Foreign Perspectives

If some of the claims getting published these days is anything to go by, they seem never to have had to submit an expense claim as a subordinate working in some company or indeed, perhaps more appropriately, the civil service.

Although the vast majority claim to have kept their expenses claims “within the rules” that’s not really the issue and claims that they have “done nothing wrong” isn’t relevant. The issue is that the rules themselves are, in many cases, quite ridiculous.

For example, it would be quite convenient had I been able to claim expenses for a home that was closer to work. Clearly this would have meant that I’d have been more available to work late and so on. Yet, of course, I can’t do that because there’s no way the company would pay for that. I see that Peter Mandelson has claimed for work done to repair his roof as it was leaking. Ironically, Peter is one of the more honest of the politicians yet the thing is: it’s his roof, so why should he be able to claim it as an expense?

What is clear is that there is a need for politicians to have a home near to Westminster and it’s reasonable that expenses for this should be paid for. After all, it is (in principle) a temporary job and moreover they also need to live in their own constituencies where, in effect, their true home is. What’s not reasonable is that all MPs should be claiming for this second home because obviously many already live in London and it’s also unreasonable for them to be able to constantly switch which is their main and their second home which seems, in most cases, to be done solely to work the system.

More generally they also need to recognise that it’s unreasonable for them to be the only arbitrators for their own salaries. Whilst recognising that it was far from perfect the simplest way of doing this seems to have been to tie their salaries down to specific civil service ranks and perhaps while they’re at it, follow the rules on expenses that the civil servants do.