Dedicated Followers Of Mammon

Two Conservative MPs – Sir Peter Viggers and Anthony Steen – will resign their seats at the next election. Sir Peter will step down as MP for Gosport in Hampshire "at the direct request" of David Cameron after spending tens of thousands of pounds on gardening, including a £1,645 bill for a floating "duck island", while Mr Steen, the MP for Totnes in Devon who claimed £87,729 on his luxurious country house, will also leave the Commons.



Steen has now "unreservedly apologised" for saying the public should not have been allowed to see what he claimed.


Three Labour MPs – Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Margaret Moran, who claimed £22,500 on expenses to treat dry rot at her "second home" over 100 miles from her Luton constituency, will be summoned next week to a disciplinary panel to defend their claims. Gordon Brown has warned that no MP who has "defied the rules" on expenses will be allowed to stand at the next election. 

Ex-minister Elliot Morley, suspended by Labour following reports about his expenses, has told the BBC that he can prove he did not over-claim on purpose.

The Parliamentary Labour Party took action against Mr Morley after he claimed £16,000 for a mortgage that had already been paid off. 

Mr Morley said he was sorry for making the claim, but promised that "I will demonstrate that it was a mistake". 


This is Not a Picture of Margaret Moran the Member of Parliament.

According to the Financial Times it is also alleged that Margaret Moran used parliamentary resources to help a company partially run from her constituency office win up to £50,000 of public funding and business sponsorship between 2006 and 2008. 

Hundreds of documents seen by the Financial Times dated from 2006 to 2008 show that Ms Moran used her parliamentary staff to write funding bids for Equality Networks (EQN), a non-profit group of which she is the non-remunerated chair, telling one that the salary the individual received was tied to working for EQN. Michael Booker, her fiancé, is one of two company directors. Her constituency office also helped organise “great networking opportunities” at EQN conferences with ministers personally invited by Ms Moran.

When EQN bids for funding were unsuccessful, Ms Moran repeatedly used Commons-headed paper to intervene with local authorities and Whitehall departments to express her “concern and amazement”.

A statement authorised by Ms Moran in response to the FT stated that “Margaret has never written any letters for EQN on parliamentary headed notepaper”.

However, the FT has seen copies of letters written by Ms Moran in 2007 on Commons-headed paper supporting EQN funding bids and personal invitations to EQN events sent to businesses on Commons headed paper.

MPs remain entitled to two pay-offs so long as they serve until the general election, rather than resign immediately. MPs who step down, or lose their seats, at an election are paid a "resettlement grant" to compensate for loss of salary. It ranges between six months' and one year's pay depending on age and length of service.

An MP aged between 55 and 64 who has been in Parliament for 15 years will be paid a year's salary – £64,766 at current rates. The first £30,000 is tax-free. In addition, all MPs can claim a maximum of £40,799 for "winding-up costs" to pay off staff and end office leases. They also benefit from a final salary pension scheme heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. 

Margaret Moran's Behaviour Unacceptable According To Brown

Tom Bradby from ITN asks Brown:

what he would say to members of the public who think ordinary people would get punished more severely if they behaved in a comparable way to MPs. Does Brown back Margaret Moran (the Luton MP who claimed around £20,000 for dry rot in a home many miles from her constituency)?

Brown says:

That Moran's behaviour was "totally unacceptable". He says that she should be investigated by the parliamentary commissioner for standards before a decision is taken. (We didn't know that case had gone to the commissioner.) It sounds likes he's just terminated Moran's career.

Another journalist says anyone caught shoplifting who tried to get off by paying back the money would not get away with that. Why could Blears get away with that?

Brown says: 

That Blears's behaviour was "totally unacceptable", but Blears was not breaking any rules. That's the strongest criticism he has made of Blears in public. Sounds like her government career may not last much longer.

Margaret Moran MP

Telegraph: Second home 'flip' paid £22,500 dry rot bill

Internal records show that the Commons' authorities considered that Labour backbencher Margaret Moran's arrangement broke the "spirit" of the rules but felt powerless to stop her taking advantage of the loose system of Parliamentary allowances. 

The semi-detached house, a hundred yards from the seafront in Southampton, is a two-hour drive from both Parliament and Miss Moran's marginal constituency of Luton South.

Thanks to GOT for the idea of the morphing.

Does MP mean Miss Piggy?

UPDATE: Video no longer works. I've replaced it with a piccy.

Update 2: Margaret Moran has agreed to pay back the £22,500 she took for the dry rot bill.

After being overwhelmed by complaints from angry constituents, Miss Moran has backed down and agreed to repay all the expenses money she received for the shared property in Southampton. 

In a statement she said: "I have at all times sought to serve my constituents in Luton South with honesty and integrity. I have always tried to act with decency and to do the right thing. 

"The expenses currently in question were claimed in full consultation with the Fees Office in the House of Commons, and I have always followed their guidance and stuck to the rules. 

"However, I do understand constituents' anger at the current fees regime, which is why I will be repaying the full amount claimed for my home in Southampton."