Only 26 Per Cent Of Public Now Have Confidence In MPs

The number of voters who believe MPs are dedicated to doing a good job for the public has almost halved in three years, a survey shows today.












Research commissioned for the Committee for Standards in Public Life found only 26 per cent now have confidence in their elected representatives compared with 46 per cent when the last study was carried out in 2008, before the expenses scandal.

The proportion thinking that most MPs are competent also fell by 10 percentage points from 36 to 26. The committee's chairman, Sir Christopher Kelly, described the findings as "worrying". He is putting the finishing touches to his committee's report into funding political parties, due next month. Plans include a £10,000 cap on individual donations with parties being compensated through tax relief on smaller contributions.

Sir Christopher said yesterday: "The results of this survey make stark reading. Previous surveys have shown that public confidence in those holding public office has been on a long term decline since 2004. The 2010 results suggest that the rate of decline may have increased. I am struck by the common themes that run through many of the issues we see. High ethical standards do not just happen. They require leadership and the development of a strong ethical culture in which people understand what is expected of them. Overwhelmingly, the scandals we have seen in recent years could have been prevented."

Sir Christopher said his report on party funding would look at "complex and controversial" issues.

"The public are concerned about very large donations, whether from activist groups, large companies, trade unions, or individual donors," he said. "People generally assume that substantial donations are made for self-interested reasons and a third of respondents believe that politicians 'very often' do special favours for people and organisations who give large donations."

MPs' Expenses: Labour's Margaret Moran Faces 21 Charges

Ex-Labour MP to appear before magistrates over charges including false accounting and forgery related to claims worth more than £60,000.












Former MP Margaret Moran, who is to face 21 charges in relation to claims she made for parliamentary expenses.

The former MP Margaret Moran is to face 21 criminal charges for allegedly making illegal parliamentary expense claims, the Crown Prosecution Service said on Tuesday.

The ex-Labour member for Luton South will be prosecuted on 15 charges of false accounting and six charges of forgery related to claims worth more than £60,000.

Investigations into Moran centred on allegations that she repeatedly "flipped" her designated second home, making claims for properties in London, Luton and Southampton over a four-year period.

Moran claimed more than £20,000 to have dry rot treated at her Southampton home, which is almost 100 miles from either her former constituency or Westminster, according to House of Commons documents. She has maintained that she is innocent of any wrongdoing.

She is the last of 10 MPs and peers whose parliamentary expense claims have been referred to a specially convened panel of police and prosecutors for assessment. Of those, seven have been referred for prosecution. The decision to prosecute comes more than two years after details of MPs' claims on their expenses were disclosed to a national newspaper. Detectives handed a file related to Moran's claims to prosecutors in December last year.

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, said that the charges followed a lengthy inquiry into claims made to furnish and improve her main residences.

"Having thoroughly reviewed the evidence gathered by the police, we have decided there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to bring criminal charges against Margaret Moran.

"The summons relates to 15 charges of false accounting, contrary to the Theft Act 1968. It is alleged that she claimed expenses for the furnishing and improvement of main residences between November 2004 and August 2008 through a scheme intended for the maintenance of second homes or offices.

"Ms Moran also faces six charges of forgery, contrary to the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, where it is alleged that she submitted forged invoices in support of some of her claims," he said.

A decision on whether to prosecute was held up because of Moran's ill health. She had claimed that she was too unwell to be interviewed by detectives.

She has been summonsed to appear at City of Westminster magistrates' court, central London, on 19 September.

On 15 May 2009, the director of public prosecutions and the Metropolitan police commissioner set up a panel of senior police officers and senior prosecuting lawyers to assess complaints about parliamentary expense claims.

In total 10 files of evidence related to 10 individuals have been submitted to the CPS for a charging decision. Of those, seven cases including that of Moran have resulted in charges. No further action was taken in two cases and the request for a charging decision on one file was withdrawn by the police. There are no longer any cases to be considered by the panel.Former MPs David Chaytor, Eric Illsley, Elliot Morley, Jim Devine, and peers Lord Taylor of Warwick and Lord Hanningfield have been jailed over the scandal. Devine was released in August after serving four months of a 16-month sentence. Illsley and Chaytor were released and were tagged.

In 2009, Moran married her long-time partner of 30 years, Michael Booker, who lives and works at Southampton University as the safety adviser. They have no children. She has written that her personal interests include céilidhs, visiting historical sites, walking and eating curry.

Starmer warned the media over reporting of Moran's impending prosecution. "Margaret Moran now stands charged with criminal offences and has the right to a fair trial. It is extremely important that nothing should be reported which could prejudice her trial," he said.

A Labour party spokesman said: "Margaret Moran is suspended from membership of the Labour party and is no longer an MP."

Expenses, 'Phone Hacking, Riots ''All The Same Problem''

The Labour leader Ed Miliband has said the underlying causes of the recent riots are the same ones that saw MPs fiddling their expenses, bankers sending the UK's finances into freefall while pocketing huge bonuses, and newspapers hacking mobile 'phone voice mails of murder victims and others.










Essentially, he said, all the perpetrators deliberately turned a blind eye to what was right and what was wrong and chose to think only of their own needs. And this 'me first' approach was a major flaw in the thinking of too many people that really needed to be sorted out.

"There is an issue which went to all our souls," Miliband said on BBC radio, "this is an issue not just about the responsibility and irresponsibility we saw on the streets of Tottenham. It's about irresponsibility, wherever we find it in our society.

"We've seen in the past few years MPs' expenses, what happened in the banks, what happened with 'phone hacking."

He went on: "It's right the courts are handing down exemplary sentences because there needs to be a signal sent that we won't tolerate these things in our society, that it's not okay to do these things.

"We have got to ask why do we have people in our society who feel that the way they can get on and the right thing to do is go and nick the telly, engage in the kind of looting we saw. We have got to avoid simplistic answers. There's a debate some people are starting: is it culture, is it poverty and lack of opportunity? It's probably both."

When it was pointed out that the children rioting were 'Blair's children' in that they all grew up under a Labour administration that was in power for 13 years, Miliband said: "I deeply regret that inequality wasn't reduced under the last Labour government. But we did great things to tackle inequality in our society."

Pointedly, he added: "We did better at rebuilding the fabric of our country than the ethic of our country."

Miliband also repeated his request for a public inquiry into the riots which did not include "a bunch of academics in Whitehall ... but the good, decent people of Tottenham".

"I really hope the Prime Minister in the next couple of days, before everything dissipates and the dust settles, agrees to that public inquiry," he said.

David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet Drawn Into Expenses Scandal

Senior members of David Cameron’s shadow cabinet have been implicated in the parliamentary expenses scandal.













Michael Gove and Andrew Lansley “flipped” properties designated as their second homes to claim allowances for multiple properties at taxpayers’ expense.

The tactic has been criticised by another member of the shadow cabinet.

Other senior Conservatives who made questionable claims included Alan Duncan, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, who oversees the party’s expenses policy. He was officially warned over his gardening bills after attempting to claim more than £7,000 in two years.

David Willetts, the shadow universities secretary, claimed more than £100 for workmen to replace 25 light bulbs at his home. Oliver Letwin, the chairman of the Conservatives’ policy team, claimed more than £2,000 to replace a leaking pipe under a tennis court.

Two members of the Conservative front bench, Mr Gove and Cheryl Gillan, have agreed to repay some expense claims.

Mr Cameron this morning called on Tory MPs to explain any dubious claims and publicly apologise for any "mistakes", saying it was "not good enough" to claim they had just been following the rules.

"What I want is for Conservative MPs, as with other MPs, to come out and explain why they claimed what they claimed, to admit to any mistakes, if there have been mistakes, and collectively to say 'Look, this system was wrong, we took part in it, we operated it'," he said.

"It's not good enough to say we obeyed the rules. We need a big acknowledgement that we are sorry that this happened and it needs to change."

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said that the public had the right to be angry at MPs of all parties over the expenses scandal.

"I think voters can differentiate between what they think are legitimate expenses for those who have to have a second home to represent them in Parliament and what the public would regard as frivolous or luxury expenses," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

"There is an element of common sense in that and I think voters can see that even when MPs may not have been able to see it."

Mr Duncan, one of the leading Tories whose claims have been thrust into the spotlight by the latest revelations, called on all MPs to apologise. "The House of Commons is in such a mess, these allowances have got to stop," he said.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said that a “culture of abuse” had developed among MPs claiming expenses. Lord Naseby, a Conservative peer and former deputy speaker, said that the standing of Parliament had been brought “right down into the pits” and there may be a need for an immediate general election.

The Daily Telegraph has obtained details of expenses claims made by MPs from all political parties over the past five years.

The expenses scandal detailed over the past three days has hit the Cabinet, extended to the entire Government and is now shown to stretch to the highest levels of the Conservative party.

The Telegraph Expenses Files on the shadow Cabinet disclose that:

* Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, spent more than £7,000 in five months furnishing a London property in 2006 before “flipping” his second home designation to a new property he bought in Surrey. He then claimed more than £13,000 in stamp duty and other fees from his Parliamentary expenses for this property. Mr Gove’s behaviour surprised colleagues because the former journalist was only elected in 2005 and is close to Mr Cameron.

* Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, spent thousands of pounds renovating a thatched Tudor country cottage shortly before selling it. He redecorated inside and out with premium paint at a cost of £2,000 and re-shingled the driveway. He then “flipped” his expenses to a Georgian flat in London where he claimed for thousands of pounds in furnishings including a Laura Ashley sofa.

* Francis Maude, the shadow minister for the cabinet office, attempted to claim the mortgage interest on his family home in Sussex. This arrangement was rejected by the Fees Office. Two years later, Mr Maude bought a flat in London a few minutes walk from a house he already owned. He then rented out the other property and began claiming on the new flat: the taxpayer has since covered nearly £35,000 in mortgage interest payments.

* Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, claimed thousands of pounds to renovate a London flat 17 miles from his family home. Mr Grayling already owned three properties within the M25 but still bought the flat with loans subsidised by the taxpayer. He then claimed for work on the property for up to a year after it was carried out. This enabled him to claim close to the maximum amount allowable under the expenses system during different years.

* Cheryl Gillan, the shadow Welsh secretary, claimed for dog food on her expenses. Last night, she said that she would repay the money.

The disclosures underline the cross-party nature of the parliamentary expenses scandal. Over the past few days, the Telegraph has exposed the exploitation of the allowances by senior Labour figures including members of the Cabinet. Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, has condemned the “flipping” of the designation of second homes by ministers.

“The idea was always that ministers were deemed to have their primary residence in London when they were members of the government,” he said. He called for a “hard and fast rule” about what constitutes an MP’s primary home.

Mr Cameron said last week that claims by Conservative MPs that were outside the rules would be “looked at”. “They just have to explain themselves,” he said. “That’s what all my MPs are going to have to do, that’s what I will have to do and I think that’s what the public deserve – they are angry about it and they want it sorted out.”

Not all members of the shadow Cabinet were implicated. Mr Cameron and William Hague, his deputy and shadow foreign secretary, both had relatively straightforward claims. George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, claimed for a chauffeur using his office allowance.

David Cameron Took Out Maximum Taxpayer-Funded Mortgage - Then Paid Off Own £75k Loan Four Months Later

David Cameron was dragged personally into the expenses row last night after it was revealed that he paid off a loan on his London home shortly after taking out a £350,000 taxpayer-funded mortgage on his constituency house.

The disclosure followed a powerful call by the Tory leader yesterday for the ‘full force of the law’ to be deployed against MPs who have abused allowances.

Following a Mail on Sunday investigation Mr Cameron could now face searching questions about his own expense claims.
















He took out the £350,000 mortgage – close to the maximum amount that can be claimed for – to buy a large house in Oxfordshire in August 2001, two months after winning his Witney seat in the General Election. By nominating it as his second home, he was able to claim for the mortgage interest payments under the now-infamous Commons’ Additional Costs Allowance (ACA).

Just four months after securing the £350,000 mortgage, Mr Cameron paid off the £75,000 loan on his London home, taken out only six years earlier.

There is no suggestion that he broke any rules. But mortgage experts say that if he had kept the loan on his London home and borrowed £75,000 less on the Oxfordshire property, taxpayers could have been saved more than £22,000 between 2002 and 2007

The revelations came as Gordon Brown was warned that he faces a new threat to his leadership if Labour is beaten by the UK Independence Party in Thursday’s European elections.

And in today’s Mail on Sunday, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable calls for ‘immoral’ Chancellor Alistair Darling to resign for ‘being caught with his fingers in the till’ by abusing his expenses.

Last night, Mr Cameron insisted that his mortgage claims had been ‘perfectly reasonable’ and denied that reducing his Oxfordshire loan would have helped the taxpayer.

A statement said: ‘David Cameron paid off his London mortgage with his own money which came from the sale of shares and money built up while working at Carlton TV. He bought a home in his constituency and claimed for mortgage interest payments, which is perfectly reasonable and the intended use of the second-home allowance.

He later paid down a part of this mortgage and claimed for some basic utility bills.

‘He made it very clear several weeks ago that he would not claim for a second home if he became Prime Minister and lived in No10.
































‘We are pleased that Gordon Brown and other members of the Cabinet have now adopted this policy and will no longer be able to claim for their second homes while living in grace-and-favour apartments.’

A later statement said: ‘If he had paid £75,000 toward Oxfordshire it would not have been cheaper for the taxpayer, as that mortgage is far higher than the amount he was able to claim for – particularly in 2001, when the amount you were able to claim for was much lower.’

Ten days ago, at a meeting with his Witney constituents to answer their questions on expenses, Mr Cameron candidly admitted claiming ‘close to the maximum’.

But he failed to mention that he had paid off his London loan shortly after he had secured it.

‘From 2001 to 2007, the only thing I really claimed for in respect of my second home was the interest on a mortgage – not the repayments, but the interest,’ he told the meeting.

‘It was a very large mortgage. It was £350,000 worth of mortgage. It was about £1,700 a month that I was claiming. That was quite close to the maximum you could claim at the time but I did not at that stage claim for anything else.

‘In 2007, I was able to pay down the mortgage a little bit [by £100,000], so it was a £250,000 mortgage, paying about £1,000 in mortgage interest every month, and so I also claimed for what I would call some pretty straightforward household bills – council tax, oil, gas and other utility type bills and insurance on the property.

‘I now claim less than the maximum. I don’t claim all of those utility bills. I claim a percentage of them, because I think that’s right and fair.’

Today’s disclosures may spark fresh criticism among some Conservatives about Mr Cameron’s forceful handling of the expenses row. They believe he is using the scandal as an excuse to clear out traditionalists who stand in the way of his modernising project, while largely protecting members of his inner circle.

Until now, Mr Cameron has made only one concession on his expenses – admitting that he was wrong to claim £680 to have wisteria removed from the chimney of his Oxfordshire home. He has repaid the money.

Now The Mail on Sunday can provide a more detailed account of his property dealings and how they relate to his expenses.

According to Land Registry documents, in 1995 Mr Cameron paid £215,000 for a house in Kensington, West London, which was part-funded with a £75,000 mortgage from Alliance & Leicester.

In August 2001, just a month after the second-home allowance went up by a staggering £5,840 per annum – from £13,628 to £19,468 – and two months after he entered the Commons, he paid £650,000 for the constituency house in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, and used the property as security for a £350,000 loan from HSBC.

Mr Cameron’s spokesman said last night that his offer on the house had been accepted three months earlier in May 2001.

Then, in December of that year, the Land Registry removed the Alliance & Leicester charge from its records for the Kensington home after the loan was ‘discharged by electronic means.’

Mr Cameron sold the Kensington property in 2005 for £1,150,000 – a profit of £935,000 – and bought another house nearby. His Oxfordshire home
is estimated to be worth just under £1million, a paper profit of more than £300,000.

His mortgage claim is potentially contentious because, coincidentally or not, experts say that it corresponds approximately to the upper limit of the ACA, which covers the costs of running an MP’s second home. In the financial year 2002-03, the first full year Mr Cameron claimed under the ACA, he received the maximum £19,722.

In 2003-04, he claimed £20,328, just £5 less than the maximum, and in 2004-05 he took the maximum of £20,902.

In total, between 2002 and 2007 he claimed £102,874. If he had paid off £75,000 of the Oxfordshire loan, rather than clearing the mortgage on his London home, the bill would have been about £22,500 lower.

In an interview yesterday, Mr Cameron said: ‘When I was first elected, I was renting rather than owning a home and I couldn’t find my rent bill. The fees office said, “Don’t worry, just claim for food.” I said, “I haven’t had any food,” and I went and found my rent bill.’

In the interview, Mr Cameron maintained his hardline stance by calling for any MPs who have used taxpayers’ money to pay for ‘phantom’ mortgages to be investigated by the police.

He said he was outraged by Sir Peter Viggers, who claimed for a floating duck house, Douglas Hogg, who claimed for his moat to be cleared, and Anthony Steen, who recouped the cost of tree surgery and guarding his shrubs against rabbits.

All three – regarded by modernising Tories as anti-reform ‘bed-blockers’ – have announced that they will stand down at the next Election.

Only one Cameron ally, his adviser Andrew MacKay, has been forced to leave the Commons following revelations that he and his MP wife Julie Kirkbride had claimed more than £250,000 in second-home allowances by ‘double dipping’.

On Friday, Mr Cameron said that Bill Cash, a veteran Eurosceptic regarded as a troublemaker by the party leadership, had ‘serious questions’ to answer about claiming for rent payments to his daughter.

One Tory MP last night attacked Mr Cameron’s alleged ‘double standards’ crackdown on some MPs and soft handling of others. ‘It’s like living through one of Stalin’s purges,’ said the MP.

‘It’s all deeply divisive. Some people are being asked simply to apologise while others are being told they have questions to answer. That’s code for: let’s get all the lunatics in a local constituency to stage a public execution.

‘Although MPs have simply been obeying the rules as they were, Cameron is saying that’s not enough. He seems to want to make burnt offerings of other MPs. Fine, but on that basis, why doesn’t he repay years of mortgage interest claims above £1,250 a month that he’s claimed for?’

In his defence, it could be argued that what Mr Cameron has done with Commons expenses pales into insignificance next to Tony Blair. He used the ACA to help pay for a £296,000 mortgage on a house that he had bought for £30,000 in 1983. He claimed just under a third of the interest back from the taxpayer.

He remortgaged the constituency home in Trimdon, County Durham, in 2003 – shortly before he paid £3.65 million for a London townhouse which became his post-Downing Street home.

Gordon Brown has also been at the centre of controversy after claiming for payments of £6,577 to his brother Andrew over a 26-month period for a cleaner shared by the pair.

Moreover, Mr Cameron has said that if he enters Downing Street, and has use of the official country residence of Chequers, he will give up his second-home allowance completely, a ban that would extend to other Ministers who are entitled to use grace-and-favour apartments.

Expenses Scandal: Tory Leader David Cameron Faces Probe Over Mortgage Claim

DAVID CAMERON faced an internal inquiry yesterday into claims he "maxed out" his second home expenses.

The Tory leader took out a £350,000 taxpayer-funded mortgage and then paid off a £75,000 loan soon afterwards.














The financial juggling may have cost taxpayers as much as £22,000.

Cameron said he had not broken any rules but agreed to be investigated by the "scrutiny panel" he set up last month to investigate Tory abuses.

Asked if he had failed his own "smell test" - that it broke the spirit if not the letter of the rules - he limply responded: "It's absolutely for others to make that decision."

But he said he would repay the money if found guilty.

Gordon Brown moved to seize the initiative by setting out plans for a legally-binding code of conduct for MPs, peers and other public servants.

He said the code would apply not just to MPs but organisations such as the BBC and the NHS, which are also publicly funded.

Labour called on Cameron to publish all the documents so the public could see if he had cheated the taxpayer. He took out a £350,000 mortgage on a constituency home in Oxfordshire when he became an MP in 2001.

By declaring it as a second home he was able to claim around £20,000 a year from the taxpayer towards the cost of the mortgage.

Within four months of buying the property, the millionaire Tory leader paid off the outstanding £75,000 he owed on a house in London.

Experts have calculated that if he had kept the loan on the London home and borrowed £75,000 less on the Oxfordshire home, he could have saved taxpayers £22,000. Cameron told the BBC's Politics Show: "I think what I did was very reasonable."

He denied he could have reduced the amount the taxpayer had to pay.

He said: "First, because I was actually paying out more in interest for my mortgage than I was claiming from the taxpayer and, second, when I did pay down the mortgage, I was then able to claim for some very basic and standard bills, things like heating and lighting and water."

Brown defended his own record on expenses, saying: "I feel that I have managed my affairs personally with the utmost integrity."

Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg called for Alistair Darling to resign over allegations he "flipped" his second home to beef up his claims.

But the Chancellor's spokeswoman said: "The allegation he changed addresses for personal gain is untrue."