12th May 2009 “I support Cameron’s expenses plan” – David Maclean
Member of Parliament for Penrith and the Border, David Maclean, says he strongly supports David Cameron’s tough new plan to be ruthless on all Conservative MP’s over expenses claims. He has also volunteered to submit his past expenses to the special new scrutiny committee for checking, even though they have not been challenged yet.
Speaking from Westminster he said, “Last year a senior Labour MP, a Lib Dem MP and I worked very hard for six months inventing a new, streamlined and fairer allowances system that was cost neutral to the taxpayer and Members of Parliament. It abolished the John Lewis list among other radical reforms. David Cameron put a 3 line whip on it to try to vote it through. But Labour put on a 3 line whip against the reforms going through and we lost. I fought for those reforms at the time and I regret that they did not go through. Now we must, whether justified or not, bare the complete loss of our reputations from this expenses scandal. I therefore support David’s initiative that we have to go way beyond the House of Commons rules and submit ourselves to further scrutiny, above and beyond what is legally necessary. I am therefore going to look out my past expenses claims which have all been approved by the House of Commons authorities and ask the scrutiny committee to look at them. If they say that anything I have legitimately claimed is in their opinion unreasonable or excessive then I shall pay it back.
For the record, my quad bike and electric wheelchair is owned by the House of Commons authorities and I have the use of it so long as I am an MP. Nevertheless, if the new committee thinks this is excessive I shall give them up.
These steps are all essential until Christopher Kelly reports on a new allowances scheme and he will have to do what has been lacking in the criticism of the last few days i.e. suggest a workable alterative. We have to spend almost half our working lives in Westminster, every suggestion on how the cost of that should be covered has been rejected by media critics. At some point, someone will have to invent a system which will be regarded as fair to the taxpayer and to MP’s so that Members of Parliament will be able to do their work in the constituency and also go to London to fight for our constituencies there.”
