Three Peers have been suspended after the House of Lords’ sleaze watchdog said that they had wrongly claimed tens of thousands of pounds in expenses.
Cathy Newman checks it out It’s tough at the top – as Nick Clegg is beginning to find out. Since being elected leader in 2007, the Liberal Democrat leader has struggled to get noticed. No longer. But his newfound celebrity has a downside. His past is coming back to haunt him. Things that might have…
Jon Snow
Whilst the rest of us were yesterday marking that benchmark moment in our democracy when an election is called, the House of Lords was the scene of an awful climax to their Lordships’ expenses scandal. 78-year-old Lord Clarke of Hampstead was being flogged at the yard arm. Hard to know whether to feel sorry or…
Jon Snow
Sir Ian Kennedy, the chairman of the Commons standards watchdog is reported today to be in a hurry to fix a new regime for MPs’ expenses before the next election ushers in a new slew of MPs. There is no such hurry in the House of Lords. Nor is anyone in the Lords over anxious…
Gary Gibbon
Sir Christopher Kelly, Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, talked to the Public Administration Committee this morning. He refused several invitations to take a pot shot at Sir Thomas Legg. He said to the committee: “I think all of you are guilty of having gone along with a system which you must…
Jon Snow
Jon Snow blogs on the findings that Lord’s expenses are not receipted.
Gary Gibbon
Today’s Eames report into Lords’ expenses would give the commissioner powers to examine claims dating back four years.
Gary Gibbon
The leaked contents of Sir Christopher Kelly report into MPs’ expenses say members will have to declare to their constituents where they will work on the side.
Jon Snow
Why is there to be no ‘Legg style’ investigation into the expenses of members of the House of Lords? I have blogged before on the expenses culture in the House of Lords.
Jon Snow
If the expenses scandal is about anything, it is about the public’s right to know what politicians do in their name and with their money. Yet as the parties attempt to purge the transgressors, all the indications are that the same secrecy and attempted cover-up that led to the leaking of MPs’ expenses to the…
“Good governance is based on three things – capability, responsiveness and accountability,” the Department for International Development (DfID) declares on its website. The government department which funds anti-corruption programmes in developing countries goes on to say that it uses this assessment, as well as “promoting good governance and transparency, and fighting corruption – to make…
If MPs were forced to repay some of the more ridiculous expense claims, a few might join the ranks of Britain’s growing personal insolvencies. MPs that go bankrupt are forced to forfeit their seat. Is this what is meant by politically bankrupt?
If you step away from the details of bathplugs, unnecessary taxis and sibling cleaning contracts, there is a staggering picture emerging about the MPs who decide our laws. During the biggest housing boom in Britain’s history (and some economists argue in world history) many of the politicians who had the power to rein it in…