Keen To Claim But Not So Keen To Repay We Suspect!
From today’s Sunday Times.
Quote: The health minister Ann Keen is this weekend revealed to have insured her 70-year-old husband’s life for £430,000 – and to have claimed the premiums on parliamentary expenses.
Keen took out a joint HSBC “first death” policy with her husband Alan, also a Labour MP, which meant if one of them died the other would get the payout.
The £867 monthly premiums were submitted as part of their parliamentary expenses. The couple are already entitled to generous payouts if one of them dies under the Commons pension scheme.
Details of the policy have been released after a three-year freedom of information battle by The Sunday Times. Michael Martin, the Speaker, was forced to publish the expenses of 14 MPs after spending more than £200,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to block their release. Unquote.
Regular visitors to this site may also remember:-
Quote: Husband and wife Labour MPs Alan and Ann Keen claimed £40,000 in expenses between them in a year without submitting a single receipt, it has emerged.
They were paid the money from the public purse and were never asked to explain why they needed it.
The couple each claimed – and received – £1,640 a month during 2002/03, one-twelfth of the maximum allowed in one year.
There is no suggestion that the couple broke the rules.
Details were revealed three years after a Freedom of Information request was put in.
Mrs Keen, 59, a junior health minister, is MP for Brentford and Isleworth in West London.
Her 70-year-old husband represents the neighbouring constituency of Feltham and Heston.
The couple – known as Mr and Mrs Expenses – live in West London, but also have a home in central London nine miles away. Unquote.
More here .
Also in today’s Sunday Times:-
Quote: In an imposing residential block with its own swimming pool, gym complex and 24-hour concierge is a flat that has earned some notoriety in Westminster.
To date, Ann Keen, the health minister, and her husband Alan, who is also an MP, have used two mortgages and more than £100,000 of public funds to help pay for it.
The flat on the south bank of the Thames is just a short stroll from the Houses of Parliament and was bought by the Keens — dubbed “Mr and Mrs Expenses” by Westminister wags — for £500,000.
The couple funded its purchase in May 2002 with a mortgage on the flat and an additional loan on their family home in Brentford, west London. They then claimed the interest payments for both mortgages back on parliamentary expenses.
Details of the unusual purchase arrangements — which appear to have been sanctioned by House of Commons officials — are disclosed in documents released after a three-year freedom of information battle by The Sunday Times. Michael Martin, the House of Commons Speaker, notched up legal bills of £200,000 in trying to block the publication of the breakdown of expenses of 14 MPs, but admitted defeat last week.
The documents lay bare a lax, confused and poorly recorded expenses system. The documents and inquiries by The Sunday Times have established that:
The Keens insured each other’s lives for £430,000 — and claimed the premiums on expenses. Unquote:
This may be read in full here .
And images of Ann Keen’s claims and related documentation may be viewed: here .
Socialists, apparently, certainly believe in the Marxist theory (and practice) of the redistribution of wealth!
