David Laws, expenses and public service

I'm not going to get into the debate over David Law's sexuality because in the context of the controversy over his expenses claims, it's irrelevant.

Unless I've misunderstood something - it seems his "offence" is that having shacked up with his partner in London, he then claimed (substantially below) the second homes allowance for this over a period of four to five years - a total of about £40,000.

£40,000 may sound like a lot of money, but that's actually not a lot to be paying in rental over a period of 5 years (when I first moved to Brentwood in 2004, I rented a one bed place at 550 a month - that would have come to a total of about £33,000 over five years. That was about as cheap as I could get, and was for a small one bed flat).

The ridiculous thing about this does appear to be that had Laws -having claimed well below the allowance in the first place - simply "flipped" his second home to his constituency and claimed the full whack, wouldn't be under fire this morning.

The actual breech of the rules is that apparently it's not okay for an MP to pay his expenses to a family member or partner. So far, so good, and Laws has moved to pay the money back to the Commons authorities - it probably helps that he is "independently wealthy" as a result of his investment banking background.

But why precisely is it not acceptable for MPs to not claim expenses for staying with friends or family. One can essentially two approaches to expenses as expenses - one, that they should actually cover the costs to the MP of doing his job, or second, that they should be used by MPs who could not otherwise afford the costs of being an MP.

If we take the latter approach, then Laws shouldn't have claimed the expenses - the fact he can repay such a large sum of money indicates he was well able to pay them in the first place without claiming the money. This is not an unreasonable approach - it emphasises the public service element of being in politics, but doesn't prevent the less financially well off from entering parliament on affordability grounds. In effect, you means test the second homes allowance.

That's not what the rule book says though. What it says is that the costs are there to cover the expenses of being an MP. There is a category of MP that clearly needs a second home - either in London or in their own constituency (Laws almost certainly falls into this category). If an MP owns a house in their constituency, and then owns a flat in London - there is still a cost to them of using that flat in London - if they weren't using it for their duties as an MP, they might have the option to rent the flat out. So the cost to that MP, of using a flat in London, is that they lose the rental income on the flat they would otherwise have. Under the current rules though - they can't claim that. In fact I even recall one MP being criticised because they did rent out their London flat and then claimed second home expenses on a "third" property they used as their London base.

This is how it works in the real world by the way - if I stay with a friend instead of using a hotel on a business trip, I can claim a nightly allowance (under HMRC guidelines, there is a set amount which isn't taxed and doesn't require receipts). Most managers and finance departments if they see an expenses claim that comes well under the allowance tend not to question the details too much, as they are simply pleased that the employee has saved them money (a manager who is expecting to sign a claim for 3000 pounds and might look at the details will simply just sign a claim for the trip if it comes in at 2300 - and that's my own recent experience).

It's really quite simple - either we pay MPs expenses on a what it costs them basis, or we means test them. David Laws seems to have fallen into that gap where despite saving us money by his own lifestyle choices he is being condemned for... well what precisely?

Sir Fred's pension

As the Devil and Tim Worstall point out, if Sir Fred Goodwin's pension was part of an agreement reached between him and RBS as he exited the company, there's really no grounds in law for confiscating his pension money if he's not willing to give it up voluntarily. Sir Fred claims that he has already made a number of gestures in terms of his entitlements from RBS, and that the pension relates not just to his time in RBS but also his previous employments. Sir Fred also makes the claim that his pension arrangements "have not fundamentally altered" from when he joined RBS in 1998.

During his time in RBS, Mr Fred Goodwin became Sir Fred, due partly to the intervention of the then Chancellor. The same Chancellor whose regulatory system completely failed to prevent the collapse and (partial) nationalisation of several banks. Perhaps Sir Fred should consider this - offering to take the same percentage cut in his pension as the then Chancellor, given that they both messed up on the job.

I wonder how well that would play with the current resident of Number 10 Downing Street.

Princess Diana

Alex Massie has an excellent posting as we approach the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's life. My own memory of the event is still quite clear - the weekend before Princess Diana's death, I had been in Paris at the World Youth Day celebrations - the previous Sunday had seen a fair amount of world attention directed at Paris because of the million plus people who turned out for Pope John Paul's final Mass. The following Sunday I arrived at church to find the curate who had been in Paris the previous week preaching. He kept mentioning the "tragic event in Paris this morning" without elaborating, and it wasn't until we got home and put the radio on that we realised what had happened. That didn't stop me heading off to the U2 concert at Lansdowne Road that afternoon. By the time of her funeral the following weekend, I had got so fed up of the mawkish emotionalism that was dominating the Irish radio and news papers that I frankly couldn't wait for the whole thing to be over (it must have been hellish for those in England who wanted to watch television and didn't like the sentimentality of the thing) and jumped at the chance to spend the Saturday doing an extra shift of tech support for the ISP I worked for at the time. The effective canonisation of the Princess in the week when a real saint, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, died just annoyed me more.

One thing I would take issue with Alex over is this:

"....one wonders how long it would have been before the public began to see her as, not to put too fine a point on it, a tart. Hypocritical perhaps, but there are different rules for Princes than there are for Princesses."

Indeed there are - as I was in college for most of the 90s as the marraige of the Waleses fell apart, and the typical offerings in the GMB at Trinity College Dublin were the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Times, the Guardian and occassionally the Telegraph and the (London) Independent, I had the good fortune to miss most of the tabloid nonsense that accompanied the breakup. I was quite surprised therefore to realise that in fact I could easily count four "former lovers of Diana, Princess of Wales" - namely James Hewitt, Will Carling, Dodi al Fayed and that heart surgeon whose name escapes me. Prince Charles, rather than having a "string of love affairs" with women "of questionable suitability" had one long standing affair.

It's always struck me as odd that Charles has been villified for his single affair with one woman, while Diana was effectively canonised despite having had a string of them. It does indeed seem that even these days "there are different rules for Princes than there are for Princesses."