TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 2009
Bonkers MPs Should Lose Seats
Alistair Campbell thinks MPs detained under the Mental Health Act should not automatically lose their seats. The BBC reports him saying that such a “simple and symbolic” rule change would be a“powerful” way to lift the taboo around mental health which exists in politics. Campbell said many MPs including members of Tony Blair’s government had had mental problems. Yes, someone did once say that Gordon Brown was“psychologically flawed”. Sorry, but Guido really doesn’t want bonkers politicians running the country anymore…
+++ Shahid Malik Being Investigated +++
Standards Commissioner today confirms he is investigating if Malik’s parliamentary expenses were used to defray his personal expenses. He has written to Malik asking him to explain himself…
UPDATE : Letter is now up on Sunlight COP’s site.
Government Paying Banks to Help Sell Gilts
You might have got the impression that the economy is turning. In reality the debt crisis is now in phase two and the government can’t easily find buyers for gilts.* In what is a rare shame for a triple-A rated nation, HM Treasury was forced this morning to ask banks for help selling the debt paper. Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and RBS are looking for buyers of £5 billion of Gordon’s gilts round the market with generous yields being offered. Not quite a buy-one-get-one-free offer. Not yet anyway…
When Gordon set up the Debt Management Office it was supposed to handle gilt sales for the government. The tidal wave of government debt flooding the market has made that more difficult…
See also: S&P Downgrades UK Government Debt
*Full disclosure, Guido sold gilt futures before breakfast this morning.
Polly has written an article on ‘candour’ today
Osborne’s plans will be set out “in due course”, he says, but watch out: “Some savings will only become apparent when we have the chance to look at the books in government.” So we won’t know until after an election – and that’s not honest. There is nothing hidden in government books. It’s all in the Treasury’s red book.
Got that? When the Shadow Chancellor says he needs to have a look at the books once he is in government, he isn’t being honest because he need only look in the government’s openly published Treasury red book. Polly has caught Osborne out!
A few paragraphs down she writes
The red book’s own predications are usually wrong.
Errrm…
N.B. Want to see Richard Littlejohn’s classic bitch-slap of Polly again? The video is here.
Kelly Review of MP’s Expenses
The Committee on Standards in Public Life Review of MPs’ Expenses kicks off today with opening evidence from “witnesses”; Harriet Harman MP, Alan Duncan MP and David Heath MP. Surely they are “the accused”?
Sir Christopher Kelly invited evidence from all interested parties and some of the submissions were better than others. Some of the best submissions (out of hundreds) are up on the Committee’s website. Guido suggests you skip reading all the MPs’ self serving demands. In the main they unsurprisingly argue for even more money. Look instead at some of the more realistic submissions:
Donald Hirsch, Head of Income Studies, Loughborough University argues for a £1,600 increase in pay to compensate MPs for loss of their well-padded expense perks. They base this on the same sort calculations applied to welfare claimants. That seems a fair basis to Guido.
The Sunlight Centre for Open Politics makes income comparisons both internationally and against average UK earnings and consequently argues for no increase in MPs’ expense allowances or pay. Transparency International suggests some safeguards against MPs’ corruption. Unlock Democracy puts forward some broad ideas and principles. The Taxpayers’ Alliance suggests among other ideas, accommodating MPs in the Olympic Village. It is fair to say that all these NGOs make the case for transparency down to the last penny.
The Council of Employment Judges suggests MPs should get the same expenses as them, £95 a night. The Chartered Institute of Public Finance Accounting wants full accounting, the National Audit Office wants to do the accounting. The Electoral Commssion wants harmonisation of various reporting requirements.
The NGOs which do not receive taxpayer subsidies on the whole do not want another Quango, the various Quangos all want to protect or increase their turf. All the political parties claim to want to reduce the cost of MPs’ expenses. It will be interesting to see who is called from outside the cosy political establishment to give evidence, Peter Oborne has made a submission…
Best Idea for MPs’ Second Homes Crisis Solution
Guido loves this idea from the Taxpayers’ Alliance on how to solve the problem of MPs’ second homes: house them in the Olympic Village after the Olympics.
There will be a legacy of 3,000 homes after the Olympics, so it would require no new capital. The project has been nationalised already since it failed to attract outside capital, the 572 MPs outside London could be housed there at no extra cost.
As they point out, since the Olympics forms a major terrorist target the Olympic Village will already have been built with security in mind. Housing MPs in a single location will make it easier to arrange a variety of services.
It is also constructed in an ecologically sound fashion and provides a low carbon emissions means of transport connection to Westminster via the Jubilee line tube network that would take only 25 minutes. If it is good enough for Olympians, it is surely good enough for our humble public servants…
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