Gordon Brown is directly implicated in the latest expenses scandal. For some reason, he paid his brother thousands of pounds for a shared cleaner, though others he paid directly. As the Telegraph points out, this would not have been revealed under the release of information planned for July as personal data had been removed. This removal allowed one abuse to be hidden: the switching of properties so that a number of homes could be furnished and decorated at public expense.
Later this summer details of more than a million receipts for expenses claimed between 2004 and 2008 are set to be released. However, MPs have already passed a law to prevent the publication of their addresses, making it impossible to understand the way the allowance has been misused. Only when the addresses are examined does it become clear how some MPs routinely switch the designation of their second home in order to maximise the benefit that accrues from the allowance.
Many have claimed tens of thousands of pounds to furnish and renovate what any
reasonable person would consider to be their principal residence – the home
where their families reside. A large proportion of MPs have refurbished,
decorated and sold second homes at taxpayers' expense, using the allowance
to pay the mortgage interest and then pocketing the profit or buying another
property. Many seem to have come to regard the allowance as a basic human
right to be used for the most prosaic purchase.
Very few of the Cabinet come out with any honour: Hilary Benn and Alan Johnson to the fore (the new leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party?). We have already had the rush of defences from Ministers defending their positions as working within the rules: a defence that will not wash since they made the rules without independent scrutiny.
Let Andy Burnham have the last word on how desperate they became to get the money:
After rejecting the claim three times, the authorities finally gave in to a series of desperate pleas from the Culture Secretary and his wife to pay the money. Mr Burnham even told the Fees Office that he “might be in line for a divorce” if he did not get the money quickly, The Daily Telegraph claimed last night.