yonmei

yonmei @ 09:34 am: MPs expenses
I just looked up the expenses claims for my MP, for 2004-2008, and pretty much (a) I don't think he has anything to worry about (b) Whatever my feelings about the expenses claims system*, the claims he turned in look like he was operating within the rules: he claimed for his second home in London, including the TV licence, the utilities, a cleaner, and various undetailed claims for repairs and decoration (that I think add up to less than £2K over a 4 year period, but no single item looks outright unreasonable: plus there's a "legal fees" expense claim which he already paid back part of), he claimed for a laptop computer (paying the going rate for a decent model), he buys all the local magazines/newspapers and has an account with a Stockbridge newsagent that looks like all the national newspapers - and he routinely claimed between £10 and £40 a month for food**. (Which suggests to me that he claimed for tea/coffee when meeting with constituents - which if so, seems absolutely reasonable.)

Certainly what he claimed could all readily be justified under the incredibly vague rule of "I confirm that I incurred these costs wholly, exclusively and necessarily to enable me to stay overnight away from my only or main home for the purpose of performing my duties as a Member of Parliament". The problem here is the vagueness of it - most companies, when you claim for travel expenses, have very detailed and pretty stringent rules about what you can claim and what you can't.

When staying in a hotel on Compaq expenses, I found - looking up the rules - that Compaq regarded it as reasonable that I should have wine (or beer/cider) with my evening meal, plus an aperitif if I wanted one, but had a given limit - expressed as a percentage of the total cost of the meal - on the cost of the wine/aperitif. I remember as well that they were clear about travel expenses: if Compaq were paying for a transatlantic flight, they'd pay for their employee to travel business class: if employee wanted spouse to go with (same-sex partners not mentioned, but this was 1999) then they could switch their tickets to tourist class and both travel tourist on Compaq, if that cost the same as a business-class ticket: if it cost more, the couple paid the extra, unless the trip was going to last more than x weeks, in which case see spouse travelling allowance. I read through the rules the first time I stayed in France on expenses: I looked things up whenever I had a query: and discovered, when I was staying with a couple of friends in London to attend a course Compaq were paying for, that because I was saving Compaq the expense of a daily ticket to London at peak time, I could take my hosts out for a meal and charge it to expenses, limit being up to the amount I was saving Compaq. I never had any trouble working out what I could claim for and what I couldn't: the chief trouble with the expenses was always getting the receipts back to admin in time to have them paid before the credit card bill came due, because while you could claim for interest due on unpaid expenses as an additional expense, it was (we all agreed) just adding an extra layer of complication.

*Complicated. It's certainly been used as a salary top-up. And it's not as if MPs are underpaid: a backbench MP gets £64,766. I feel that if taxpayers are paying all the damn expenses of a second home in London, when it's sold the money should go back to the state, or the flat should fall into the possession of Parliament (and could then be rented out to future MPs) but: he was claiming, from the expenses sheets, for the basic running costs.

**Alex Salmond, First Minister for Scotland and extremely-part time MP for Banff and Buchan, claims his food expenses each month are frequently as much as £400 - up to £400, MPs don't have to show receipts or justify it in any way, just write £400 on the form and get the cheque. Meh.