Exclusive: Examiner puts your questions to MPs - video
May 23 2009 by Sam Casey, Huddersfield Daily Examiner
What do you earn?
Have either of you made any claims that you regret looking back?
KM: No. I think if I was going to regret it I wouldn’t have done it.
BS: I haven’t claimed for anything I shouldn’t have and I’m very happy with the scrutiny that the whole thing’s getting now.
I resent people apologising on behalf of the MPs, they might want to apologise but I don’t think I’ve done anything.
I’ve never wanted to vote on my own salaries and expenses, I’ve been forced to. I’ve always argued against.
And I’ve also said to all three leaders – Cameron, Brown and Clegg – will we accept Christopher Kelly’s report (into MPs’ expenses) when it comes out? I haven’t heard any of them say yes. And if they don’t we will be in the same mess.
We want a fair system by an independent body. Unfortunately the prime ministers have never accepted that principle.
Kali, you were on the advisory panel for members’ allowances. Why hasn’t anything been done before now?
This was what we have been looking at for two years, writing all of this, we were conscious that this needed to be done and it was set up by the speaker.
We didn’t need the Telegraph to do this, we were doing it anyway. If people think I looked annoyed because of the Telegraph it’s because I knew how much work we’d put into this.
Looking at claims that we thought were doubtful, we needed to clean it up. There is nothing there that we hadn’t looked at and how we’d regulate it.
Have you been shocked by some of the allegations? Which ones?
KM: Some of them, but I’d prefer not to name names.
In some cases because of who they are rather than what they have done. I have been really sad to find they have been accused of something that I would never have anticipated.
Some people you think ‘I’d expect it from them’ and so it’s not so shocking.
Some of them have made mistakes. Some mistakes are on behalf of the Telegraph because some of them submit receipts on which there are plenty of things they haven’t claimed for so they are accused of claiming for things they really didn’t and some people have submitted similar receipts and have claimed for things accidentally they never intended to claim for, like dog food and that was a little misdemeanour that was never intended.
We were already looking at this issue before the Telegraph articles.
All of this misdoing would have been found and put right.
Everybody would’ve known about it and it would have been dealt with in a calm and rational way and we could have had an open debate about what to do about it and we would have been able to say let’s deal with these people who have done wrong properly and we wouldn’t have been having trial by chequebook journalism.
BS: There is one particular person who has been accused who is on my committee, David Chaytor (MP for Bury who claimed £13,000 for a mortgage that did not exist).
I’ve always found him the straightest person I could possibly imagine.
I believe when the full enquiry goes through we will find he has not broken the laws and I will stand by any of my colleagues until they have been proven to have done something wrong.
The Telegraph is highlighting certain of them in a particular way and some of them look amusing, to clean the slime off your moat or to have a duck house. Some of them sound ridiculous and slightly amusing, but they are not amusing.
Do you think there should be criminal prosecutions?
KM: If someone has broken the law and they have shown to have broken the law, absolutely yes.
There should be a proper process, you don’t jump to conclusions and my own view is that process should involve referral to the House of Commons standards committee.
For other people the remedy might be within the law, within the tax law where it’s a civil remedy or in the criminal law, where it might be fraud.
We do acknowledge that we are people that have been given this really big duty on behalf of the public, so we have to be better than average behaviour. But equally we are entitled to a proper hearing.
BS: Most of the MPs we are talking about have done nothing wrong. There is a significant minority where the allegations are quite serious, but I suspect it is very few that are of a criminal type.
Some of them may have bent the rules and we have to find out if they have bent them or not. But you are innocent until proven guilty in this country but I’m not willing for any of my colleagues to be charged and sentenced by the Daily Telegraph.
I have to remind you that their former owner, Conrad Black, is still in prison for massive fraud in Canada.
Once this independent group is established to go through people’s expenses.
I was trying to total up the number of MPs flagged up by the Telegraph.
The vast majority of MPs have come under scrutiny and come through unscathed. Many of them have done no wrong and some of them believe the way the Telegraph has spun the story about them has prejudged a proper analysis of what it was.
Should there be general election?
KM: Not over this. You shouldn’t be voting on who you want as your next government over expenses, because for one thing no one party will come out of this well. A general election should be separated out of this issue.
BS: We need to let this get sorted and settled before we go into a general election.
Will this issue dissuade potentially very good MPs from wanting to pursue careers as MPs?
KM: I think that’s a very real possibility because I even know of some MPs who are not accused of anything thinking of standing down themselves, which makes me sad.
BS: No. This will calm down and it’s still the best job in the world.
What do you think of our MPs’ responses? Let us know by contacting the Examiner on 01484 437728 or e-mailing letters@examiner.co.uk.
A thank you to readers who submitted their questions. They included: Bill Macbeth of Huddersfield, Betty Sweeney of Dalton, P Fahey of Fixby, C.R. Atkinson of Honley, Tony Whittaker of Skelmanthorpe, George Mellor of Meltham, K Gledhill of Dalton, Gerald Sharp of Waterloo, Julie Hosty, D Exley formerly of Highburton, Markham Weavill of Linthwaite, A E Brown of Huddersfield, Alan Starr of Golcar, Nigel Bates and David Billington.
Other readers also submitted questions and we did not ask every question submitted but have tried to cover the most popular subjects.
On May 23 and June 4, we reported that Colne Valley MP Kali Mountford had told us that there was no payment for ‘finishing as an MP’.
In fact, when we first asked her about so-called ‘parachute payments’, there was some confusion about whether we were referring to an allowance that allows retiring or defeated MPs to clear their backlog and hand over cases to their successor, or to the resettlement grant, which is essentially a redundancy payment.
Ms Mountford believed we were talking about the former allowance, which does not directly benefit MPs. We accept that Ms Mountford was not seeking to mislead people and apologise for any confusion.
Additionally, we quoted Ian Leedham, Ms Mountford's husband and assistant, as saying that he could not remember which charitable causes she donated money to after receiving a windfall on her second home.
We are happy to clarify that he was not referring to the sums given to charity but to the precise amount of capital gains tax they had paid following the sale of their second home.
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