2/02/2008

New allegations against Conway show him in the worst possible light

The Telegraph today publishes new allegations against Derek Conway, the worst of which intimates that he halved his secretary's pay whilst paying his wife £40,000 a year out of his allowances.

"Mr Conway's political career was effectively ended last week after he was heavily censured for paying his son Freddie about £50,000, even though there is no evidence of any work being conducted.

It also emerged that his other son, Henry, a flamboyant regular at exclusive London nightclubs, picked up more than £32,000 from his father's taxpayer-funded staffing allowance. The MP's wife is also on the payroll, receiving almost £40,000 annually - the maximum permitted for a secretary.

Yesterday it emerged that Mr Conway halved his constituency secretary's salary at a time he was paying his sons thousands of pounds in overtime and bonuses.

Friends of Lisa Rayson, a single parent who lives in a council house in Bexleyheath, claimed Mr Conway told her last June he could not afford her £15,000 salary. She declined to comment on the allegation yesterday."

It is becoming clearer by the day that Derek Conway used his allowances as a slush fund to set his family up for life, and all this at the expense of his constituents who will have missed out by him employing less staff, and the UK taxpayer, who appear to have kept his family in a lavish lifestyle for some years.

What Mr Conway needs to do now is apologise again to parliament for the lie he told last week. He referred to an "administrative oversight", whereas he should in my opinion have declared a "deliberate effort to pay money his family from his parliamentary expenses that they were not entitled to".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Apologies aren't enough. He should resign - immediately.

Anonymous said...

But that would stop Conman plc from continuing its long journey on the gravy train.

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