BRITAIN’S THREE main party leaders, including prime minister Gordon Brown, should all repay, or supply extra information about, some expense claims made over the last five years, an independent auditor has ruled.
The provisional finding of the auditor, Sir Thomas Legg, into the MPs’ expenses scandal was delivered to hundreds of MPs by letter yesterday on their first day back following the summer recess.
However, Sir Thomas has angered many MPs because he has decided that some should repay money even when their original claims obeyed the rules existing at the time.
Mr Brown must refund £12,415 (€13,270), he has decided, including £10,716.60 for domestic cleaning, window cleaning, dry cleaning and laundry; £302 for gardening bills; and £1,396 for painting and decorating.
Earlier Mr Brown said: “We’ve got to consign the old discredited system to the dustbin of history, this is part of the process of doing so. [If] he says you’ve got to repay, let’s get it done, let’s get it sorted out and let’s get it back to a system that people have confidence in.”
Sir Thomas, who has spent months examining four million pieces of documentation, has ruled that MPs should be entitled to claim £2,000 a year for the cleaning of their London house or flat and £1,000 for gardening bills.
Saying Mr Brown would co-operate fully, Downing Street added that his “expenses have always been cleared by the House authorities as entirely consistent with the rules” and that he had not “claimed the maximum level of expenses”.
Conservative Party leader David Cameron, who has already repaid £218 he overclaimed when he changed his mortgage between August and October last year, has been asked to produce a mortgage interest statement for the period.
Last night, sources close to Mr Cameron, who said the inquiry was important to “sort out the mess at the House of Commons”, said Sir Thomas’s questions related only to the sum repaid and nothing else.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, who urged MPs to “bite the bullet and pay up”, immediately paid the £910 of the £3,900 he claimed for gardening bills between 2006 and 2009 ruled inadmissible by Sir Thomas.
MPs who refuse or cannot repay expenses demanded back will have the money deducted from their salaries, or else be forced to resign – thus losing the severance package due to them if they retired when an election was called.
Sir Thomas was appointed to examine all MPs’ expense claims made from 2004 after the Daily Telegraph in May published extensive details of abuses, including claims for maintenance of castle moats, and questionable dealings by some MPs with the Inland Revenue.
His final report, due in December, will go to a House of Commons committee, which will have the authority to enforce rulings.
The Speaker of the House Commons, John Bercow, however, has written to all MPs urging them to co-operate fully with Sir Thomas. Politically, MPs facing an election next year will find it difficult not to abide by the figures laid down by him.
In a separate inquiry by the standards commissioner, John Lyons, former Labour home secretary Jacqui Smith was found to have breached Commons rules by claiming that her sister’s house in London was her primary residence.
While she made an apology to the Commons yesterday, her reputation has been damaged because her testimony about the number of nights she spent in London or in her constituency differed from that of her 24-hour police protection officers.