Four British MPs Face ‘Theft’ Charges Over Their Expense Claims

Four members of Parliament will face criminal prosecution under the Theft Act.
Four British MPs Face ‘Theft’ Charges Over Their Expense Claims
Medical assistant Elissa Ortivez draws an MMR vaccination at the Spanish Peaks Outreach Clinic on August 5, 2009 in Walsenburg, Colorado. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Simon Veazey
2/7/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/UK-C.jpg" alt="Labor MP for Livingston Jim Devine outside his home on Feb. 5, 2010, in Blackburn, Scotland. Devine is one of four MPs who are facing charges of falsely claiming parliamentary expenses.  (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)" title="Labor MP for Livingston Jim Devine outside his home on Feb. 5, 2010, in Blackburn, Scotland. Devine is one of four MPs who are facing charges of falsely claiming parliamentary expenses.  (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1822774"/></a>
Labor MP for Livingston Jim Devine outside his home on Feb. 5, 2010, in Blackburn, Scotland. Devine is one of four MPs who are facing charges of falsely claiming parliamentary expenses.  (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
LONDON—After a year of revelations about dodgy politician expense claims, British members of Parliament hoped a report on Thursday would draw a line under an episode, which many believe has shattered the public’s faith in elected officials.

But the day after Sir Thomas Legg published his report into expenses, came the announcement that four members of Parliament will face criminal prosecution under the Theft Act.

The possibility that they may try to avoid court through a law designed protect discussions in Parliament from libel has caused a swell of anger from politicians.

The Daily Telegraph dined out almost every day for months on the expenses scandal from May 2009, headlining story after story about the expense claims of MPs, the details of which had been blocked by Parliament from being made public.

Details of the claims—including the now notorious claim of over £1,000 (US$1,560) for a floating duck house and another claim for repairs to a bell tower—caused outcry, and led to various investigations and reports into the entire expenses system and claims of individual MPs.

Initially, some politicians were irreverent about the claims, but as the groundswell of public anger and media attention registered, politicians soon were voluntarily offering to repay expenses which may be deemed excessive—even though they had not broken the rules or been involved in any kind of deception.

Three Labor MPs, Elliot Morley, Jim Devine, and David Chaytor, together with Tory peer Lord Hanningfield are due to appear in court in March.

In a joint statement, the MPs said that they would refute the charges and “defend our position robustly.”

In their statement they said, “We are clearly extremely disappointed that the DPP [Director of Public Prosecution] has decided to instigate proceedings against us.

“We maintain that this is an issue that should be resolved by the parliamentary commissioner who is there to enforce any breach of the rules. Clearly Parliament’s system of expenses is utterly discredited, but we believe there has been a complete inconsistency of approach to different individual cases.”

The DPP said that they were prepared to test any attempt to invoke “parliamentary privilege” in court.

But senior politicians have warned the MPs not to try to use the legislation to derail the case.

Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg said, “I think people will be disgusted that MPs are proposing to use a law from 1689 to avoid facing the consequences for fiddling their expenses in 2010.”

“Parliamentary privilege is there to protect the freedom of speech, not to cover up for corruption,” he told Channel 4 news.

Alan Johnson, the home secretary told the BBC, “The whole point about this dreadful, damaging year is that people want to see MPs treated in the same way as they would had they broken the law. Very few have been thought to have broken the law. They’re entitled to a fair trial. I think the public would be aghast if they thought that there was some special little get out of jail card for parliamentarians.”

The expenses scandal is set to see the biggest exodus of elected officials for generations with over 130 of the country’s 752 MPs already having announced that they will not be running for re-election in the upcoming general election.

An array of reports and recommendations into the expenses system have themselves become embroiled in various complications, controversies, and contradictions.

The report published on Feb. 4 by Sir Thomas Legg concluded that over half of MPs needed to repay expenses totaling over £1 million ($1.7 million). He criticized the system as being “deeply flawed,” blaming a “culture of deference” toward politicians by parliamentary officials which ensured extravagant claims were approved.

The inherent corruption and collusion within the system appears to be the justification for Sir Thomas Legg’s retroactive application of new rules on old expenses—applied to expenses which cleared the existing rules at the time.

This notion of obeying the spirit, not just the letter of the rules, is a theme that has run through the debate on expenses and is the point on which another report clashes with Sir Thomas’s conclusions.

The report by Sir Paul Kennedy, by coincidence published on the same day, says that in some circumstances decisions to retrospectively change the system were “damaging, unfair and wrong.” Sir Kennedy was responsible for handling the appeals of MPs against orders to repay expenses—44 of the 75 appeals were upheld.

Simon Veazey is a UK-based journalist who has reported for The Epoch Times since 2006 on various beats, from in-depth coverage of British and European politics to web-based writing on breaking news.
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