years, and so their votes matter.”
Home and hearth and women in pinnies gently rocking the cradle with one hand while they stir the pot with the other while their man does the “real” work in the outside world is an image that has long fuelled nationalist propaganda – as has a particular choice of language. Take, for instance, Dench’s “disenfranchised”. We are living in the age of the consumer and politics isn’t immune. Describing oneself as “no party” does not necessarily mean disenfranchisement – the deprivation of choice – on the contrary, it could be read as a signal that choice rules supreme. These voters intend to “shop around”.
“No party” could also mean that no party conveys the values, goals and vision of a society in which these voters can believe. This isn’t about the sisterhood. It’s about neglect of the white working class and the death of a clear Labour ideology. Or, to put it another way, perhaps some of those 52% of working class women who voted for Labour during a bad case of the blues under Margaret Thatcher now believe the party has become too posh for its own good – reflected in a House of Commons stuffed with white male bankers, lecturers and management consultants.
In this scenario, the small band of Labour women, including Harman, who could have done more have at least done something, including achieving a reduction in child poverty, changes to women’s pensions and improved rights for carers, all impacting on women who are full-time mothers (who have increasingly powerful voices via the classless Mumsnet, Netmums and the Women’s Institute).
Dench’s arguments patronise women at home, insult women in paid work and do no service to men. Once there is equality in earning power, more men can opt out of the straitjacket of being the main breadwinner and play a greater role in care. Once care is given its proper value, inside and outside the home (and research tells us that more involved the dad, the better the child), and paid work ceases to be the only coin with currency, the whole of society benefits.
A recent paper by the TUC gives a further set of reasons for working-class women’s disillusionment with Labour – that underline that far from wishing to stay at home full time, many women are frustrated in their inability to get a secure full-time or part-time job – and once the cuts in the public sector hit home (the public sector accounts for 40% of all jobs held by women), the situation will get very much tougher.
The latest YouGov poll says that women are split 37% to 29% in favour of the Tories, and that’s before Sam Cam, the Conservatives’ secret weapon, and the classic working mother, has been fully launched. Labour’s election strategy will apparently be underpinned by claims that “middle-class mainstream” mums will suffer most if the Tories win and launch spending cuts. That’s how far the party has drifted from its roots. And ironically, what there is of the sisterhood in the House is probably trying to tell it so.
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MPs and peer charged with expenses offences deserve fair trial | Michael White
Mar 12th
When I was a regular court reporter in Queen Victoria’s day we took contempt of court seriously. Some papers today ought to refresh their memories
A wholesome public figure whom we all know said in my hearing this week “there’s a crisis of public life”. By that he meant that the politics of relentless scrutiny, which prefers to play the man, not the ball, is driving good people out of responsible positions.
That’s fine if you want “monks or millionaires” running the country, he said. I didn’t give it further thought until I opened this morning’s papers and saw three MPs and a Tory peer all over some front pages.
They were all appearing at Westminster magistrates court on expenses-related charges. Guilty? I don’t know and nor do you, though we both probably have views. That’s my point.
The Daily Mail’s splash headline is “‘Thieves’ who think they’re above the law”. Note those delicate quotation marks around “thieves”. It’s a perfunctory nod to the law, which requires court reports to reflect the proper presumption of innocence, even for rapists, child molesters and politicians.
When I was a regular court reporter, under Queen Victoria, we took it seriously. Woe betide papers that didn’t.
But in 2010 the Mail’s strap line gives the game away. “With brazen cynicism, three Labour MPs [where's that Tory peer gone, I ask myself?] charged with expenses fraud argue a court has no right to put them on trial.”
Actually it’s not quite brazen cynicism. But it’s certainly prejudicial to say so in a court report. On radio, TV and in print there was plenty more. Some papers, including this one, sent their sketchwriters.
Thus my old friend, Simon Hoggart, has written an uncharacteristically testy piece that takes a passing swipe at costly and overdue renovation work at the Palace of Westminster.
You would never know from the article that the authorities have just spent millions renovating the Commons press gallery where we all work rent-free. The office under Big Ben where Simon and I have worked for years in Stygian darkness now has a window, two actually. Daylight at last! Few reporters wanted the upgrade; we were happy in our squalor. Few MPs wanted to upgrade us. Officialdom and our old mate ‘ealth and safety drove the project.
Back to the magistrates court. Surely, we have spent a lot of the past week debating the need to ensure that Jon Venables gets a fair trial for whatever offence he’s allegedly committed under whatever name he lives under? The mob is in full cry over him too and his rights deserve defending.
But they have been abused, roundly so by great swathes of reporting – as Simon Jenkins also pointed out this week. It happens all the time. Will anything be done about it? I doubt it, and there’s an election coming.
The politicians are afraid of the press, which can do truly scary things to them. I don’t need to remind Guardian regulars about the News of the World phone-hacking, far more extensive than admitted, as becomes clearer by the week.
When Nick Davies and Rob Evans reported that the NoW had paid out another £1m to buy off Max Clifford’s phone-hacking law suit – not a man to cross is Max – how many other papers picked up the report? None that I saw.
It didn’t suit them, as it would have if an MP had been – allegedly – drunk at the wheel and they’d been tipped off for money by a copper.
Why not? Plenty blag for information too, so the information commissioner concluded. You won’t have read much about that either. Professor Brian Cathcart explained it well in MediaGuardian the other day.
And while we’re on the subject, there’s another little report in today’s Guardian which you might usefully read. Facebook is threatening to sue the Mail for tweaking a scary piece written by Mark Williams-Thomas, an ex-police detective specialising in paedophile cases.
He’d (allegedly) told the paper that the social network on which he’d posed as a teenage girl – and been inundated with dirty propositions – was not Facebook, but they said it was anyway. It fitted the story they were writing about poor Ashleigh Hall.
That happens a lot too; take my word for it. Make the facts fit the story. But it needn’t happen. In many years at the Guardian I can only recall one instance of a “fact” (which later proved untrue) being inserted late at night against the advice of the reporter whose name was on the story. There was a big fuss afterwards.
So let’s go easy on unconvicted MPs once they’ve been charged, on Venables too. Due process matters. And don’t tell me that applies to Tony Blair’s deficient handling of the Iraq war, as demonstrated (again) by the Chilcot inquiry. I agree.
But before you get too smug read this. It’s a rare take on the Iraq war by a rare kind of witness. Nigel Biggar is regius professor of moral and pastoral theology at Oxford and he marshals a powerful case against the “Bliar Blair’s illegal and murderous war” brigade.
Whether or not Biggar knows what he’s doing raising his head above the parapet is another matter. Doesn’t he know what happens to people in public life who cross the prejudices of the Daily Beast?
If readers in the quiet streets of north Oxford hear unusual noises just before dawn it may be a freelance trawling through the Biggar family bins on behalf of the Beast. And change your mobile phone number, Prof.
Good luck.
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MPs in the dock: from kings of the castle to a glass cage
Mar 11th
The treatment in court of the three MPs charged with fiddling their expenses claims was not what they are used to
For the three MPs charged with fiddling their expenses claims, it may have been the unkindest moment. Their brief, Julian Knowles, wearing one of those vast chalk-stripe suits that possibly only lawyers may, by law, ever wear, asked the chief magistrate if the trio might be excused sitting in the dock.
The chief magistrate, district judge Timothy Workman, said in the mildest and gentlest fashion that it was usual for defendants to sit exactly there. So the MPs, who had plonked themselves on comfy chairs towards the back, had to file into a glass cage in the corner of the court. It looked slightly like the bulletproof conservatory the Israelis built for Adolf Eichmann. A tiny woman, a court attendant, locked them in, possibly in case they tried to flee in time for a crucial Commons vote.
This is not the kind of treatment MPs, who are kings of the castle in parliament, are used to.
Outside Westminster magistrates court a vast crowd of photographers had gathered, and a somewhat smaller crowd of protesters. What they lacked in numbers they made up in spray-gunned anger: placards denounced “Bakers, politicians, rozzers, grasping, corrupt, filthy pigs the lot …” Some wore pig masks, others were dressed as Guy Fawkes.
Back in the Commons there was another mini-scandal on the way. It was They Just Don’t Get It, episode CXXII. Having just spend £400,000 on refurbishing one of the bars, they plan to spend another £400,000 on turning it into a day nursery for the infant children of MPs and staff. This total sum, which would buy a family home in one of London’s nicer areas, has not been vetted by the relevant committee – because, we are told, there isn’t time. Tories suspect it’s not been checked because it would be turned down.
Back at the beak’s, the clerk, a young blonde woman, read out the charges. It took around 10 minutes. The MPs stood up in their glazed cage – Jim Devine looking truculent, David Chaytor anxious, Elliott Morley brick-red and cross.
Knowles explained how his clients were going to claim the charges were none of the court’s business – thanks to article 9 in the Bill of Rights, 1689, what happens in parliament stays in parliament. Workman, mild as ever, said he declined jurisdiction and packed them off for trial at the end of the month.
Outside the court there was chaos. “Oink, oink, oink” yelled the people dressed as pigs. “Bye, bye, scum, bye!” said someone else – and he was a photographer. The three MPs and their brief somehow struggled into a cab which managed – just – to drive away without crushing a dozen cameramen’s feet.
I pondered what MPs’ children will be taught in the new creche. If they can’t agree on finger painting or stories, a burly policeman will arrive and bellow “Division!” There will be instruction in expenses. “No, Jordan, you can claim for a Wendy house because you can sit in that, but not for a doll’s house. Wayne, you’re very naughty, claiming for a Matchbox lorry! Make that claim for a Tonka truck, but only if it’s carrying Lego bricks deemed essential for your education under terms agreed with the Fees Office …”
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MPs on expenses charges cite parliamentary privilege
Mar 11th
Labour MPs and Tory peer plead not guilty and say workings of parliament should be dealt with by parliament
Three Labour MPs and a Conservative peer charged with theft over their expenses claims are to fight to keep their cases out of the criminal courts by attempting to invoke a 320-year-old law protecting them under parliamentary privilege.
Elliot Morley, David Chaytor, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield appeared today at City of Westminster magistrates court to plead not guilty to charges of false accounting under the Theft Act 1968.
The cases were committed to Southwark crown court after lawyers argued they raised issues of “high constitutional importance”. If convicted, the four face a maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment.
Julian Knowles, representing the three MPs, stressed the men were not saying they were above the law. “That would be quite wrong.” But, he added, “parliamentary privilege is part of the law, and it is for parliament to apply the law in their cases”.
The three MPs stood together in the functional reinforced glass dock of Court One at the Horseferry Road court, a short walk from the Palace of Westminster, during their 15-minute appearance.
A request they be allowed to remain outside the dock was refused by district judge Timothy Workman. Lord Hanningfield, who gave his name as “Paul Edward Winston Lord Hanningfield, previously White”, appeared alone immediately after them.
Knowles said the three MPs “unequivocally and steadfastly maintain their innocence of the charges against them”. Referring to the 1689 Bill of Rights, originally designed to protect freedom of speech, he said the MPs maintained “that to prosecute them in the criminal courts for their parliamentary activities would infringe the principle of the separation of powers, which is one of the principles which underpins the UK’s constitutional structure.
“The principle of the separation of powers means that whatever matter arises concerning the working of parliament should be dealt with by parliament, and not elsewhere, and should be dealt with in a manner that is consistent with the way other members have been treated.”
He added that parliamentary privilege meant that “proceedings in parliament cannot be impeached or questioned in any court or place outside of parliament”.
“These principles mean that it is for the House of Commons alone to decide whether the conduct of Mr Morley, Mr Chaytor and Mr Devine has been such as to call for sanction.”
Morley, 57, former agriculture minister and MP for Scunthorpe, is alleged to have dishonestly claimed £30,428 more than he was entitled to in second-home expenses between 2004 and 2007 on a house in Winterton, near Scunthorpe, towards a mortgage that was paid off.
Chaytor, 60, MP for Bury North, faces charges that he claimed almost £13,000 in rent in 2005 and 2006 on a London flat which he owned, as well as £5,425 in 2007 and 2008 to rent a property in Lancashire owned by his mother. He is also alleged to have used false invoices to claim £1,950 for IT services in 2006.
Devine, 56, MP for Livingston, is alleged to have claimed £3,240 for cleaning services and £5,505 for stationery using false invoices in 2008 and 2009.
All three have been barred as standing as Labour candidates in the forthcoming general election.
Hanningfield, 69, who was suspended from the parliamentary Conservative party and stood down as leader of Essex county council, pleaded not guilty to six charges relating to claims for overnight allowances, ranging from £154 to £172, from the House of Lords between 2006 and 2009 when records allegedly show he was driven to his home near Chelmsford.
The judge agreed with the defendants’ application for the cases to be heard at crown court. All were released on unconditional bail to appear at Southwark crown court on 30 March.
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Tories boycott Commons inquiry into Ashcroft peerage
Mar 11th
Three Conservative committee members walk out claiming inquiry is pursuing Labour vendetta
A Westminster inquiry into the row over Lord Ashcroft’s peerage was thrown into turmoil when the Tory MPs on the committee walked out and said they were boycotting it permanently.
In what is understood to be an unprecedented move, Conservative members have withdrawn from the public administration select committee, some following discussions with the party whips.
The committee, regarded as one of the most influential in parliament, announced an inquiry into Ashcroft’s ennoblement in the aftermath of the peer’s revelation last week that he has non-dom status. The billionaire described how he had renegotiated an undertaking he gave as a condition of his peerage to become a full British resident to allow him to retain his non-dom status and avoid paying tax on his substantial international earnings.
The disclosure ended 10 years of speculation about Lord Ashcroft’s tax status and provoked a bitter row over whether he had broken the spirit of the undertakings he had given to secure his peerage.
The Tory leadership was also embarrassed after it was revealed that no one in the party knew of his tax status until the shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, found out a few months ago, and that he in turn kept David Cameron in the dark until last month.
Sources close to the committee have confirmed the three Tory members have walked out, claiming the inquiry is pursuing a Labour vendetta. Some are under pressure from their leadership via the party whips, one senior source claimed.
It also emerged that Lord Ashcroft failed to meet a 9.30am deadline today to respond to an invitation to give evidence to the committee next Thursday. Gordon Prentice, a Labour committee member who has campaigned vociferously against the peer, made the announcement on his website. The committee has no powers to order members of the Lords to give evidence.
The remaining members met yesterday and agreed the line-up for their one-day hearing on propriety in peerages.
Hague, who as Ashcroft’s closest colleague sponsored his peerage and was subject to his promise to become a permanent resident, has been invited. Hayden Phillips, the senior civil servant at the time, has also received an invitation and Baroness Dean and Lord Hurd, who were on the scrutiny committee at the time of his appointment, are also understood to be on the list.
The three Tory members of the committee, David Burrowes, Ian Liddell-Grainger and Charles Walker, will not be attending any further meetings. An end of term lunch, scheduled for today, was cancelled after they failed to turn-up.
Liddell-Grainger, MP for Bridgwater, confirmed to the Guardian that he had walked out. “I’ve served on that committee since I’ve been a member of parliament. Tony Wright has been a good chair but three weeks before a general election is called they have decided to make this committee blatantly political. It has been totally politicised and is therefore not able to function as a proper select committee any more.”
He denied he had been ordered to boycott the committee by the party leadership, saying he reached the decision himself.
Burrowes, MP for Enfield, confirmed that party whips had been involved in the discussion about the committee but said did not need the whips to tell him to boycott it. He said the inquiry would become a “political circus” and argued that Lord Paul, the Labour donor and non-dom, should also give evidence. Walker could not be contacted last night.
A spokesman for the Conservatives said: “We don’t believe that it [the Ashcroft inquiry] is an appropriate use of the committee.” He said that the central party had not been involved in the MPs’ decisions to leave the committee.
Tony Wright, the Labour chairman of the committee, defended the decision to conduct the inquiry. He said: “We are not interested in the party political dimension of this but we are interested in trying to get to the bottom of an issue about propriety that has remained unresolved for the best part of a decade.”
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New details published of expenses charges faced by Labour MPs and Tory peer
Mar 11th
David Chaytor, Jim Devine, Elliot Morley and Lord Haningfield to face court today
New details of the charges faced by three Labour MPs and a Tory peer were revealed in documents published ahead of their court appearance today.
David Chaytor, the MP for Bury North, is accused of providing false information on an allowances form under the Theft Act 1968.
The charge states he falsely claimed rents between September 2005 and August 2006 for 152 Hide Tower, Regency Street, London, from Sarah Elizabeth.
It added that he claimed £12,925 by lodging a claim for £1,175 a month in rent when he was in fact the owner of the premises.
A second charge stated that on or about 19 May 2006, he dishonestly filed two invoices for computer IT services worth £975.
The court document added that they purported to show the services had been provided in February and March 2006 by Paul France.
A third charge stated that between November 2005 and September 2006 he dishonestly made use of a short-hold tenancy agreement in a claim form.
This showed that between August 2007 and January 2008 he rented Delph Cottage, Castle Street, Summerseat, Bury, from Olive Trickett for £775 a month plus a month deposit.
The charge added that Trickett was his mother and it was not permissible to lease accommodation from a family member. The total sum claimed was £5,425.
Jim Devine, the MP for Livingston, is accused of falsely claiming costs for parliamentary duties in March 2009.
The charge sheet alleged he submitted two misleading invoices worth a total of £5,505 for services provided by Armstrong Printing Ltd.
A second charge alleged that between July 2008 and May 2009 he dishonestly claimed allowances for repair, insurance or security.
The document alleges he intended to gain by submitting false invoices for services, cleaning and maintenance worth £3,240.
The services were allegedly provided between April 2009 and March 2010 by Tom O’Donnell Hygiene and Cleaning Services.
Elliot Morley, the MP for Scunthorpe, is accused of falsely claiming a furnishing allowance between March 2006 and November 2007.
The charge sheet alleged he submitted a deceptive mortgage application.
This showed £800 mortgage monthly interest was charged by the Cheltenham and Gloucester when in fact the mortgage was paid off. A total overpayment of £16,000 was made.
A second charge alleged that between April 2004 and February 2006 Morley made a further false mortgage interest claim.
Again he is accused of claiming £800 a month, a total overpayment of £14,428.67.
Lord Hanningfield, also known as Paul White, faced six charges.
The offences are alleged to have taken place in March 2006, May 2007, April 2008, July 2008, May 2009 and April 2009.
One charge stated that on or about 1 April 2009, at Westminster, he made a dishonest claim for travelling allowances.
It stated that Hanningfield “purported to show that you were entitled to be paid expenses when the conditions entitled you to payment of such expenses had not been fulfilled”.
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Red-faced and blue at PMQs
Mar 10th
David Cameron’s designer rage pushes prime minister’s questions to unparalleled levels of lunacy
The election is two months away, and already they are demented with rage. Ministers and shadow ministers rolling around the school playground! Mad claims that the criminal classes are all Tories! And today the high spot so far, a prime minister’s questions of unparalleled lunacy. Terrible for our democracy, no doubt; marvellous for us sitting in the gallery. Most new films seem to be in 3D now, and we get the full benefit. We duck as violent accusations hurtle towards us. We gasp in horror as insults fly across the chamber like turbocharged, pixellated pterodactyls!
David Cameron was asking about Gordon Brown at the Chilcot inquiry last week. One former chief of staff had said his evidence was “disingenuous”; another that he was “dissembling”. By now a low rumbling had begun on the Labour benches, like a steamroller crossing a cobbled street. Suddenly the row exploded. A barrage of noise swept towards the Tory leader. I couldn’t make anything out, but my colleagues could, and Mr Cameron certainly did, because he paused, and with face reddening, neck muscles throbbing and eyes bulging, he shouted: “Oh, it’s because they’re Tories, is it? That’s it, is it?”
As the noise continued to blot out everything, like Iron Maiden tuning up in a broom cupboard, he bellowed on: “This tribalist and divisive government … this prime minister should get up and dissociate himself from complicity with what those people have said!”
Brown tried to calm him down by appealing for everyone to find common ground rather than division. This is politics-speak for “let us all agree that I am right”. The Tory leader was unmollified. “These MPs have questioned the integrity of people who have served this country, fought for this country, who are essays in bravery! You must dissociate yourself from these disgraceful remarks!”
So perfect was his designer fury that I wondered whether he had rehearsed it in private, then only pretended to have heard someone accuse the grizzled old warriors of party partisanship. But I gather the cry of “they’re Tories!” could be made out from the direction of Ken Purchase and Ronnie Campbell, senior officers in Her Majesty’s Old Troublemakers, a regiment that has seen service in some of the greatest battles of the past century.
Brown said defence spending had gone up every year. Under the Tories, it had gone down. Once again Mr Cameron looked as if he might lose control of his wits. “The defence budget fell in the 1990s because under the Conservatives we won the cold war!”
Labour MPs, upset that they might have been kicked off the moral high ground, decided that was the funniest, most ridiculous thing they had ever heard. The Tories? Hadn’t Mr Cameron heard of two characters called Reagan and Gorbachev? The noise grew louder yet. The Speaker shouted “Order!” nine times. He was buried under a pile of orders. He too started insulting people: “Mr Burns, your heckling is as boring as it is boorish!”
Too late. The house was lost in the frenzy of a medieval mass madness.
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How liberal are our MPs? | Stephen Tall
Mar 12th
Posted by Stephen Tall in Politics
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A new website ranking MPs’ anti-authoritarian credentials reveals that the Liberal Democrats are the party of freedom
One sure-fire way to bring most Lib Dems out in hives is to ask them the question, “Do you think of yourself as rightwing or leftwing?” This right/left dichotomy – an archaic hangover from the French revolutionary period – is a nonsense in today’s political situation, in which all three major parties broadly subscribe to the principles of market economics and parliamentary democracy. Left and right are terms beloved by those parts of the media too lazy to engage in nuance; for most of the rest of us they belong in the lexicographical dustbin of history.
When most of us set up our Facebook profiles, we were not asked to define our political views according to an outmoded left/right axis. No, the dividing lines they set up were liberal versus conservative, terms which identify an individual’s general social and political outlook. The late Robin Cook preferred the more loaded terms “cosmopolitan” (outward-looking, internationalist, pro-choice, tolerant, progressive, forward-thinking) and “chauvinist” (reactionary, isolationist, narrow-minded, centralising, nostalgic). As a liberal, I say take your pick.
When looking at political labels, left/right is – figuratively and actually – so last millennium. That’s the serious point underpinning a new website launched today by Liberal Democrat Voice, the leading independent website for those interested in the party. Code-named by us “Project Rank“, it has a very simple aim: to provide an easy way for the public to find out how liberal or authoritarian are the views of their MP according to his or her voting record in parliament.
We have identified ten crunch votes from the last five years – ranging from ID cards and freedom of speech to freedom of information and trial without jury – in order to score all current MPs out of 100: the lower their score the more liberal they are; the higher their score the more authoritarian they are.
The results are revealing. Of the 340 most authoritarian MPs in the House of Commons, 339 are Labour MPs: all score more than 35 out of 100, with 39 Labour MPs ranked as 100% authoritarian. (Lady Hermon, the Ulster Unionist MP for North Down, earns the dubious privilege of being the most authoritarian non-Labour MP). The most authoritarian Conservative MP – perhaps unsurprisingly – is Ann Widdecombe, with a score of 28 out of a possible 100. David Cameron might term himself a “liberal Conservative”, but in reality the honour belongs to Tory MP Richard Shepherd, the only Conservative to score an impeccably liberal score of zero. All Liberal Democrat MPs score lower than 12 out of a possible 100: 22 achieved the perfect zero.
What does such number-crunching mean for the forthcoming election? Well, for a start we hope the site will draw the public’s attention to how their MPs have voted over the past five years. If you hold liberal views look at how your MP has voted, and ask yourself if his or her record justifies your vote.
Does the fact that Labour is, according to their voting record, by far the most authoritarian party represented in the House of Commons mean that the Lib Dems must automatically favour the Tories if the election result is close? No, not necessarily. Commitment to the civil liberties of the British people is enormously important to the Lib Dems, that is true: but freedom is only half of the liberal equation. The other half is fairness, the key message Nick Clegg is stressing as the Lib Dem message in the coming campaign.
That is why I view a vote for the Lib Dems as an important one. Labour cannot be trusted with our freedoms; the Tories cannot be trusted to build a fairer Britain. Only the Lib Dems recognise the fundamental importance of a free and fair Britain, and can act as guarantors for those cosmopolitans who want to vote for a party which shares their values.