Brown washes his hands of the Jacqui Smith situation

teledu

From the Guido Fawkes blog:-
"...Note that the anger MPs are feeling about the expenses revelations is directed not at those MPs who are abusing the system and bringing them all into disrepute, but at those who are exposing them. Labour MPs are convinced there is a “Tory mole”* in the fees office, others think that digitised versions of their soon to be released receipts are being shopped around the papers. MPs are after blood - the blood of the whistle blowers rather than the blood of those robbing the public."

Death or Tory

Our 'kebab-hipped' Home Secretary is now mortally wounded, however long she stumbles-on in post.

Odd that it's not her major rip-off of the Taxpayer through the dodgy second home allowance claim that will finish her, but a couple of pornographic movies rented by her loathsome husband.

It's always the little things that get them in the end...

Sally Chatterjee

Smith can't claim "I didn't break any rules" as a defence because she is Home Secretary. Her very job is to exercise judgement, to demonstrate knowledge of justice and reason. Mere compliance of the rules is not enough.

Whether it's the pornography, the bathplug, the two washing machines or the mortgage, it's clear to me that she has no ability to see beyond petty rules. This proves she's not ministerial material and Brown should know this, not support her.

A resignation is due.

David Ossitt

An immediate pay cut of 10%, together with the full disclosure of all expenses now (Why for heavens sake are they draging their heels.

This to be followed a committee of three, "I would suggest Vince Cable, Ian Duncan Smith with Frank Field in the chair".

These three to clean out the whole sorry mess and come back within four weeks with their new proposals, these must be passed without a vote.

Meanwhile MP's could have that four weeks as an amnesty, in order to put a stop to all of this, anything dodgy after the four weeks, they should be permanently banned from the House of Commons.

Enough is enough!

The only

Rob Atkins

Keep them all in post till the General Election - then they can all go down together as New Labour sinks without trace for a generation ...

Rhoda Klapp

Pete, you must meet these people. Do they really not understand the mood of the nation? Do they really not know right from wrong?

Lady Windermere's Van

David -

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/MPs-Salaries-To-Rise-By-233-From-April/Article/200903415251916?lpos=Home_Carousel_Region_3&lid=ARTICLE_15251916_MPs_Salaries_To_Rise_By_2.33%25_From_April

C Powell

"Quite simply, the system needs to be made more transparent and less open to claims of the extraordinary kind."

No: the allowance system needs to be abolished. MPs earn 3 times the national average wage. They don't need any sort of pay increase, especially not at this time. They should get no allowances but simply reimbursement for those expenses which are solely due to their work as MPs and would be allowed under Inland Revenue rules. So no claim for a second home: if MPs do not live within commuting distance of London they only get the expense of staying overnight in London with a cap so they don't stay at the Savoy. They get the cost of a constituency office and the necessary admin but nothing else. No travel expenses (if I choose to live a long way from work I don't expect my employer or the taxpayer to fund me) or ludicrous claims for TV channels, pergolas, bath plugs etc etc. And expenses are only paid if there are receipts with all receipts published in full every quarter. Any "mistake" should be punished as fraud, because this is what is going on at the moment, an utter fraud on the taxpayer by people who seem unable to understand the depths of people's anger and disgust at the political class.

If MPs cannot or refuse tot understand that we expect them to live decently and honestly then they will have to be made to understand.

Pete Hoskin

Rhoda: a worrying amount of the MPs I speak to seem oblivious to it all...

Verity

Sally Chatterji, She can't exercise judgement. The woman's a raving loony. She banned a respectable, high profile MP from another (rather sane and stable) EU country because he was about to annoy Milord Ahmad ("Ahmad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more! I'm going to call in 10,000 Muslims to surround the Palace of Westminster!") by showing his perfectly legal film exposing aspects of the Q'ran, in the House of Lords. By invitation of one of the Lords.

Jacqui Smith - and why do we have to have all these bloody familiar names in the Labour Party? Tony Blair, Jacqui Smith, Ed Balls blah blah blah. Don't any of them have grown-up names?) chose to defend those who wish to kill off freedom of speech and free debate in Britain.

Gordon Brown should sack her. And make her give back the £500 stone sink she bought with taxpayer-earned money for her "second home".

Max Kaye

It used to be said that Labour's scandals involved money; while the Tory weakness was sex.

New Labour has indeed found a 'third way' by combining the worst of both.

Rhoda Klapp

Rob Atkins, I'm sorry it will not do. These people are on a gravy train for life. They should be punished by having their pensions taken, and by immediate dismissal from the House, and from public life. Then maybe it will encourage the others, or keep them honest.

Wily Trout

Standard nuLab fare - remember when Prescott punched a member of the public and Blair just said: "John's John"? Must be Public Response No. 97 in the Campbell Book of The Grid.

Rhoda Klapp

Pete, that's what I thought. There is a massive disconnect. Those in the bubble are in denial of the mood of the country. And I don't just mean the MPs, I include large parts of the media, especially the BBC.

If you (or any Coffee Houser who wants to weigh in) wanted to fix this problem, what would you do?

richardj

Surely the point is the taxpayer is paying the husband £40,000 year to assist "Ms Smith" and the husband, aided with the MP's signature in getting films (porn or otherwise)to watch at home at the taxpayer's expense - hardly the business of an assistant to a MP let alone a senior minister (don't laugh).

Verity

Well, she's meeting with the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, today. He's a brain box. Three degrees, one of them a Masters in Government from Harvard. I wonder what they'll have to talk about.

MartinW

I suppose onr is entitled to ask when those dirty films were purchased, and did the Home Secretary watch them too?

JONNY

I especially like the Mirror's take on it...
'Jacqui Smith went ballistic when she found out her husband had been watching porn movies at their home'
Nice bit of spin this - turning her in one twice from perpetrator into victim. With a clever touch of the vengeful Medeas.
A heroine from a Fay Weldon novel, with whom every decent modern can identify.

Alfred T Mahan

Pete, your response to Rhoda Klapp above goes to the heart of all this. In itself, a minister's husband charging say £20 to her 'office' account (almost certainly without her realising what he was doing) is not exactly important. It's given us all a good laugh at his and his wife's expense because it's pornography, but its real significance is that it symbolises yet again how the political class are on a different planet.

We have career politicians and as such they are really no more than an arm of the executive. They have forgotten the importance of the separation of powers, and they have forgotten that they are there to speak for the common people of Britain against the power of the state as part of a system of checks and balances. The well-meaning but deluded belief that the state can cure society's ills no doubt accounts for part of this as there is no longer the visceral dislike of government among MPs such as the permanent backbenchers that previous generations would have recognised. Now half the governing party is a minister, with a minister's perks and salary, so they're effectively bought.

I think we have to find a way of destroying politics as a career again for the bulk of our representatives. Limiting the number of MPs with ministerial jobs might be an option; so might limiting MPs to, say, two periods in office. But I have no idea at all how you get the turkey MPs themselves to vote for Christmas.

JONNY

I especially like the Mirror's take on it...
'Jacqui Smith went ballistic when she found out her husband had been watching porn movies at their home'
Nice bit of spin this - turning her in one twice from perpetrator into victim. With a clever touch of the vengeful Medeas.
A heroine from a Fay Weldon novel, with whom every decent modern can identify.

John Thomas

Rhoda - you ask: "Do they really not know right from wrong?" - You misunderstand - they don't believe in the existence of these things, let alone the distinction ("How old fashioned! How uncool! Soon you'll sound like one of those awful Christian fundys! We're beyond all that!") How ever could they promote the abortion industry - with a greater head-count than Hitler+Stalin - without being "values free" people in a "values free" government.

Hawkeye

I cannot believe that Brown is daft enough to hang on to Smith.

Oh well, on the bright side, she will provide plenty of entertainment whilst trashing Labour's remaining reputation.

With a bit of luck her legacy with be a more complete destruction of the Labour party than was happening otherwise.

Hawkeye

Rhoda Klapp said: "If you (or any Coffee Houser who wants to weigh in) wanted to fix this problem, what would you do?"

I would stop the allowances. If MPs don't like it they can quit and get a job in the real world like the rest of us.

John Page

The presumption should be that an MP's main home is in their constituency.

If that is too far away for them to commute like ordinary mortals, they can be put up in flats owned by the state. They will be lodgers, but they will pay for their own food.

Thus

* Ms Smith's main home would be in Redditch. In London, use the grace and favour apartment or stay elsewhere at your own expense.
* Harry Cohen's would be in Leyton. No flat, he can easily commute.
* Jacqui Lait's main home for parliamentary purposes would be in Beckenham. No flat, she too can easily commute.
* Bob Neill's main home would be in Bromley/Chislehurst. No flat, he too can easily commute.

The MPs' outlying properties in Colchester, Sussex and Southend would be irrelevant. If they want to maintain a property outside their constituency, that's up to them.

Verity

I agree with C Powell that the allowance system needs to be abolished. It cannot even be justified by, "we need to be able to attract only the best", given the pigswill that occupies the Government benches.

Lady Windermere's Van - Great blogname!

Bluebottle

So where is this "Son of the Manse's" moral compass we used to hear so much about? Obviously it was not designed to point out dishonesty and scamming when its right under his nose.

They really don't get it do they? Can they not see that all this taxpayer cash the political class lavish on themselves has been taken from the pockets and purses of all the "hard working families" they profess to care so much about?

We're as mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more!

Hysteria

spotted a comment in Guido yesterday (can't find the damned link thing now though) to the effect that Smith will resign over the porn film issue, and so avoid the much more serious issue of the second home allowance.

As with the ridiculous "Fred the Shred" media scrum we are all watching the wrong ball!!

John Goulding

What Harriet Harman??
Court of Public Opinion...Maybe you should take a look at your own party first!!

Dave Rattigan

"Brown washes his hands of the Jacqui Smith situation"

One can only hope Mr Timney did the same.

Tom Pride

1. Amazing, she even threw in the kitchen sink. £550 from Habitat at that!

2. 1st April 2008 was a Tuesday. What time did he watch it? Not during office hours surely? Jacqui needs to find this out. Could be a gross misconduct offence.

C Powell

Rhoda: I and others have put up in this thread and others our suggestions as to what should be done. It's all perfectly straightforward: no pay increase and only those expenses permitted by the IR which are exclusively incurred for their job i.e. a constituency office/admin and somewhere to stay in London when Parliament is sitting - not a second home, provided they actually attend and provide a receipt. 95% of current allowances eliminated and MPs subject to the same rules as the rest of us. Simple but I think that MPs are going to need a few bricks through their windows and more of the sort of reaction which Eric Pickles got last week before they get the message.

Rhoda Klapp

Hawkeye, I wasn't looking for a way to fix the expenses problem, but the disconnect. Something I'm inclined to think always existed but is becoming worse. A Labour MP has more in common and more sympathy with a Tory MP than a labour-supporting member of the public. They only meet us if they have a constituency surgery, and then they only meet people with a problem, they are social workers, not representatives of the people. They kowtow to whips and seek rent. They don't understand what the expenses fiddles mean to the rest of us. How to fix that is the problem. And the whole political class would be aligned against any fix that upsets the status quo.

teledu

How about switching Parliament to, say, Mansfield. Build a dollop of council flats solely for the use of MPs and their staff. Build a "flat-pack" Ikea-like Parliament. That might regenerate the building industry (in Mansfield anyway) and reduce living and travel expenses. Just a thought!

David Ossitt

C Powell
March 30th, 2009 2:02pm.

I agree with every thing you wrote; an excellent post.

Lest we forget; every MP's bar, cafe, and dining room in The Palace is very heavily subsidised, so we pay for them to eat drink and be merry.

And is it not also true that because it is a palace; smoking can not be entirely forbidden?

If this last point is true then they should all burn in hell; I had my last fag six years ago but I almost started again in protest.

philip

whatever system is put into place the low-life breed will always cheat, lie and steal it is in their nature.

Baghdad Blue

There is a stench of death about this administration just as there was over Major's. However the dire economic situation means that this is not the laugh-a-minute Whitehall farce of 1992-7. Given the appalling situation and Brown's obvious inability to provide any leadership worthy of the name, is there any chance her Majesty may take a hand to save the nation? She's had her closed door briefing from the Mervyn King and there is a precedent of sorts in the Whitlam government in 1975. Could it happen here? Or should I say there? I am in Baghdad where the incompetence, venality and corruption of the regime doesn't look so bad when compared to the governanve of Britain.

elmer

Kebab-Hips main residence is apparently a room in her sister's house.No doubt,courtesy the tax payer,she pays her sister handsomely for this privilege.Hopefully the Inland Revenue will take an interest in the financial arrangement which may well be a brown envelope job.Smith's conduct is an astonishing mixture of naive opportunism and greed.

John

What has happened to sound judgment, the Home Secretary does not have it. The Prime Minister also appears not to have it in standing by the flawed Home Secretary, who seems to be intent on fleecing the tax payers of this country as fast as she can.

Draughtsman

I don't suppose these MPs give a toss about the mood of the country even if they are aware of it. Jacqui Smith will just do what these people always do, just brazen it out until the agenda moves on and in the meantime just carry on troughing it at our expense as usual.

john miller

Err, my life as an MP:

Get up, make an expense claim, obey the whip, go to bed, get up , obey the whip, make an expense claim - well, you can see where I'm going with this.

Steve

All M.P.'S expenses should be
available for public viewing as they are paid out of tax payers
money. There is no reason as to
why this information should be
confidential unless they are
trying to hide something.

Moraymint

Just heard on Channel 4 News that the Smith family are raking in a tad short of £300K per annum from us poor bloody taxpayers; for what exactly (apart from the opportunity for a little taxpayer-funded self-abuse from time to time)?

Nice work if you can get it.

De Rigeur

Baghdad Blue: You've hit the nail on the old proverbial. Yes HM should call in the troops. It would be a rather unpleasant rumpus, but needs must be met. Most of the anger and ire you read in these pages (and many, many others) is the result of a terrifying frustration felt by the electorate.
Only the Queen, representing all her subjects, can realistically step in to save us.
She needs to suspend parliament and get out the great and the good - that is if she can find any such worthies - and install a national government. Sounds horrifyingly 3rd world. But really the only respectable option.

elmer

By the way, the State is generously giving me as an OAP an extra 25p a week from next month.Hope they can still afford it.

Hysteria

if you think the economic situation is bad now, just see what happens if there are troops on the street and the (temporary) abolition of parliament.

We seem to be beyond the point of armed insurection, there seem to be no honest MPs standing up and demanding to be heard (except Dan Hannan who has been on this case for quite a while in the European context).

Not sure what the answer is - no - wait - A GENERAL ELECTION - there's a thought!!!!

David Short

I still have yet to see any tooth and claw attacks on the sexist 'Mr Smith' from Guardianista harpies, demanding blood and resignation, for watching films that trest wimmin as sex objects.

If it had been a Tory MP's husband doing this, there'd have been pages of bile in the Guardian and the Independent and on BBC Radio 4's continual loop Wimmin's Hour type coverage.

Dave

The sound of pigs snorting in the taxpayers trough resounds throughout Whitewash, sorry, Whitehall.

Michael Booth

If, as some of you suggest, the Queen did intervene there would be howls of protest and accusations that she acted unconstitutionally - given the chatteristas inclination towards republicanism (they control the media after all) it would jeopardise the throne. Agree totally the whole show is a shambles and a disgrace to the nation.