Expenses scandal: The betrayal that shocked us all
The ordinary people who suffer while MPs join the ‘gravy train’
Expenses scandal: The betrayal that shocked us all
By Paul Roberts
www.caringforyourbusiness.co.uk
Suzanne is an unpaid carer of an elderly mother struggling to cope with dementia. Between 6am and 8am, Suzanne helps to feed and dress her 83-year-old mother before leaving home to walk to work at a local supermarket.
A till operator, she starts work at 8.30am and rushes home during her lunch break to care for her mother – preparing her lunch, changing her clothes and making sure she is comfortable and safe in their rented two-bed semi-detached home.
Suzanne finishes work at 4.30pm. When she gets home, she faces three more hours of work – washing and clearing up, preparing an evening meal and taking her mother for a brief walk through the local park to ensure she has ‘fresh air’.
This is her routine five days a week. At weekends she looks after the garden, cuts the grass and shops at her local supermarket. She has no social life. Her mother needs constant care seven days a week – and Suzanne provides that care.
Suzanne earns the minimum wage – £5.72 an hour – and does her best to manage without claiming benefits. She has no car, walks everywhere and has promised her mother that she will look after her and not ‘put her into a care home’.
Two weeks ago – after being urged by friends and others to seek help – Suzanne plucked up the courage to see her local MP during his Saturday ‘surgery’ to ask if anything could be done to make her life easier.
The MP suggested that she should seek help from Social Services in the first instance and perhaps consider working extra hours at the supermarket to increase her income. But he warned her that ‘things are very tough because of the recession’ and she may struggle to secure help.
Suzanne thanked him for giving her the time to speak to her and decided to follow his advice. But within a few days she read and heard that her MP was being ‘named and shamed’ in the expenses scandal unveiled by the Daily Telegraph.
She discovered that, on top of his £60,000-plus a year salary, he had been claiming thousands each year for mortgage interest on a second home and claiming money from the public purse for food, mundane household items and utility bills.
Suzanne felt sick, angry and betrayed. She was shocked that someone she looked up to as her MP had been ‘raiding the public purse’ while she had been left to struggle alone on a poverty-line wage – and been told that the chances of help were slim.
Joanne, the owner of a UK homecare agency, had recently contacted her MP to discover how she could save her business from ruin in the recession. She was offered little hope of assistance and reminded how ‘everyone’ was being hit by the economic downturn.
Joanne told the MP how she had reduced staff expenses – for mileage claimed by care workers travelling to people’s homes – and borrowed money from her family in a last ditch attempt to keep her business operating.
She had asked her bank for help – but, of course, it was not prepared to step in even though she had been a good customer for more than 10 years.
Michael, a proud, elderly man living on his own in the north of England, found that he was no longer able to look after himself in his 90th year. He sought help from Social Services who arranged for a care worker to visit him every day.
He did not want to go into a care home. But, only receiving help for up to an hour a day six days a week, he was struggling to cope. He decided to speak to his MP – someone he knew and trusted – to ask if he could do anything to improve his life.
He received encouraging words. But to date, no additional assistance has been forthcoming. Michael continues to cope to the best of his ability in his one-bedroom maisonette, grateful that a care worker comes to see him most days, even if it is only for a short period.
Both Michael and Joanne were equally horrified when the full extent of expenses claimed by MPs was revealed. They were – and still are – very angry and felt that there was ‘one rule for MPs and one for the rest of us’.
Suzanne, Michael and Joanne have every reason to be outraged. They, like many of us, cannot understand how MPs have been able to benefit from the expenses ‘gravy train’ while everyone else has been feeling the pinch of the recession.
They are left speechless by the revelations of MPs ‘flipping’ second homes and by the acres of newspaper, radio and television coverage on expense claims for maintaining gardens, clearing out moats, horse manure, and buying luxury and everyday household items.
Their trust in their MPs has been shattered and the new package of emergency measures announced in the Commons to restore public confidence in parliament will be insufficient to heal the wounds opened by the expenses scandal.
Most people in business associate expenses with three things:
1. Mileage
2. Overnight accommodation
3. Subsistence (or meal) allowances
I claimed these expenses on a regular basis for more than 20 years. They were scrupulously checked by me and the company accountant before payments were made. Honesty was an important part of the process.
All my claims had to be accompanied by details of petrol purchased, hotel/other accommodation and legitimately claimed meals. There was little or no room for ‘cheating’. The system worked and everyone was happy about it.
As the Telegraph continues to expose the claims made by many MPs, there have been numerous jaw-dropping moments. It beggars belief that MPs and Ministers on good salaries can claim up to £400 a month for food and thousands for other everyday items.
Just what do they spend their salaries on? They seem to be able to claim for so much on a regular basis, it’s no wonder that many of them have no mortgages, fat bank balances, luxurious cars and lifestyles to match.
I am fed up hearing many of them argue that they have ‘always claimed within the rules’. They knew the rules stank – and were morally corrupt – and yet they were willing to play along with them because ‘rules are rules’.
The emergency measures announced in parliament will put an end to MPs ‘flipping’ their second homes and billing the taxpayer for furnishings and food. Mortgage interest payments will be capped at £1,200 a month.
The Fees Office, which inexplicably rubber-stamped dozens of highly questionable claims, will be abolished and replaced by an independent regulator which will publish all new claims online to increase transparency.
The measures were approved by leaders of the main political parties at a meeting with the outgoing speaker who had the good grace to fall on his sword and announce his resignation before the rebellion on expenses got out of hand.
They will remain in place until Sir Christopher Kelly’s Committee on Standards in Public Life publishes new rules later this year.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he is ‘angry and appalled’ by the way MPs have exploited the expenses system and he has hinted that more MPs and Ministers will face the possibility of suspension as their claims are investigated.
He has agreed that Westminster cannot operate ‘like some gentlemen’s club’. But Mr Brown has rejected calls for an early General Election, despite the overwhelming view that this will be the only way of resolving the mess parliament finds itself in.
Some MPs have foolishly attempted to justify extortionate expense claims by arguing that the Commons has been reluctant to increase salaries. That is no excuse for milking an appalling system that has encouraged the worst excesses.
Many people in the UK would support higher salaries for MPs – with a substantial reduction in expenses – to increase pay transparency and avoid the exploitation of tax and other gaping loopholes.
But the changes now coming into force will in no way make up for the betrayal that ordinary electors are feeling right now. Parliament – and many of its members – should not underestimate the damage they have done to democracy.
Paul Roberts
www.caringforyourbusiness.co.uk
Roberts Consultants, specialists in developing care businesses
November 13th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Thanks for the great read!
January 5th, 2011 at 6:57 pm
I love your writing. It is very motivating.