Motes and Beams

Like everyone else, I guess, I have been gobsmacked by the way members of Parliament of all persuasions seem to have been taking the piss with their expenses, going back not weeks, not months, but years with their claims for faux-Tudor beams, foaming moat cleaner, spare tyres for their cat's butler's granny's Aston-Martin, etc etc contd p.94.

Yet, on reflection, I suppose, I have always known - we have always known - that the political class have a featherbedded lifestyle, cushioned from the harsh realities of life, so it shouldn't really come as a huge surprise that, coupled with extremely lax standards of accountability, a certain amount of abuse must have taken place.

But what is staggering is the scale of the problem. As I have said before, I generally deplore chequebook journalism, but you have to say here that, in this instance, the Barclay Brothers’ chequebook has, at least for once in its life, and no doubt to the surprise of any resident moths, been deployed in the public interest. The fact that the owners of the Daily Telegraph, and people such as Rupert Murdoch, probably avoid far larger amounts in tax than the MPs have jizzed out of the taxpayer, is sort of beside the point, for once. As is the assertion that journalists also fiddle their expenses. Yes, we know. But that argument descends quickly to the level of “whataboutery”. So what? Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Anyway, as I was saying – the sheer scale of it. We all know about David Cameron’s mortgage and Jacquie Smith’s bath plugs, for instance, but this current scandal is like putting your hand through a small hole in a wall somewhere in the dark and feeling what you thought was a small tassel on the end of a leathery bell-pull, and then discovering to your horror that you are actually holding an elephant by the tail. You sort of think on the one hand it might be prudent to bow out now and let it go, but on the other hand the sheer impressive bulk of the pachyderm deserves a grudging respect.

Elephants, of course, have their uses. While alive, they can haul timber, or carry Nabobs and Mahouts around the Indian jungle, thus saving the rest of us the trouble. Translated to the elephants’ graveyard, they provide useful umbrella stands and excellent piano keys. I’m not sure if anyone is currently working on a publication called “101 Uses For A Dead MP” but if they are, it’s likely to be a slim volume, up there with the Taliban Joke Book and the Spanish Guide to Donkey Welfare.

Because they are going to get slaughtered. Not literally, of course, this isn’t France, where if a similar scandal came to light, their equivalent of Parliament Square would be crammed with burning lorries, rioting students and CS gas, in roughly equal proportions. No, this is England, where we shrug our shoulders and say “mustn’t grumble”! But slaughtered they will be, electorally speaking. This is the problem with repressed anger, of the sort that is seething below the surface of (it seems) the entire voting population right now. It sometimes manifests itself in strange, perverse, unexpected and frankly, sometimes unjust ways. So, all over the UK, come the local elections, hard –working councillors, who conscientiously go to meetings, actually try and help the people who elected them, juggle a workload that would stun an ox, and claim little or nothing in the way of expenses, will get voted down because of the loons at Westminster, because people want to vent their anger and protest, and that process will of course inevitably benefit the demagogues.

In fact, this is probably what makes me angriest about the whole thing. Instead of saying “sorry” about the money – or at least as well as – and coming out with their cockanamie lame excuses about mistakes, oversights and accountancy not being their strong suit, they should also be apologising for undermining the very fabric of democracy and handing victory to the fascists on a plate. Because undoubtedly the beneficiaries of this fiasco will be the BNP and UKIP. It is very easy for the likes of the BNP to do now, in the UK, what the Nazis did in 1930s Germany. Denounce the existing administration as incompetent and corrupt (check); promise to make things better (check) promise to put British workers first (check – they mean white British workers, of course); promise to make the trains run on time (check – well, the only opposition was Lord Adonis, so that was a slam-dunk); and blame scapegoats (in Hitler’s case it was the Jews, in the BNP’s, it’s the Muslims and immigrants). What fascists never tell you, of course, is that once they’ve made the trains run on time, the terminus is always the death camps.

So what are we going to do with these MPs, eh? Those public-spirited stalwarts, who all agree now, in the celebrated quip by Andy Hamilton, that the system was so rotten and so abhorrent they could scarcely bring themselves to milk it dry? Is it enough just to apologise and pay it back, even in those cases where amnesia seems to have shaded over into actual fraud? [On the subject of paying it back, by the way, I don’t really see the sense of this. The Government will only go and blow it on something frivolous like an extra Eurofighter or Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension. I’d rather they gave the equivalent of the overclaims on second homes back as a donation to Shelter].

Is it enough that, in the most widely telegraphed downfall since King Kong brandished a screaming Fay Wray at the passing Curtis Jennys from the top of the Empire State Building, a charmless and unpopular speaker of the House has been sacrificed in the hope that it will throw us off the scent? No. It isn’t.

In real life, of course, it’s no defence to say I’m sorry, I forgot. But we’ve already established that these people inhabit a different reality to the rest of us. If you forget to tell the DSS about a change in your benefit circumstances for instance, you are likely to find yourself being interviewed under caution, forced to pay it all back, and probably fined and or prosecuted to boot. But MPs live in a different world, and I am not holding my breath for any prosecutions. I am, however, and I remain, incandescent over the double standard. Not so much moats and beams, as motes and beams.

Much has been made of the argument that MPs were given tacit signals that it was OK to fill your boots on this tax-free gravy train of a system, because this in some way compensated for a supposed shortfall between an MP’s “basic” pay and that of the grades of equivalent public servants such as head teachers, civil servants, brain surgeons, etc. If that is the root of the problem, then maybe the solution is as simple as – give them a basic pay rise, but take away their expenses. Apart from legitimate business ones. I’ve no objection to them buying a folder from Rymans, but having your moat treated is taking the piss. Seriously.

In addition, I’d also take away their right to vote on their own pay increases, and give it to an outside body instead, perhaps composed of CIPFA, the Office of National Statistics, and maybe even citizen representatives from say a dozen randomly-typical constituencies throughout the land, on the proviso that these people are not members of any recognised political party.

Furthermore, if they do put in an expense which is disallowed, subsequently, then that should be retrospectively taxed as a benefit in kind. Their claims should also be published, in full, in the public domain, at least annually. Finally, to this I would add (to which I return yet again, like the dog that returneth to its vomit) a residence qualification. If you want to represent the good people of Lower Snodbury in Parliament then you should damn well buy or rent a house in Lower Snodbury and go and live there, and have lived there for a number of years before you are even allowed to stand.

The people who point out this disparity – supposed disparity, I should say – also often use this as a plank to support the argument that unless we pay MPs “what they are worth” you will only get rich people being able to afford to run for Parliament, and those of modest means will be excluded. Well, I would just like to say, here and now, that I think £64,000 is a massive sum of money. It’s three times what I earned last year before tax, and I would jump at the chance of being Ancient Geek, MP. There’s only one thing stopping me standing, which is the £1000 deposit. Get rid of that, or reduce it to a nominal amount, then you might get some people who actually want to make a difference standing for Parliament. People who aren’t just in it for the money. True, by-elections and indeed general elections would suddenly sprout whole lunatic fringes of monster raving loony candidates and people like Wing Commander Boakes, of recent memory, who used to campaign by sitting in a deck chair in the fast lane of the A40!

But to me, you see, that is all part of the rich tapestry of democracy. It keeps the big parties on their toes, and it gives the protest vote somewhere else to go, other than straight into the arms of the fascists!

And, it would send a very loud, very clear message to those present incumbents at Westminster, whose idiocy might even now just have let the Hitler Youth into the Reichstag by the back door, that there is more to the governance of this great little country of ours than just turning up every so often and signing for your expenses.