Nov 04 2009
Sign up to Kelly
The insiders at Westminster all say the same thing. MPs have to sign up to Kelly.
In practise it doesn’t matter whether MPs like or loathe Kelly. The government has legislated to take all this out of MPs hands. Kelly reports. The IPSA (Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority) is assembled in the next few months. IPSA then considers Kelly’s conclusions. If IPSA approves, they become the new rules. If IPSA disagrees, it can vary the conclusions. This is unlikely to be achieved before the end of this Parliament, as IPSA has not yet recruited most of its staff.
This Parliament has little authority, and thanks to the government has made sure it has even less by deciding it is not even competent enough to put in its own sensible value for money scheme for MPs expenses. The leaks from Kelly imply some savings by ruling some MPs out from claiming second home costs altogether, but this will be offset by many others being made to claim rent instead of mortgage costs where rental is likely to be dearer.
What the country needs is a cheaper scheme. Time will tell how successful this one proves. Time will also tell whether the officials when recruited at IPSA share Kelly’s certainties about allowable expenses, and his wish to sack all relatives currently employed in Parliament. As someone who does not employ a relative, I think a blanket rule against all such existing contracts may be unenforceable given current employment law.
18 Responses to “Sign up to Kelly”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Viewed an interesting Report on TV last night about the Sweedish system for their Mps.
No one needs to purchase a second home as all are provided with state owned apartments (very simple and basic rooms) within a few minutes walk of their government buildings (note no expenses for travelling).
Their MPs are all provided with an office within walking distance of their Government buildings, all such offices, staff and the running costs are under the direct control of government/civil service, and paid by Government directly. Not by individual Mps.
Expenses are miniscule compared with those in the Uk, and are subject to complete transparency and publication, ALL earnings investments and the like, outside of MPs salaries are published.
This sounds like the system many of us bloggers were suggesting was sensible last year.
Cannot understand what the problem is in the UK, apply similar to the above with exactly the same tax allowances as everyone else gets in the UK.
Subsidising MPs House purchases, first, second, or third is a bloody nonesense.
Why can the majority wake up and smell the bacon.
The gravy train has to end.
OOps
Why cannot the majority wake up and smell the bacon.
Adding another quango to oversee MPs expenses is inevitable from a Labour government, but it’s hard not to think that they’ve given it over to Labour party supporters.
Sooner or later the law of unexpected consequences is going to start to have an effect.
I don’t mind family members being given proper jobs, as long as it is arranged through the organisation that sorts out administration in Westminster. They can then do all the annual assessments to prove that the staff member is there for a good reason, and remove them if not. The trick is to stop this from being an illegitimate means of taking more money from the tax payer.
Banning claims for the purchase of second homes is more about the “flipping” scandal. Whether it saves money is almost a secondary issue. What we expect is for MPs to behave in the same way that they legislate for ordinary members of the public, including collecting receipts for absolutely everything they claim for.
It tells us a great deal about Parliament and those who purport to make our laws and govern us that they cannot be trusted to devise and administer a scheme for MPs’ expenses. Perhaps that is why so many of our law making powers have been handed over to an anti-democratic EU.
“… but this will be offset by many others being made to claim rent instead of mortgage costs where rental is likely to be dearer.”
This is a silly argument.
It may well be true today, while the government is holding rates down, but it is unlikely to be true in the near future when the Tories will start hiking rates to try and suck back in some of the excess money Gordon is printing.
Far more to the point, the difference between rent and interest is a drop in the bucket in the context of the national accounts. What is far more important is that the current system gives MPs a strong motivation to go along with the horribly damaging permanent property boom mentality.
If they are only getting rent paid and have no direct financial stake in their taxpayer funded property, their motivations will be closer to the rest of us.
Which would be nice …
I’ll do the job for a very moderate sum squire, work from home, recruit a couple of occasionals from the local agency, nice simple scheme, out source dodgy ones to the Met’, lots of experience, and always reckoned to know a bad one when I saw it. Can I tender on a competitive basis?
My view on the employment law aspect (I speak as a solicitor practising in this area) is that if new legislation prohibited the employment of family members, it would provide a virtually unanswerable defence to any unfair dismissal claim under the “illegality” head, just as it would be illegal to employ a chauffeur who had just lost his driving licence. Of course there would be separate issues for the chauffeur if he could argue that there was alternative employment he could have been offered.
The better point here, over and above the fact that genuine hard working family members would be tarred with the same brush as fraudsters, is probably the retrospective nature of any new enactment. Better to let both present and future employment of family members be properly scrutinised for approval rather than impose a blanket ban?
Reply: The plan is to introduce rules, not legislation.
[...] Evangelist Redwood seems to concord with Mr Carolingian Flint. On his blog he says: Time module also verify whether the officials when recruited at IPSA deal Kelly’s [...]
Why not replace the 626 MPs with out of work actors and pay them say £10 hour with no expeses. The actors would be happier grandstanding in grand surroundings than working behind a bar or waiting at table.
The real Government in Brussels could carry on as normal, nobody would notice, and the country would save a fortune.
And you Mr R. could go back to creating wealth for the county.
Some times the best plans are the simplist.
Parliamentary sovereignty is dead, long live the quango state (including the EU Commission).
As others have already said cost of rent vs mortgage is neither here nor there. People don’t care if it costs £1million p.a. vs £1million + £10k p.a. for an MP to attend parliament (bearing in mind security, upkeep of HoC, HoC staff, etc.) but that MP’s were buying a home, designating it as a second home, redecorating and having mortgage with the taxpayers shilling then two years later redesignating it as a main home, selling it and trousering all the profit. Anyway, that’s by-the-by everything that can be said about expenses has been thousands of times over.
As for the family member rule – why not introduce guidelines (or rules if you prefer that word) that are not legally binding but that spells out in black and white ‘no family members to be employed’ and have MP’s publish a list of their employees. Of course, some MP’s may just stick two fingers up at the public (although it would be foolhardy after the furore over expenses) and do it anyway but surely it’s better that whole of parliament sticking up two fingers and not even trying to assuage the publics concerns over this?
After all, don’t special rules apply to MP’s anyway in some cases, like expenses not being a benefit in kind as far as the taxman goes? Seems that when the laws bend in favour of MP’s exceptions can be made but when it’s the other way round it’s an insurmountable problem?
An expensive sledgehammer to crack a nut – what a surprise!
Here’s a cheap way:
1. Make a (short) list of allowable expenses.
2. ALL expenses to be covered by receipt.
3. Publish all expenses for each MP on the internet.
4. End
5. Cost – one typist to enter the details. Perhaps an unemployed MP’s wife.
This would be self-policing. Constituents/reporters would scour the resulting information for anyone stepping outside the (spirit of the) rules.
Steve
Country not county
Allow me to remind you:
We have had years and years of being lectured about our disgusting habits – smoking, foxhunting, being fat, getting drunk, not caring about the disadvantaged, being racist, not liking immigration, being homophobic, not liking living with people of entirely different cultures, not caring about the poor and being so utterly hopeless at life that we needed to be controlled by our MPs who are, apparently, our Salvation.
Then we find out that these very MPs swindled their expenses in a way that would have got any of us sacked. They, in other words, have feet of clay too.
We couldn’t give a damn about employment of wives etc: lots of us do that too.
What we despise is the way that MPs cannot appreciate how utterly corrupt they look as they walk away from their stinking little swindles entirely unscathed.
Just like their bosses and superiors in the EU.
Why can’t we just have honest MPs?
Yes, while you all went along with his no boom and bust nonsense, worrying about what the media might think, none of you gambled he might steal your pensions and livihoods too!
First he came for the politicians …
StevenL
Yup, never thought about it like that
[...] John Redwood seems to agree with Mr Caroline Flint. On his blog he says: Time will also tell whether the officials when recruited at Ipsa share Kelly’s [...]