The justice of a roulette wheel

From honourable member to rogue. That, thanks to retrospective and unprecedented changes Sir Thomas Legg has made to the rules on MPs' expenses, is how I feel.

You may remember that last year I was part of the small band of MPs who voted to make details of our expenses public. It was a mystery to me why the then Speaker and his allies opposed being open to taxpayers. They were later defeated in the courts.

As soon as the details of our expenses were given to MPs I put mine on my website. The Daily Telegraph who bought all of this information published a ‘rogues and saints' gallery. Having considered the evidence, they placed me in the latter category.

For the last five years, I claimed, for my home in Birkenhead: £11,250; £12,006; £11,509; £9,573 and, for the year ending April 2009 my claim was £7,303, 30% of the total allowance. I did not claim anything approaching the maximum annual £24k simply because I did not need to claim such an amount.

However, late on Monday I received along with other MPs a letter from Sir Thomas Legg. He recommends I repay just over £7,000: £1,000 housekeeping costs for each year; £1,800 of other household bills, and £230 which I should have claimed from other allowances.

Sir Thomas correctly points out that over the five year period I claimed twice for three bills amounting to £117. The bills shouldn't have been presented twice nor paid. I regret this and have paid the money back.

My concern is that nowhere has Sir Thomas explained why he has changed the rules which have resulted in his recalculations. No matter what the cost of maintaining a second home in my constituency has been, a £3k cut-off point was retrospectively imposed.

Imagine that you have been driving, perfectly legally, through a 30 mile an hour zone at a speed of 25 mph. Imagine then your reaction when, five years later, you receive multiple fines as a decision has been taken to change, retrospectively, the speed limit to 20.

Sir Thomas has also suggested that other household bills were wrongly claimed telling me that the Fees Office had told me such claims were invalid. Sir Thomas is simply wrong. There is nothing in the file to support his assertion. He has misread a letter between Officials dated after this period relating to another issue. The actual file shows that at no point were objections raised to my claims.

Last week I replied to Sir Thomas. I was dazed that, as someone who has always been open about my expenses, his arbitrary decision should link me with the abuses known all too well to voters. I have requested that he withdraws his suggestion, but I am not holding my breath.

I share the electorate's anger with how some have played the system. But the Legg Review does not seem to have taken on the abuses. What he has achieved is simply to move around some of the characters in the honourable members and villains galleries.

Frank would very much like to read your feedback on today's article. If you would like to respond, please click here to visit our feedback form.

Date added: Saturday 17th October 2009

Comments

I am 52 and have never voted for your party but I'm moved to offer my wholehearted support on your expenses stand. I believe the analogy you've offered regarding speed limits is a very good one. I don't pay close attention so I don't know Mr Brown's position but I see that other party leaders have said that their MPs not repaying will not stand again. I would support any 'honourable' member taking a principled stand on the basis that you have and only by opposing injustice can we hope to achieve justice. I sincerely wish you well in your fight.
Report this post - Anonymous

Absolutely right Mr Field. I understand that we are now in a 3 week responses period. I hope that Legg WILL take note of reasoned replies such as yours, otherwise the whole process will simply add to the stench, rather than cure it.Alan Douglas
Report this post - Anonymous

No, Frank. A better analogy is that the law was that you had to drive at a safe speed, and you (collectively) decided that it was safe to drive at 50. You then complain when years later someone comes along and points out that maybe you should have been driving at 30 if you wanted to be safe. There's nothing retrospective about the rule that expenses have to be incurred wholly, necessarily, and exclusively in the pursuit of your parliamentary duties. Legg is just putting a figure on it, because you all had failed to do so before.
Report this post - Anonymous

All I'm going to say, Vehicle Excise Duty...... If the public have to pay retrospectively, so should you. (My vehicle was new 23/04/06 and so the higher rate of tax was applied after purchase - disgusting)!
Report this post - Anonymous

You're right. The telly, trouser press and coffee maker are absolutely essential to your parliamentary duties.Besides, imagine buying a car in 2001 and driving it for several years only to find out that the Vehicle Excise Duty has taken a massive retrospective hike, like millions of us lot have experienced. Not so funny when it's 'YOUR' money, eh?
Report this post - Anonymous

And I thought you had principles.Turns out your principles were different to those I had in mind.Disappointed ex-Labour voter. (Whose coffee maker is not wholly, necessarily and exclusively required for the performance of his duties, and which was bought out of taxed income - like your constituents).
Report this post - Anonymous

Just pay the money back. I don't even earn that much in a year, you will be getting no pity from anyone else. Stop whinging and write a cheque out.
Report this post - Anonymous

Mr Field, you are not using a full analogy:What if when the 20mph limit was introduced (retrospectively as you say), it was found that there was a clause in the Highway Code, that required all drivers to be more circumspect in crowded areas or where children may be crossing the road and that a self imposed 20mph limit would be more appropriate. Then your driving analogy circumstances are more aligned with the Expenses situation and MPs should have realised that spending money on things that were not wholly associated with doing the job as an MP was wrong.
Report this post - Anonymous

I admire you, Frank, and of course you're right that any errors Legg has made must be corrected. We all make errors of course, as you admit yourself about double claiming. The public isn't angry about little things like that. But we are (I am, anyway) angry about the obvious abuses of our money - and about MPs' self-centred and pathetic moans about their being corrected. Many of us know how we are dealt with by HMRC, DWP, the police, traffic wardens and so on, on the basis of rules laid down by MPs. No one seems to stand up for the ordinary member of the public who makes a mistake - I'm charged £100 by HMRC when I forget to make a payment, even if they've delayed letting me know what account to pay it into. So people like me have little sympathy for MPs, who are much better off than me, in many cases I suspect less socially useful, and many of whom have been shamelessly on the take with the money HMRC takes from me in tax, NI and penalties.Which brings me to the "retrospection" point. If those amounts you listed were incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily in connection with your work as an MP, then fine. That was the rule at the time, and that's what Legg is applying. To complain about the "retrospective" cash limits and compare them to retrospective speed limits is misleading. The true position is that you, the MPs, set the speed limits and chose to set no quantifiable one, but simply to put up a sign saying "drive carefully". No one was actually stopped, no matter how recklessly fast they drove. What Legg is now doing is playing back an imaginary videotape and saying, "if you were going over 40, you can't have been driving carefully". The only alternative for him would have been to say "although its clear many payments weren't in accordance with the wholly, necessarily etc. rule, because MPs' own drafting of the old rules means I don't know how much exactly should be repaid, I must rule than nothing should be repaid". That would have been a whitewash rather than an audit.Please don't join the complainers, Frank. Get on with implementing the solutions, including Legg.By the way, why do you say you won't publish my name? I'd like people to see who it is that's said this!
Report this post - Anonymous

Fair comment - the Legg review has not tackled the real abusers but has instead sought easy targets among the honest majority. A bit like this government, really.
Report this post - Anonymous

Like most decisions from Mr Brown recently the appointment of Tom Legg has fallen foul of the law of unintended consequences. I agree with most of what you say, and fear for the quality if any future parliament. A great many honest and able people will be leaving with the rogues. Those coming in will lack experience, and there is a grave danger that able people of limited means will be deterred from taking on the job, which is already poorly paid.
Report this post - Anonymous

Frank, if you don't 'get it', then we are truly doomed.
Report this post - Anonymous

Ah Frank, but your speed limit signs never said "Take up to £24k per year regardless of what you need and sod the tax payer". It said that you should only claim for expenses "wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred to enable you to stay away overnight away from your only or main home for the purpose of performing your Parliamentary duties". Many people have to fund alternative accomodation to enable them to carry out their work (supposing they still have work). They don't get their cleaning and repairs done tax free. Hell hath no fury like a socialist forced to be as equal as others eh?
Report this post - Anonymous

The Legg Review has avoided dealing with the real problem and this was the massive abuse by flipping second homes and of tandem claims by husband and wife teams when MPs netted thousands while the rest of us struggle to pay our mortgages and others fail. My fear is that Legg was instructed to "get" certain people including you Mr Field. Inevitably in order to get you he had to be even handed and get some others as well but the amounts are trivial compared to the housing "racket" as practiced by members of the "in crowd" like Jackie Smith and of course many others who it seems are to be let off. This reminds of so many other corrupt incidents with this Government including the Hutton Inquiry - just another load of whitewash.
Report this post - Anonymous

Mr Field I have just read this BBC News report:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8312916.stmYou and your colleagues have brought parliament and your parties intodisrepute over the last few years by your collective abuse of the expensessystem.Ordinary people cannot claim handouts for housekeeping, gardening, furniture,redecoration, etc, so why on earth should you and your colleagues be able todo so? I run a business and would never be able to claim money from mybusiness for maintaining my own property. Now, please just stop whinging, pay up and get on with what you should bedoing, and stop trying to take advantage of the taxpayer!Look forward to hearing from you.Thanks
Report this post - Anonymous