MPs Screwing The Taxpayer Awards 2009
Dear readers,
Welcome to the second annual award ceremony that rewards those MPs who have made a point of screwing the taxpayer over the last 12 months. Last year the Labour Party were run-away victors on the day, claiming eight out of the nine awards with only the SNP denying them a full sweep. Could Labour repeat such an astonishing achievement again this year? Let’s find out!
Accommodation allowance (’second homes’) – in this category, MPs can claim for their mortgage, refurbishments, sofas, chairs, tables, beds, crockery, cutlery, telephones, televisions, decoration, insurance, cleaning, council tax, service charges, all utility bills and legal expenses associated with buying a home (including stamp duty). MPs can also claim an additional £25 for every night that they stay away from their main residence on ‘parliamentary business’. The winner in this category is…. well, actually we have 143 joint winners who each claimed the maximum £23,083 last year. A special mention must go to Bob Blizzard (Lab), John Greenway (Con), Eleanor Laing (Con) and Angus Robertson (SNP) who all claimed £1 less than the maximum, thereby dropping themselves 143 places lower on the list of most extragavant spenders! TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £11,726,078
Office and staff costs - this is intended to ”provide for facilities, equipment, supplies and services for Members and their staff.” That said, members can also claim for petty cash up to £50 a month without producing receipts. MPs can even claim for “recruitment expenses” if they’re too lazy to employ their own staff and can commission other people to do some work whenever they want. It also covers the “provision of staff to help you perform …parliamentary duties” plus making “additional pension contributions” to staff and they can even use it to pay “contributions to private healthcare schemes”. If an MP acts illegally when it comes to a dispute with an employee, the taxpayer will cover “settlements made at tribunals and court hearings” out of this allowance and if they really like an employee they can give them a bonus of up to 15% of their salary. The winner of this award is…. Bob Neil from the Conservative Party! Congratulations to Bob for becoming the first ever Conservative award winner. His total of £119,185 (£17,130 for his office and £102,055 on staff) was about £1,500 more than any other MP, although Labour still proudly claimed 34 out of the top 50 most expensive MPs offices. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £66,877,327
Car travel – the 2007/08 mileage rate was 40p per mile for the first 10,000 miles and 25p per mile over 10,000. The clear winner in the category for the MP who blew the most taxpayers’ money on driving a car goes to… Janet Anderson from the Labour Party! Well done to Janet who held onto her crown from last year as she racked up expenses claims of £11,996 for mileage, over £1,600 more than any other MP. Labour have 29 out of the top 50 most profligate MP drivers while the Conservatives have 15. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £1,928,714
Rail travel – MPs can claim for “reasonable travel and associated costs” by rail but “there is no restriction on the class of travel for Members” and “season tickets may be purchased for allowable journeys if Members are satisfied that value for money is being achieved”. Pah. Anyway, the winner of the award for the MP who spent the most taxpayers’ money on rail journeys goes to… Helen Goodman from the Labour Party! She accrued a bill of £16,617 on train tickets in one year, about £600 more than any other MP. Labour can boast 44 out of the top 50 most well-travelled MPs on our railways. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £2,367,995
Air travel – again, no restriction on the class of travel for air fares. The winner of this category is…. Angus MacNeil from the SNP! He spent £28,137 on flights in one year, £2,000 more than any of his competitors. Only one Conservative made it into the top 50 in this category, while Labour had 27, the DU had 8 as did the Lib Dems and the SNP had 4. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £908,737
Staff travel – in terms of the MP who spent the most on their staff running around the country, the winner is…. Mohammad Sarwar from the Labour Party! Congratulations to Mohammad who takes this title for the second year. His staff cost the taxpayer £4,858, which is over £300 more than last year. Labour hold 35 of the top 50 positions in this category. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £301,575
Family travel – this is a new category. The rules are that spouses and civil partners are entitled to up to 30 single journeys each year between London and the constituency or an MP’s main home and MPs’ children can also claim 30 single journeys every year back and forth to London, irrespective of whether they actually see a single MP during their trip – all paid for by us. The winner of this new category is… Charles Kennedy from the Lib Dems! Well done Charles for not completely abandoning your commitment to screwing serving this country. He spent £11,276 of our money on shipping his family up and down the country, £1,500 more than any other MP. A special mention also goes to Alistair Darling who came second with £9,674 and Gordon Brown who came sixth with £6,282. Wait a minute, don’t Alistair and Gordon live on Downing Street?…. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £461,067
Stationery and postage - After Siobhain McDonagh of the Labour Party racked up a bill of £13,900 on stationery and then spent an extra £35,207 of taxpayers’ money on posting letters, there was a mini-crackdown on this expense. A new maximum of £7,000 was set, and the winner of this award is… David Drew from the Labour Party! David was the only MP to spend the maximum, and Labour can boast 18 of the top 20 big spenders on stationery and postage. In fact, the first non-Labour MP in the list is in 18th position. His name? David Cameron. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £2,261,079
IT - fairly self-explanatory, as MPs can spend our money on buying themselves new IT equipment. The winner of the award for the MP who spent the most on IT services goes to… Liam Byrne of the Labour Party! He managed to hold onto his title by blowing £2,721 on IT last year, almost £200 more than he spent last year and over £800 more than any of his competitors. Labour have 35 of the top 50 IT spenders. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £773,438
Staff cover and other costs – the winner of this award is… Tony Blair of the Labour Party! He spent £35,022 of our taxes in this category, which was £16,000 more than anyone else. Many people don’t realise that Blair still has his own dedicated office and staff funded by taxpayers, even though he is no longer remotely relevant to British politics. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £419,433
Communications allowance – this new award covers “regular reports and constituency newsletters, questionnaires and surveys, petitions, targeted communications, contact cards, distribution costs including direct mailing and postage, websites and some capital purchases”. The allowance is only £10,000 a year but funds can be transferred from other expenses categories to beef it up. The winner of the communications allowance award is… Michael Spicer from the Conservatives! He spent £21,857 under this heading, about £500 more than any other MP. Interestingly, the Conservatives have 23 of the top 50 spenders on communications, which suggests that the fight is definitely on at a local level. TOTAL COST TO TAXPAYER: £4,723,850
Total expenses – the winner (by some distance) of the award for the MP who screwed the taxpayer out of the most money over the past 12 months is… Eric Joyce from the Labour Party! He cost you and me £222,445 in a single year, which was £13,000 more than any other MP in the entire country. Labour can happily lay claim to having 34 of the top 50 most expensive MPs while the Conservatives have to settle for just three MPs in the top 50. GRAND TOTAL OF MP EXPENSES IN 2007/2008: £92,749,293
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today on this momentus expose of how much our MPs really cost us every year. I hope you enjoyed the show without bursting any blood vessels or having breathing difficulties. Well done to the Labour Party for yet again demonstrating, just like last year, that ‘value for money’ is simply not in their vocabulary.
A.Tory
For more investigations into expenses, you can read my posts on:
What your MP is allowed to claim for, laid out in all its glory
Witanagemot Blogs
The fightback seems to have begun – three columnists in the ‘Guardian’ (the latest getting an almighty kicking in the comments is the egregious Polly Toynbee) and David Aaronovitch in the ‘Times’ have published ’so what?’ articles on this.
They really, really don’t like it up ‘em, do they….?
Dear LAFT. One would not expect ” value for money” to be in a socialist’s vocabulary. Prudent stewardship of other peoples money, (OPM) is not a socialist core value. 12 years of “Pebble-dash” economics, where OPM is thrown at a problem in the quixotic hope that some of it might stick, (CSA, NHS IT, nationalising the Banks, ID cards, ad nauseum), has repeatedly proven that socialist theory and idealism cannot grasp the concept.
Well,I for one am sickened.Pigs in a trough is a bit too polite for them.No shame,no morals,nothing but pure greed.Each should be made to stand outside parliament with a sandwich board listing their expenses and cost to us.
I would love to see each mp interviewed on television in front of the nation by a competant non biased interviewer,so that is the bbc out.Never has the nation been so disgusted by its so called leaders.
Now wait for the new attempts to hide mps expenses from harman the hypocrite.
I think to cite Angus MacNeil for the cost of air travel is somewhat unfair. If he, like Alastair Carmichael from Orkney and Shetland, is to serve his constituents as an MP, he has little option but to fly south and to get around the constituency. Using land and sea would take an inordinate amount of time to travel and with both rail and ferry fares would be little cheaper.
I read that letter and wonder what on Earth is wrong with us British. If that was France at any point over the last 250 years, there’d be a revolution and those theives would be swinging from lamp-posts. What do we do? Angrilly make a cup of tea and tut into our newspapers? Is it only me that finds that a bit odd since we share quite a lot with the French (well, the Normans…)?
I just don’t understand the need for expenses in the first place – it seems like a clinging relic from the days when MPs were voluntary and didn’t receive a wage. Now they have quite a favourable wage and yet double it with expenses! The sad truth is this will never go away unless there is a very unBritish revolution (as shaun mentions) as the people benefitting from this are the people deciding whether it stays. It’s almost as comical as allowing people on benefits to vote!
And as for the the distant constituencies – surely with modern technology they could set up video conferencing and an online vote system! That would stop that old boy’s club paper shouting nonsense of the Commons!
I know how you feel DMC.
Richard, obviously his travel expenses are likely to be high, but as far as I’m concerned it just makes the case for Scottish MPs not voting on English laws even stronger.
Shaun, maybe hanging them from lampposts would contravene health and safety laws, leading the police to beat the **** out of you (while preventing you from taking photographs of the incident).
Candid, I don’t mind things like REASONABLE travel expenses and paying for REASONABLE office costs, but even a cursory glance at the figures shows that this is a million miles away from what actually happens.
@ Richard T:
Not really wishing to support the SNP in any way, but I thought the same on this.
This isn’t sensible. Of course an MP from Scotland pays the most in airfares while the DU are up there as well. MP’s SHOULD spend money on staff and offices to help them. As for IT, well £2200 is a new laptop and a desk pc. Let’s concentrate on the abuses. there are enough of those without muddying the waters with genuine expenses.
I wrote my above comment before LFAT’s 9:26 post. On the Scottish MPs voting on English laws business, I’m not at all sure about that in any case, but an advocate of Scottish independence can hardly be criticised on that front. Votes for UK-wide and English-only laws are mixed up, so it can’t presently affect this MP’s travel costs. I would also note that the DUP have similair travel issues.
Nice to see Tony Blair stepping up for a bow! How on earth did that happen?
[...] of a Tweet from a very annoyed Martyn Shiner, I discover over at Letters from a Tory: Stationery and postage – After Siobhain McDonagh of the Labour Party racked up a bill of £13,900 [...]
What could inject some reasonableness would be if, after submitting their expenses, MPs were trussed up and hung like a pinata from the ceiling. Aggreived constituents could then take one swing at them with a
baseball batgolf club for every £100 they claim. I suspect that would spell the end of 5-digit claims in short order…Why would anyone claim £1 less than the maximum?? Could it be a typo?
@ABC: faux modesty of course: I’m not greedy, I claimed 100 of Her Majesty’s pennies less than the limit!
ABC, there were a lot of MPs who claimed just below the maximum for that particular expense. I’m leaning towards cheekiness rather than incompetence as my preferred explanation but feel free to disagree!
Shaun, although your example provides some rather bizarre mental images, your point about the lack of incentive to keep costs down is a good one. If MPs were given a block grant out of which they had to pay all their expenses, I think you’ll find a significant drop off in first-class air fares, staff bonuses, private healthcare and many other categories.
Mike, I take your point about IT but MPs do not have to provide any evidence that their current equipment is either not working or needs updating. Why should the taxpayer pay for a brand spanking new PC and laptop when the old ones worked fine?
IRJ, the DUP obviously have a similar situation to some SNP members. The Scottish public don’t appear to support independence judging by the polling on this issue but that doesn’t detract from the needless waste of money shipping Scottish MPs back and forth to vote on laws that do not concern them even if full independence is not on the agenda. Some straightforward planning of the Parliamentary schedule would sort out the current nonsense.
Great analysis LFAT. Spot on as usual.
“What do we do? Angrilly make a cup of tea and tut into our newspapers? “
Or our blogs…
“Why should the taxpayer pay for a brand spanking new PC and laptop when the old ones worked fine?”
We’ll see if the Cornflicker virus wipes out a load of them – if so, maybe getting them to chuck a PC every week or two is a *sensilble* security measure!
LFAT – I’m wondering if it would be right to allow incumbent MPs to add the *value* of their term’s expenses underspend to their electoral expense threshold? Obviously this will favour incumbents, but probably not significantly more than using your communications budget to spam the locals… By tying their spending to the one thing they do all definitely, definitely care about (keeping their job), it *should* work. The incumbency thing worries me a bit, tho…
Julia, I think you and I both use our blogs to get certain things off our chest, including rage, frustration, anger, loathing….
LFAT, I would suggest allowing them to rollver a percentage of any underspend to the following year rather than helping the incumbent build a bigger fortress.
While it rankles that scottish mps vote on English matters,why can’t they vote by pc save flying down,after all they don’t stint themselves with them.
Pity the public can not appoint our own watchdogs to do spot checks on them.Not one of their own toadies but independant ones not accountable to them.
I can’t see what all the fuss is about.
If you want upstanding honourables members of the community to serve you in your best interests, then it is necessary that they are to have Villeroy and Boch gold plated Lalique bathroom taps.
I mean, its just common sense.
[...] MPs Screwing The Taxpayer Awards 2009 [...]
Just noticed the irony of the YouGov advert at the bottom of this post – sounds like it’s referring to our estemed Memebers of Parliament *chuckle chuckle*.
gold plated Lalique bathroom taps
Peasant.
Even Saddam had solid gold bathroom fittings.
Five Surgeons are discussing the types of people they like to operate on.
The first surgeon says: I like to see accountants on my operating Table
because when I open them up, everything inside is numbered.
The second responds: ‘Yeah, but you should try Electricians!
Everything inside them is colour-coded.
The third surgeon says: ‘No, I really think librarians are the best;
Everything inside them is in alphabetical order.
The fourth surgeon chimes in: ‘You know, I like construction Workers…….
those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over.
But the fifth surgeon shut them all up when he observed:
‘You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on.
There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains and no spine. Plus, the head and the ass are interchangeable
@ Shaun Pilkington:
Everything in moderation.
You should see Dawn Butler’s boudoir. Very heavy Arabian Knights theme going on in there.
That’s why I don’t feature in the top 50.
Keep out of the limelight, that’s the Quango way.
Nice one, Chunters.
Bill, I don’t need mental images like that as I come off my lunch break, thank you very much. I know you get subsidised food and a three day week but the rest of us have to focus on work once in a while.
There are no direct flights from London to the Western Isles which will explain Angus MacNeil’s figures. It would require a flight to Glasgow and then a connecting flight to the Western Isles. Often those to the Western Isles can be as much as the London-Glasgow flight.
The DUP would just have to take a shuttle flight to Northern Ireland and then drive.
[...] Posted in Angrystuff, Arse Biting, FUCK OFF, Funnystuff, Genius, Gordo, Ickle Piggies, WTF! at 7:55 pm by mummylonglegs Via DK I came across this wonderful Nugget at Letters from a Tory. [...]
Thank you for bringing a little humour to this serious subject; all joking apart though, these awards show just how far the gulf is between what our politicians think is acceptable, and what we think is acceptable.
It’s time to change the way things work in Westminster!
Hmm… £220,000 here, £120,000 there… it’s still a far cry from some of the executive pay we’re told is necessary to secure the kind of business appointees who’ve made such a success of the international economy. It’s peanuts, isn’t it? And you don’t distinguish between those who spent it on legitimate parliamentary work and those who milk the system. The real issue isn’t what they pocket, but what they do in return. One imbecilic war and an unpopular regressive tax hike – both from not examining what was put in front of them – suggest that most don’t do enough. It’s the lackadaisical lobby-fodder who need naming & shaming, not merely those who may give a proper return at higher cost.
Blair’s fair game, though.