It is becoming a bit more clear on what is perceived to have gone wrong with MP's expenses. Since 2005 (i think) there has been a deliberate system in place as part of the MP's remuneration. The first thing is to seperate the 'official' expenses system where MPs can claim back their genuine expenses. Apart from possible questions about what constitutes 'genuine' expenses, this is all open and above board. Of course the administration of this process has to be correctly done, but if they accept an invoice as valid then that is down to them and not the MP. The real problem stems from an attempt by the government to increase the MP's salary. They apparantly felt that they couldn't do it by just increasing the salaries because the public would object. Instead, they thought that they would do it be stealth. So the (un)official system was to set up a bucket of money for each MP and then encourage them to claim from this bucket. This was not for official expenses. It was just a way to pay MPs more. They didn't even have to submit a receipt for amounts under £250 but some did. The whole object of this exercise was to pay the MPs more money. Of course those submitted receipts included many items which were not justifiable expenses. But they didn't have to be justifiable expenses! This bucket contained additional income and MPs are entitled to spend their income as they wanted to! What a lousy system that government set up! They should simply have paid the MPs more money, if that is what they wanted to do, and avoided all this fuss. This deceitful approach raises questions about sidestepping taxable pay. Does this method of improving MPs salaries involve an elementof tax avoidance? It also raises questions about this government being prepared to deceive the general public about the level of MPs salaries!
Keywords: crisis, expense, expenses, member, mp, parliament, remuneration