Tweedle-Pig-Dee and Tweedle-Pig-Dum: Tories Identical to Labour in Stealing from Taxpayer for Bogus “Expenses”
It turns out that the blue Conservative pigs are just as much a con-artist operation as the red Labour pigs in Westminster. Shocking new revelations have shown that the Tories are just as guilty as the Government of ripping off the public purse with outrageous “expenses” claims.
The following Tories have now been exposed as pilferers from your tax money:
* Alan Duncan. The Tory Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and the senior Conservative MP who, incredibly, is supposed to oversee his party’s policy on MPs’ expenses, claimed over £7,000 for, inter alia, having his grass cut, repairs to a ride-on lawnmower and £41 to fix a puncture.
Mr Duncan also claimed £1,400 a month for his mortgage interest on his home in Rutland – despite records now showing that he purchased the property without a mortgage in January 1992. In the last six years, Mr Duncan has claimed £127,658 under the second home allowance for this property.
Mr Duncan’s main home in Westminster is made up of two 18th Century council houses which were joined together. Before the two houses were merged, Mr Duncan used his single council house as a leadership office base for Tory leader John Major. In 1992, Mr Duncan was rewarded by being made a minister under Major.
Within weeks it emerged that Mr Duncan had lent his elderly next door neighbour money so that hecould buy his home under the right-to-buy legislation. The neighbour bought the property at a significant discount and sold it to Mr Duncan just over three years later. In the ensuing furore, Mr Duncan resigned from his ministerial position.
* David Willetts, the shadow universities secretary, claimed more than £100 for workmen to replace twenty five light bulbs at his home.
* Oliver Letwin, the chairman of the Conservatives’ policy team, claimed more than £2,000 to replace a leaking pipe under a tennis court.
* Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, spent more than £7,000 in five months furnishing a London property in 2006 before “flipping” his second home designation to a new property he bought in Surrey.
He then claimed more than £13,000 in stamp duty and other fees from his Parliamentary expenses for this property.
* Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, spent thousands of pounds renovating a thatched Tudor country cottage shortly before selling it. He redecorated inside and out with premium paint at a cost of £2,000 and re-shingled the driveway. He then “flipped” his expenses to a Georgian flat in London where he claimed for thousands of pounds in furnishings including a Laura Ashley sofa.
* Francis Maude, the shadow minister for the cabinet office, attempted to claim the mortgage interest on his family home in Sussex. This arrangement was rejected by the Fees Office. Two years later, Mr Maude bought a flat in London which is a few minutes walk from a house he already owned. He then rented out the other property and began claiming on the new flat: the taxpayer has since covered nearly £35,000 in mortgage interest payments.
* Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, claimed thousands of pounds to renovate a London flat 17 miles from his family home. Mr Grayling already owned three properties within the M25 but still bought the flat with loans subsidised by the taxpayer. He then claimed for work on the property for up to a year after it was carried out. This enabled him to claim close to the maximum amount allowable under the expenses system during different years.
* Cheryl Gillan, the shadow Welsh secretary, claimed for dog food on her expenses.
* Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers claimed almost £16,000 in stamp duty on a flat in south London, despite having a house in her north London constituency.
Earlier, Tory Leader David Cameron said that the revelations would make a “bad day for the Conservative party.”
Mr Cameron seems to have forgotten his speech at the recent Tory party conference in Cheltenham where he said he would publicly “name and shame” all civil servants, quango chiefs and town hall officials earning more than £150,000 per year.
Mr Cameron failed to mention Tory MP for Hertsmere, Herts, James Clappison, who claimed almost £100,000 of taxpayers’ cash for a second home while building up a property empire. Mr Clappison owns 22 houses which he rents out yet has pocketed £97,892 in Commons allowances intended to pay for a second home.
Mr Cameron also ignored the fact that all members of his party joined the Labour and Lib-Dems in voting for a five percent limit on price rises in the taxpayer-subsidised bars, restaurants and cafeterias of Westminster.
This means that they will avoid the price hikes of up to eighteen percent faced by the public in supermarkets and other stores across the country.
Taxpayers will be forced to pay an extra £5 million a year to bankroll the exclusive food and drink for the MPs.
Mr Cameron was also quiet about the £1.4 million spent on “fact-finding” visits to exotic destinations by backbench MPs from all parties. Locations for these “inquiries” by House of Commons select committees included Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Shanghai, New York, Sydney and Barcelona. Accommodation in five-star hotels, first-class flights and a daily cash allowance for “extras” are all provided from Treasury funds. MPs have already booked overseas jaunts costing more than £1 million in total for the year ahead. Trips already pencilled in include the Work and Pensions Committee going to Canada to look at “pensioner poverty” at a cost of up to £55,083.
The Justice Committee will head to South Africa — at a cost of £48,051 — to study “the role of a prison officer.”
Mr Cameron also shut up about the fact that 16 out of 27 Conservative Party Members of the European Parliament employ their wives or relatives at the taxpayers’ expense, with four of the party’s MEPs paying their wives salaries of £30,000 to £40,000. Another twelve employed their partner or family member on salaries ranging from less than £10,000 to £30,000.
Mr Cameron was also quiet on the issue of the former Tory MEP Chief Whip Den Dover, who was caught out last year for claiming £750,000 in staff and office allowances to the family-owned firm HP Holdings, which was run by his wife and daughter.
Mr Cameron was also strangely quiet on the issue of Tory London MEP Charles Tannock who was reimbursed £15,228 in daily allowance payments, designed to cover accommodation and subsistence in Brussels. He spent 60.5 days in the city over the period in question — less than three months of the year.
Mr Cameron was silent about South West MEP Tory Giles Chichester who stood down as leader of the Tory Euro group last year following claims that he broke expenses rules by paying thousands in staff allowances to a firm of which he was a paid director. A report by think tank Open Europe also shows that between September and December, 26 of the Tory MEPs claimed an average of £36,303 on all travel, office expenses and allowances.
Finally, Mr Cameron was as quiet as a grave about his own personal expenses. According to official figures, Mr Cameron claimed £149,026 in direct expenses.
This figure is significant, as it puts his announcement that he would “name and shame” those who claimed “above £150,000″ in a new light: obviously he decided on that figure so as to exclude himself.
This £149,026 is over and above his parliamentary salary of £132,317 as MP and leader of the opposition. This means that Mr Cameron’s own personal income for the last year totalled £281,343 — and more than half of that was tax free.
The time has come to get rid of all the pigs in Westminster – both Tory and Labour.
You can do this by voting for the British National Party on June 4th. On that day, everyone in the country will be able to vote for the BNP in the European elections.
The time has come for change.
