MPs’ expenses: it’s not over yet…

A hard core of ex MPs is fighting a rearguard action against the whole Thomas Legg audit of expenses and proving a headache for Commons authorities.

Around eight or nine ex MPs who were in parliament between 2004 – 5, the first year which Sir Thomas Legg’s audit has dug into, have failed to respond at all to Sir Thomas Legg’s questions about their expenses for that year.

It’s believed most of the inquiries may have been about mortgages – coming up with a higher standard of proof for mortgages claimed has been one of the main headaches of the Legg inquiry.

Most sitting MPs have now delivered on that paperwork, the ex MPs, perhaps influenced by the fact that they can’t be sanctioned by the Commons now they’ve left the place, are holding out or, more accurately, staying silent.

Legg is pretty sure he’s writing to the right addresses… just getting no cooperation.

Of the 83 sitting MPs who initially decided that Legg’s demands for back-payment of expenses were excessive, 73 actually proceeded with an appeal to the former appeal court judge, Sir Paul Kennedy, overseeing appeals.

Kennedy and Legg both hope to make definitive lists of who owes what by the beginning of next week and it could be published on 4 February – that list could reveal some names and amounts that no one had realised had been caught in the audit.

The Commons would then pinch its nose and vote to agree the lists soon after. MPs who Kennedy feels need to pay up and don’t have extenuating circumstances then have until the end of February to cough up or the Commons will sequester the money from them.

It’s not over yet… but some are daring to hope this thing is nearing its end.