At least disgraced former MP David Chaytor will be home for Christmas as he faces jail in the New Year after admitting thee charges of falsely accounti
ng his Parliamentary expenses totalling just over £20,000. It carries a sentence of up to seven years, though leniency is expected to be given for his guilty plea.
It’s a sad day for politics, but a good day for justice, and the public needs to see justice is done when cases of dishonesty like this comes before the courts. Anyone who serves the electorate as their MP holds a very privileged position and to betray their trust in this greedy way is shocking. Chaytor is the first Parliamentarian to face trial over his expenses and will be sentenced on 7 January.
The Daily Telegraph described Chaytor as having among the “most controversial” expenses arrangement of all the MPs it had investigated; he had claimed five different properties were his “second home” since 2004. He was even said to have drawn up a tenancy agreement using his daughter’s first and middle names. Yet the Labour’s MP for Bury North initially claimed it was an accounting error – and his attempt to escape police prosecution by claiming Parliamentary privilege quite rightly failed; this protects MPs from legal action arising from events in Parliament.
As countless decent families struggle to make ends meet and fear for their jobs, this court case will only remind many of the contempt they feel for politicians. The long road to rebuilding public trust in MPs still has many miles to go, but I assure you they do work extremely long hours and are passionate about their work; a few bad apples should not sully them all.
They never seem to learn.
Frankly I don’t think MPs are paid enough. I’m being serious. £60k is not big money nowadays. They know it too and that’s why they feel no guilty conscience in bending the rules to bump their money up.
The real scandal is that they are about to saddle £43k earners with super tax and strip them of benefits.
A £43k earner cannot hope to buy a house in London. Nor can they afford to put their kids through university.
>Frankly I don’t think MPs are paid enough. I’m being serious. £60k is not big money nowadays. They know it too and that’s why they feel no guilty conscience in bending the rules to bump their money up.
Sigh. Here we go again!
65k puts MPs in roughly the top 7% of wage earners in the country, before niceties such as a £20k subsidy for a London pad, a still-golden pension scheme, (from memory) up to 9 months of salary payoff when they leave Parliament, travel for dependents, lifetime access to the Parliamentary estate as retired MPs should they want it, and other stuff.
Do tell why that is not enough.
I’m amazed at how the public has been duped by these prosecutions. There are many, many other examples of MPs who should have been prosecuted and somehow seem to have been ‘overlooked’. These four people are just unlucky to be the ones singled out.
Good to see my Norfolk MP Keith Simpson at the top of the list for claiming since the election. £21,000. Makes you proud doesn’t it?
Nothing has really changed of course.
Steve, I was wondering the same re prosecutions, and assume that the worst cases are being prosecuted. I agree with Kevin that MPs should be paid more, and I would certainly expect that Keith Simpson’s expenses have met the new guidelines. I believe there have been changes, but there will always be a need for expenses, and that these are now transparent for public scrutiny so you can question your MP about any of them if you have concerns.
Matt, it depends what value you put on the work they do. MPs work around 80 hours a week – double the average working week.