The possibility of a hung parliament has raised a real possibility that MPs who are currently being investigated for serious abuses of parliamentary expenses – could have those investigations dropped if they lose their seats on May 6th.
This week I submitted a complaint against my constituency MP and Labour government minister Bob Blizzard (Waveney) to Andrew Walker, the Director General of Resource at the House of Commons. Mr Walker has for the last few months at the request of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards been investigating two previous complaints I made that Bob Blizzard had repeatedly used his £10,000 p.a. Parliamentary Communications Allowance to publicise attacks on Conservative controlled Waveney District and Suffolk County Councils and even encouraged people to vote against them. Both of which are of course in clear breach of the most explicit prohibitions in the Commons rule book which repeatedly and categorically states that the Communications Allowance cannot be used for any form of party political campaigning.
The third complaint that I made this week was that Mr Blizzard , a government minister and whip responsible for ensuring that Labour MPs keep the parliamentary rules (!), appeared to be using his parliamentary expenses to employ a local Labour councillor as his ‘Constituency Political Secretary’. The use of parliamentary staffing allowances for any form of party political or non parliamentary work is most explicitly forbidden in the principles set out in the Green Book.
However, the response to my complaint from Mr Walker’s office was that whilst the complaint could be investigated after the election
"As you will be aware, there are currently no Members of Parliament and therefore I will not at this point be able to take your complaint further."
The implication is that the parliamentary authorities intend to drop any ongoing investigations against MPs who are not re-elected on May 6.
However, this would mean that it would then be quite possible for MPs such as Bob Blizzard, if they are defeated on May 6, to have all the expenses investigations against them dropped, but for them to then stand again a few months later in a second general election resulting from a hung parliament – as if they had a clean sheet, with local voters being none the wiser.
This general election has in many people’s eyes quite rightly been about cleaning up parliament. So, now would be a very good time for us to take the lead in insisting that investigations into MPs expenses must be completed – even if they are defeated on May 6. The real possibility of a hung parliament makes that absolutely essential.
