Even if the system’s to blame, no one forced MPs to milk it

Rod Liddle says that Sarah Teather, the righteous young Lib Dem MP who refused to claim for a second home, proves that it wasn’t mandatory for MPs to fleece us

The worst case of expenses fraud I ever encountered as a journalist came when I worked for the BBC and a foreign correspondent claimed a few hundred quid for a lawnmower. This created a bit of a scandal and the chap was quite speedily sacked. Claiming for a lawnmower was considered not really on at the best of times, but especially so when you lived in a third-floor apartment.

And then, back in the early 1980s, a mate of mine on a regional newspaper invented an entire town from which he would file the most astonishing and lubricious copy, but this little sliver of fraud was not done in order to extort expenses, but for the sake of fun and perhaps professional advancement. I think he now works for the Daily Mail.

Quite a few people have ventured that it is a bit rum of journalists to claim the moral high ground when writing about the MP expenses scandal, not least the most overrated man in Britain, the bipolar Labour luvvie Stephen Fry. But I’m a fairly despicable human being and it has never, ever occurred to me to steal in such a manner, and I do not know many who have. Those who did might have claimed for a fictional lunch now and again — but never, to my knowledge, for a house. Or for their entire grocery bills for the year, or for a Jacuzzi, or a moat. I suppose some might have done if they’d thought they could get away with it, but then they were in the less fortunate position of not having drawn up their own rules for expense claims.