I'm sure that it is not implausible that as an MP, employing your partner might not be a bad idea. But Tory MP Derek Conway has been paying his wife and has been paying his son out of his office expenses for the last two years, claiming his son is a member of staff. The problem is that this seems slightly odd given that his son is a full time student in Newcastle.
Is this a creative way of paying his tuition fees ?
Derek Conway is, after all, the same MP who claimed so much in petrol allowances that he claimed to have made one thousand car journeys between his constituency and parliament in a single year, that's three every day !
The Sunday Times article goes onto mention other MPs who have similarly been found to employ spouses.
Perhaps it's time for a clear rule on who can and cannot be employed and what they have to do to justify their employment by MPs, after all taxpayers are paying Derek Conway's son, it's not coming out of Derek Conway's own pocket.
1 comment:
What staggers me is that no-one checks this prior to the media getting their hands on it; do they not have an auditor, some sort of checking system. I, and not unfairly, have to justify each claim for expenses; yet an MP does not. Of course the system is abused, its human nature. The problem is that this is tax revenue and not, like most expenses, taken out of company profits. Maybe they think MPs are above fraud, mmm Archer, Aitken etc etc
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