03 April 2023 , 12:32
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In May 2022, then-Attorney General Suella Braverman told a Question Time audience: "I'm a Conservative because I want to keep more of your money in your pocket, not the government's."
In the same month, she filed an expenses claim for £303.03 for gas and electric, £270 for council tax, and £21.06 for broadband - but not for the second, constituency home the taxpayer might expect to pay for.
No, that £594.09 she claimed in May 2022 was used to pay the costs of her family home. Heating the water, powering the fridge, getting the bins emptied, providing the internet, in a home where the main beneficiaries of the taxpayer's largesse were her husband and two young children.
"But it's within the rules!" (AFP via Getty Images)Money was taken out of our pockets, and quite literally put into those of her family. One can only imagine the horror she would express if an asylum seeker had bent the benefits rules, and found a way to legally ensure their family had their heating bill paid by the taxpayer for years.
Ms Braverman, it is fair to say, is not widely liked. Soft-hearted liberals loathe her for her hardline stance on immigration and Brexit, while dyed-in-the-wool racists are conflicted by the fact a brown lady seems to hate migrants as much as they do. Somewhere in the middle is a woman in her 40s who feels put-upon by everyone, and is no doubt thinking, even as I type, that this story is a woke-blob hit job by people who want to stop her doing her job.
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Not at all, Suella - it's just we want to pay only YOU for doing your job, not you, your husband, and your children as well.
If this was a hit job, the inside source was the woman who decided to flip her second home expenses, wasn't it? (PA)After the MPs' expenses scandal of 2009, and in the midst of a cost-of-living and energy crisis, the Mirror's revelations today that the Home Secretary has claimed £25,000 over five years for utility bills rather sticks in the throat.
Ms Braverman wasn't in Parliament when MPs' greed caused nationwide fury, although it's hard to imagine she didn't notice the enormous national row as she was obsessed with politics, had already stood once as a Tory candidate, and her mother was a Tory councillor.
So she should have known the expenses rules were rewritten to avoid bad behaviour, and that as a result non-London MPs who own their second home are now helped only with utility bills, as otherwise they'd have to pay council tax, broadband, and energy twice. And after she was elected in 2015, she certainly seems to have understood the spirit and letter of the rules.
For the first two years, she claimed the rent on a home in the constituency. Two years later, she told Parliamentary authorities she was living rent-free in a home in the constituency owned by her parents, so 'flipped' her claim for a flat in London which she already owned. Despite this not quite being what the rules intended, she asked the taxpayer to refund her utility bills.
It would have been cheaper just to train it in from Fareham, which would only cost £35 return for a 90-minute trip (AFP via Getty Images)After she married in 2018, she rented out her London flat, moved in with her new husband Rael, and 'flipped' the expenses to their marital home, claiming again for utility bills. Then they bought a bigger, £1.2m house in Hertfordshire together, and she 'flipped' the claim for a third time, continuing to claim running costs at the family home.
Now, this is not a second home. She is not compelled to live there as a result of her job. Yet it is the home she has designated as a second home, and for which she is claiming utility bills that, in theory, are supposed to be incurred as a direct result of being an MP. And it looks, sounds, and smells, like she's got a flipping cheek.
Try as I might, I just cannot see how a house in Hertfordshire has the tiniest thing to do with her being an MP in Hampshire, or a Home Secretary in Whitehall. From the expenses claims that have been published it looks like she's claiming the full amounts of these utility bills - not a proportion, not saying that the taxpayer should stump up half the cost of the broadband, or a bit of the council tax. It looks very much like she's claiming the whole whack, which means she and her husband are getting a nice warm house without any of the nice big bills.
Because £5,000 a year on utility bills is going it some. If only there was a decent government insulation scheme in place, she might be able to bring those costs down a bit, eh?
"Why I should I switch the lights off, when I'm not paying the bill?" (AFP via Getty Images)The people who hate Suella will hate her more for this; those who admire her will say it doesn't matter. Where it will hurt is when those in the middle get angry, once again, at being taken for mugs by extremely wealthy people who will bend the rules to benefit themselves while tightening them for everyone else.
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Because while she was taking handouts averaging £500 a month, she was happy for every working family on Universal Credit to lose £20 every week. While she was flipping her addresses to keep claiming money, she was locking up asylum seekers in disease-ridden camps barely fit for human habitation. And while she complained about the cost to the taxpayer of housing migrants, she saw nothing wrong with the costs of housing MPs who already have three homes.
With her ministerial salary she earns £12,500 a month. Is she really so desperate for cash that she needs us to pay £20 broadband?
But then, the system we've got is the one MPs voted for. It was one designed by them, enshrined in law by them, and the chairman of the board which runs their "independent" regulator is appointed by the Speaker of the House of Commons. It's like us claiming expenses from a mate, under rules we wrote ourselves.
They told us they'd fixed it. We should have realised there was more than one way of interpreting that.
Suella won't be the only one, and the Tories won't be unique in feathering their nests at our expense. But there is a simple way out of this refreshed expenses scandal, and it is the same way out we had back in 2009 and which everyone ignored.
Not a single MP requires a home to do their job, or for us to fund their utility bills. Parliament starts late on a Monday, and takes Fridays off, purely so that they have time to travel to and from their constituency, which is where they should all live in the first place.
For three and maybe four nights a week, they need to be near Parliament, but with London rents what they are it seems unreasonable to expect the taxpayer to line the pockets of the capital's landlords.
Therefore I suggest we take a leaf out of Ms Braverman's book. Either we make them camp out in a disused airfield and bus them in every day, or we moor a three-storey accommodation barge in the River Thames and let them live in that.
The Bibby Stockholm's been used to house asylum seekers and oil rig workers. Surely MPs can't object?Despite being called an "oppressive environment" by inspectors, the Bibby Stockholm which is reportedly going to be used by the government to house asylum seekers has wifi throughout, and could enable MPs to step straight onto the Commons terrace, thereby reducing utility bills and mileage claims as well.
Unless, of course, Ms Braverman is not the sort of Conservative whose sole motivation is keeping money in the taxpayer's pocket, and out of the government's. Unless she's the sort of person who'd refuse to live in the conditions she tells others to. Unless she thinks it'd be like living on a prison hulk, with risks of disease, damp, and cold that would shorten lives and make the inhabitants vulnerable to corruption by the worst elements of society.
Making MPs live in the sort of mulitple-occupancy, less-than-thrilling accommodation they think is perfectly suitable for everybody else would probably have a strong deterrent effect on attracting the wrong sort of people to Parliament in the first place.
It's a policy that even lends itself to a simple, three-word slogan: stop the gloats.