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Comment: MPs' greed
Evening Standard comment26.10.07
Yet again, the cost of MPs' perks and expenses has gone up, by almost five per cent in the past year, to an average of £135,850. This includes the cost of running their second homes, staff, taxis and offices. One London MP, Siobhan McDonagh, spent a staggering £49,107 on stationery.
MPs in marginal seats spend significantly more than those in safe seats, which suggests that some of them use taxpayer-funded stationery for campaigning purposes. At the same time, the time MPs spend in Parliament gets shorter - they work just 34 weeks a year.
The details of all these expenses would not be in the public domain at all if MPs could help it. They went out of their way this year to try to keep the breakdown of their expenses from the reach of the Freedom of Information Act but were eventually shamed into greater transparency. What an unlovely spectacle of greed and self-interest it all presents.
Reader views (1)
Do these people have no sense of shame or decency? They appear to have lost any contact with reality. A ten day suspension from a working year of 38 weeks for what would be a possible prison sentence and a definite loss of job in the real world.
- Peter Robinson, Audierne, France
