Expenses: MPs await letters from Legg
Latest is that a bundle of letters to MPs will be delivered into the internal mail system in the Commons either late morning or lunchtime. MPs should open them some time today.
As mentioned here earlier the Legg audit is judging the Fees Office as much as the MPs.
It doesn’t matter if your claim was cleared by the Fees Office, the question is whether you abided by the spirit of the rules, claiming for expenses incurred in the pursuance of MPs’ duties.
What particularly annoys MPs is that Legg has put what they think are arbitrary numbers on what constitutes breaching the spirit of the rules and what doesn’t.
So Gordon Brown’s cleaning bill, to take a high-profile example, is deemed excessive. One minister who was off to check his post and emails and see if he had to pay back more money was as furious as a Tory frontbencher I just met.
The minister wondered if Legg had taken any account at all of the minimum wage when he was deciding thresholds, and whether he may end up penalising MPs who paid above the minimum wage and paid national insurance with the meaner ones (always assuming they exist) getting off Scot-free.
The Tory frontbencher was angry but resigned to paying up and rolling over… that, we expect, will be Gordon Brown’s message to an unhappy Parliamentary Labour Party meeting this evening – rough justice but we’ve got to draw a line under all this.
MPs will be free to challenge Legg’s conclusions when they respond, one senior backbencher I just spoke to is confident that they can win the argument with Legg.
Others remember that Gordon Brown was the central driver of getting Legg appointed in the first place and will worry that his remit may not have been drawn tightly enough.
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