Derek Conway should now go quietly

Tim Montgomerie writes:

A final word on Derek Conway.

After turning down media for 24 hours I was happy to give a number of interviews this afternoon to welcome David Cameron's lunchtime decision and to contrast the actions taken by the Tory leader with Gordon Brown's indulgence of his many miscreant ministers.  One thing I said on the PM programme is, I think, worth repeating.  David Cameron has removed Mr Conway from the parliamentary party but has refused to rule out future rehabilitation.  "Never say never" the Tory leader told Radio 4.  Mr Cameron's reasonableness is understandable but Mr Conway really should do the decent thing now and tell Old Bexley and Sidcup Tories that he won't be seeking to be their candidate at the next election.

Voters understand what Mr Conway did and they really, really don't like it.  If he stands at the next election I wouldn't be surprised if he faced the kind of anti-sleaze candidate that Neil Hamilton faced in 1997.   Such a candidate might easily win the seat.  What's worse it would be a soap opera that would play throughout the next General election campaign.  Mr Conway should do his party one final service and move quickly to admit that his political career is over.

PS I can't say very much about Nigel Waterson MP for legal reasons but I'd ask all readers to give him the benefit of the doubt.  What I've been told about last night's incident has made me respect the man more than I have ever done before.  Please don't leave speculative comments in the thread below... I'd probably have to delete them.

Comments

[Dick Wishart]

Derek Conways Association should de-select him straight away.
Months of hard word put in by the voluntary side of the Party throughout the whole country can be undone by stupid actions such as this.
Conway should go and go now!

[HF]

If Conway decides to go on he will face a media onslaught. Is he smart enough to understand the need to rehabilitate his image by being seen to do the right thing?

We shall see.

[Veritas]

I think your comments are fair. He should serve his constituents until the next GE, but announce now that he will not seek re-election. Then he should seriously keep his nose clean from then on.

Sadly I think this will solidify the (very) widespread public view that "...they are all as bad as each other".

[Richard Carey]

Is he smart enough to understand the need to rehabilitate his image by being seen to do the right thing?

I think, under the circumstances, that it is more than his image that Mr Conway needs to rehabilitate. His integrity and probity could probably also use some work.

Is he smart enough, HF asks? Given that he was dumb enough to continue with these arrangements without adequate evidence of work performed after notice was given of the close attention paid to the employment of family members by the (later dismissed) complaint against Iain Duncan Smith a few years ago, one suspects not.

While his re-adoption is entirely a matter for his local Party, I would find it incomprehensible for any local Party to re-adopt a sitting member who is not in receipt of the Whip, and I suspect that will not be lost on them either. Local Party activists in Old Bexley must be feeling very badly let down and angry at these revelations, but I would hope that they will be equally quick, decisive and firm in their own decisions in response.

I'd also like to add my praise for the very responsible and principled editorial line taken by the CH.com team in both the cases mentioned in this thread, and I can entirely understand the decision to leave well alone the Waterson case which is currently a matter for the police.

[Julian Williams]

This is public money, money I paid in taxes. Obviously he puts his personal needs before those of the taxpayers.

It's a no-brainer. He is unfit for public office of any sort.

Anyone working for a private or public company found to have made false expense claims of £250,000 has to be sacked on the spot. Why did Cameron dither for 24 hours?

[Curious Bystander]

Editor, would the amount of opprobrium you have decided to heap on Conway have anything to do with his run ins with your friend IDS? Whipping the Maastricht Bill through against the IDS rebels and signing a letter of no confidence which forced IDS out of office.

Declare your interests Editor, declare your interests.

[Northernhousewife]

The editor's interests are the same as ours: a Conservative Government.
My beef is on behalf of all those who man the phones, walk the streets and stuff envelopes - unpaid.

[Drusilla]

Esteemed Editor, does this brave declamation of yours mean that you believe that every MP who has employed spouses, children, other relatives, lovers, personal friends and random hangers-on under the terms of his / her personal allowance, without managing to document at every point that these people all provided top value for the money disbursed, ought to resign forthwith?

Granted, the result will be a smaller House, but a much, much purer one.

[Dave]

A message to the disgraced Derek Conway:

In the name of God go!

Oh, and pay back all the taxpayers money you handed out to your kids, there's a good lad.

As for Dave Cameron: the boy done good!!

[Jennifer Wells]

Drusilla: You sound as out of touch and sensationalist as Roger Gale on the Today programme.

[michael mcgough]

"Whipping the Maastricht Bill through against the IDS rebels and signing a letter of no confidence which forced IDS out of office."

I'm surprised he's lasted so long.

[ShepleyTory]

I agree with the editor on this one, Derek Conway should do the honourable thing. To try and hang on would be extremely damaging to the party & would undermine all the woprk that has been done to disassociate the party from the "sleaze" word.

[Drusilla]

Hi Jennifer - I'm just a normal Tory activist who has been a party member since university days (c. 1988), worked for several years as a research assistant for an MP, been closely involved with a right-of-centre think tank for almost two decades, worked in CCO within the Leader's office, and contributed my thoughts - as well as plenty of hours of canvassing, telling and so forth - for the greater good of the party we all support.

Does this make me 'out of touch' and 'sensationalist'? Perhaps your version of what most MPs do is correct, and mine is silly. Time will tell.

In any event, many thanks for your considered participation in this debate.

[John Hemming-Clark]

Independents to Save Queen Mary's Hospital, the party set up last October to fight to prevent any reduction in and closing of services at Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup which is in Derek Conway's constituency, today announced that its party leader, John Hemming-Clark, will stand in the Old Bexley & Sidcup Constituency at the next General Election.

Commenting on this announcement, John said,

"Having stood in the by-election in 2006 in the neighbouring Constituency of Bromley & Chislehurst, I know only too well how the electorate is completely fed up with MPs putting themselves before their constituents. (The Conservatives nearly lost this seat which was previously thought of as very safe).

Derek Conway should be spending his time fighting for our local Queen Mary's Hospital to retain its services, including Accident & Emergency which is under threat of closure. However, we find he is more interested in getting his family onto the Westminster gravy train than campaigning locally.

Independents to Save Queen Mary's Hospital's aims include rebuilding first-rate services for local people, including the local health provision and we, and not Derek Conway, are the only party to fight for local people to acheive these aims."

So, stay if you can Mr. Conway - but if you do, at the next general election you will have a real fight on your hands.

[Ben Stevenson]

Drusilla,
The difference between Derek Conway and other MPs who employ relatives is that Mr Conway seems to be unable to show that his son did anything to deserve his wage.
If I have understood this correctly, his son did virtually nothing, despite being paid for three years. That is not the same as not being able "to document at every point that these people all provided top value for the money".

[Steven Davies]

Looks like Independents to save Queen Mary's Hospital are going to take on Derek Conway at the next general election a la Martin Bell. www.faect.blogspot.com.

[Mike A]

It's almost as if you don't like Derek Conway, Tim...

[Mark Williams]

Anybody who has worked for a firm of accountants will tell you of the great lengths that they go to to avoid perceived conflicts of interest. I know of one partner in 500+ partner firm who had to resign when his brother-in-law became the finance director of an audit client, even though the resigning partner had nothing to do with the firm nor with auditing.

Given the lengths that others go to in order to avoid these issues, would it be really a great inconvenience for MPs if they were told that none of the funds provided by the state for the employemnt of staff at their discretion could be paid to that MPs' close relations? I suppose they would all hire each others' children.

[Julian Williams]

This is public money, money I paid in taxes. Obviously he puts his personal needs before those of the taxpayers.

It's a no-brainer. He is unfit for public office of any sort.

Anyone working for a private or public company found to have made false expense claims of £250,000 has to be sacked on the spot. Why did Cameron dither for 24 hours?

[Julian williams]

Sorry, I did not intend to post the above comment again. I think it was when I pressed the refresh button!

In answer to Drucilla, a student should not be earning the sort of money Conway was paying.

I did see on another thread an allegation about an MP paying their 79 year old mother. There are also allegations about MEPs who "sign in and sod off" to get the daily allowance at the EU parliament.

These types of incident show complete disrespect for taxpayer's money and it is time they were exposed and stamped on. We do not need public servants who have contempt for the the people they represent.

[Drusilla]

The difference between Derek Conway and other MPs who employ relatives is that Mr Conway seems to be unable to show that his son did anything to deserve his wage.

'Difference'? Let's wait until these other MPs have to document, with evidence, exactly how much their employees (and let's not limit this to spouses and relatives - local party cronies, for instance, ought to count too) do for them.

[Alex Swanson]

Let's wait until these other MPs have to document, with evidence, exactly how much their employees (and let's not limit this to spouses and relatives - local party cronies, for instance, ought to count too) do for them.

If they're doing real work the documentation will exist of itself - emails, letters, reports, meeting minutes.

If as you imply Conway's actions are not just unusual but commonplace, then there needs to be a clearout. Regardless of how able or hard-working they are - and if they are, there's precious little evidence of it - misuse of public funds is not acceptable. Period.

[Praguetory]

Drusilla - you will, I hope, join us in condemning any MP who can't demonstrate any value from £40k of payroll cost? The same applies to Conway and any other miscreants. Whilst best practice might involve timesheets and contracts, that's not the key. The absence of ANY evidence of work is. Think back to all your work. There would be evidence of it you could call upon if investigated.

[Drusilla]

Alex, Praguetory, presumably if you want MPs' personal staff to be treated like normal employees, you'd also welcome procedures whereby staff vacancies were advertised, and competitive interviews held for each position? And you'd also welcome the concept of MPs keeping normal sorts of hours, and not working outside them?

Personally, I can't get very excited about Derek Conway's alleged wickedness. Even if the worst that's been said about him is true, he's absolutely not the only MP out there who pays his near and dear for doing nothing at all. My understanding of this is that MPs' salaries are extremely poor relative to what they might hope to earn in the private sector, the hours they work (if they are any good) are unsocial in the extreme, and that personal allowances have long been treated as, well, personal funds to disburse as the MP sees fit.

Anyway, I'll agree to disagree with you on this one. It amuses me, though, that everyone here is so incandescently angry over what is, in the context of government spending, a vanishingly small amount of money. Why not save the righteous indignation for our quasi-socialist state, which steals such a huge amount of our money for health, education, policing and other services which are so defective that most people who can afford it have to pay, yet again, for the privately-provided alternative?

[Praguetory]

MPs aren't paid enough + small amount of fraud in the grand scheme of things = weakest defence south of Derby County

You're practically ridiculing MPs who don't abuse their position.

[activist]

not good enough, drusilla. Tories don't like embezzlement and theft. Whilst only the police can determine if that happened here or not, the fact remains Freddie Conway was asked by the committee for the name of his father's secretary in the House and did not know it.

The Editor's response has been muted and temperate. It's in the comments you find Tories across the spectrum united in outrage. We want to be better than Labour, "they're just as bad" is not good enough.

We want to save taxpayers' money. I'm sorry this happened to mr. Conway, but Tim ain't to blame.

[Traditional Tory]

One hates to intrude on private grief, but...

Seems to me that Conway has been excluded without due process. My advice to him would be to go for breach of the Rules of Natural Justice.

Meanwhile it's about time every other MP who 'employs' family members came under close scrutiny.

[cjcjc]

It sounds to me as though Drusilla has "gone native".

She writes:

"he's absolutely not the only MP out there who pays his near and dear for doing nothing at all"

and

"personal allowances have long been treated as, well, personal funds to disburse as the MP sees fit"

Is this supposed to be OK on the grounds that MP's "MPs' salaries are extremely poor relative to what they might hope to earn in the private sector".

Even if the latter were true - which on average it is not - so should (say) teachers be allowed to treat the library budget as personal dosh simply because they might have been able to earn more as lawyers?

Ludicrous.

There was someone else on R4 this morning - Andrew Tyrie (who he?) - defending existing arrangements against a very sensible sounding Tory activist who - and it seems this point needs to be made again and again - simply said that voters (remember them?) cannot understand how MP's can get away with behaviour which would have them (the voters) fired and/or prosecuted.

Sort it!

[Otto]

Curious bystander - your concern about the editor's line is mistaken, Conway was one of the first people to attack IDS when allegations about improper payments to his wife were made - of which he was cleared and fully exonerated. One would have thought that he might have realised that such matters would come under the public spotlight as a result.

He should return to the Cats Protection League - they're welcome to him.

[London Tory]

@ Traditional Tory

What total, utter rubbish.

To our remaining 198 MPs - let this be a lesson. The Party will not put up with the Conways, Smiths and Hamiltons any longer. If you screw up, you are out.

Conway has been caught with his fingers in the till. His mea culpa in the Commons was excrutiating. He was smirking and grinning before and after the speech. Hardly contrition. He exudes the 'old boys club' mentality (despite coming from very humble origins). All credit to Cameron for the way he has handled it.

The bottom line is we need every seat next time, and under Conway we would lose Old Bexley and Sidcup. He has got to go, and should dedicate the remainder of his time in Parliament to making amends to the people he was elected to serve.

Well done Cameron and Goodbye Conway.

[Traditional Tory]

@ Traditional Tory

What total, utter rubbish.

Er...sorry...

What's rubbish?

[bluepatriot]

Traditional Tory and his fellow moaners are really like vultures. They only turn up on these threads when the party is in difficulties.

[Liberalone]

It is some time since I worked in the Commons (and not for a Tory MP), but can I suggest that not all family members employed by MPs are there simply as a way of padding the family's coffers.

The wife of the MP I worked for was employed as his constituency caseworker, she had previously, before his election spent 10 years managing the County's CAB service. Her knowledge and networks were first rate and enabled us to provide a much better service to constituents.

Yes there are those who abuse the system and they must be treated firmly and deserve what they get, but please don't end up with a system which will actually be to the detriment of constituents.

[Malcolm Dunn]

'My understanding is that MP's salaries are extremely poor compared to what MPs might earn in the private sector'-Drusilla. Well your understanding would be wrong. Derek Conway spent his time out of Parliament working for the Cats Protection League, I'd be amazed if he earned anything like £60,000 a year with expenses of £120,000 pa plus. Conway is far from alone.Some MPs would do well financially outside Parliament, many would not.
Ah Traditional Tory is back.What a suprise after a day like yesterday. Glad to see that he's as out of touch and utterly irrelevant as ever.

[Drusilla]

Let's clarify what I've actually written here.

I am not saying that what Derek Conway did was ethical, sensible or admirable.

What I am saying, in contrast, is that David Cameron has set a strong precedent for what should happen to prominent party members who are found not to have handled expenses properly - a precedent that may cause a spot of bother if it turns out, remarkably, that Mr Conway is not the only person to have made mistakes along these lines.

As for Malcolm, of course you're right that some MPs would be lucky to find any form of gainful employment at all outside politics - sorry to imply otherwise - the coffee hadn't kicked in yet.

[Kevin Davis]

Malcolm,

Not that it is relevant but I think you will find he took a salary cut to become an MP. He after all probably only saw his time at the CPL as a break in his Parliamentary career.

[Letters From A Tory]

I am horrified that the idiotic Labour bloggers have already started laying into Nigel Waterson. From what I hear, it was him that called the police in the first place and he hasn't even been charged with anything yet.

Appalling.

[London Tory]

@Malcolm Dunn

An interesting fact thrown up by the Conway Debacle is that he recently sold a constituency home in Sidcup and bought a house in Pimlico for in excess of £1m. This is reported in the press and I assume it to be true. It must be difficult to obtain a mortgage of that size (assuming he has one) on a £60k MPs salary. It reinforces the point made many times on this site. Many of our MPs are both part timers, and lazy part timers at that. They treat the Commons as a Private Members Club. Their constituents interests come a long way down their list of priorities. Thankfully the 2005 intake saw the start of a process that will eventually eradicate the "Conway type" of MP. I could name you at least another 20 Tory MPs who have a very similar view on an MPs role to that of Conway.

[cjcjc]

"Not that it is relevant but I think you will find he took a salary cut to become an MP."

If not relevant, why bring it up?!

He may have taken a salary cut - from what, out of interest - but then he treated his allowances as if they were part of his personal salary!

[Bexie]

We should allow for a "recall" in UK politics, if enough local constituents take umbridge at the behaviour of a local MP.

What pisses me off about this whole affair is that there are some MP's relations who do work very hard for their constituency offices and for their siblings/ partners. No one has an objection to this, and in particular since the nature of the job is very sensitive, there are advantages to doing this. Con-away has brought this whole system into disrepute.

What is objectionable about Con-away is that he has used the office of MP to siphon off money from the tax payer to his family members and admitted to doing this before the House. This is no better than a small businessperson who "employs" their partner or children merely to fiddle their taxes.

The latter faces hefty fines and a potential jail sentance, why should the former be treated any differently?

[ACT]

[not entirely sure why this has just been wordlessly deleted, but then Tim, I don't quite share your, um, peculiar version of Christian ethics]

Where to start? With whoever's turning in the impression of Tim? With the pitch perfect pomposity, 'After turning down media for 24 hours I was happy to give a number of interviews this afternoon . . . One thing I said on the PM programme is, I think, worth repeating' &c? Or with the idea that Cameron acted well in this? If he *had* acted when this broke, then, by his own lights, and most of the posters here, he would have done well I suppose. But he didn't act. Quite the opposite. He had CCHQ issue a statement ruling out further action. And then, after the press weighed in, Cameron did what he always does: bent in front of them. Or shall we start with what other MPs have done compared to the high crime Conway is assumed to have committed? Okay, let's turn to IDS, a man cleared, of exactly the same sin, by the process that has just convicted [sic] Conway. In the words of Sir Philip Mawer:

Evidence of e-mail and telephone contact

86. In my letter of 27 October 2003, I asked Mrs Duncan Smith (the nature of whose work, she said, generated little in the way of paper files) if she could provide evidence of work done in the form of copies of e-mails, computer logs or telephone bills.

87. On the subject of e-mails, in her submission of 5 December Mrs Duncan Smith replied that when she and her husband had first moved to Swanbourne, she had done most of her work over the phone or by fax. However, in November 2001 she had opened an e-mail account with 'Yahoo' which had been superseded in May 2002 by one with British Telecom. In the summer of 2003, she had deleted all the e-mails on her account up to September 2002 to clear disk space. Later the same year, her PC was corrupted by a series of viruses. Efforts to retrieve the situation had only been very partially successful. I received a written statement by Mr Tim Wilkinson, a computer consultant, corroborating this point.

Or again, in the words of Mrs Duncan Smith:

When we first moved to Swanbourne I did most of my work over the telephone or by communicating with the Westminster office by fax. In November 2001 I opened an e-mail account with Yahoo. I tended to delete emails as I dealt with the issues contained in them. In May 2002 I opened an e-mail account with British Telecom and that is the account that I use today. In the middle of this year however I started to experience some difficulty using the e-mail account. I kept receiving warnings that my e-mail account was full. I therefore deleted all the e-mails on my account up to September 2002 to clear space. At that time as I had finished work I did not think that I would need to retain copies of the material. At the start of this Inquiry I had trouble printing documents off my computer. I contacted Home Technologies who discovered I had a series of viruses which they were able to eradicate talking me through the eradication process over the phone. At that time I asked if it were possible to recover e-mails that had been deleted and was told if I had deleted them twice (ie by confirming when prompted that I wanted to delete them) I wouldn't be able to retrieve them. Subsequently, Rikki Radford told me he knew of a man called Tim Wilkinson who had managed to recover some of his documents from the hard drive of his computer. Tim Wilkinson came to Swanbourne on 11 November to see if he could help me. Unfortunately, it appears that due to the viruses the hard drive has become corrupted so though I retrieved some very old files his search was not very successful. I attach a copy of a fax dated 4 December from Mr Wilkinson confirming that most of the e-mails and documents on the hard drive of the computer were irretrievable.[12] I needed to contact Home Technologies again recently (21st November) as I again had trouble printing documents from the computer. They cleared the several viruses which had struck again, including a particularly bad one, and explained that in order to stop the computer from becoming infected by this severe virus the computer needs to be updated.

Which, at great but necessary length, is to say – just like Conway's son, the entirely innocent Duncan Smith also isn’t actually able to provide computerised evidence for the work done for him and paid for by, well, us.

Let's move on to the risible stuff about the 'hard working spouse' trope (which is a Good Thing, it would seem, for most posters precisely because it contrasts so painfully with the 'layabout Harrovian sprog' model). Really? This is an admirable or defensible method of disbursing public funds? So tell us then, how did the spouse come to be employed? Fair and open competition, in the best public sector manner? How does s/he interact with their colleagues? 'Colleagues'? Try, in just about every instance of an MP employing a spouse, 'employees', rather than 'colleagues', for the spouse's attitude towards what should in strict, public sector theory, be their co-workers. Let's take, at random, a couple. Off the top of my head - Bernard and Anne Jenkin, but there are obviously umpteen others. Did Anne Jenkin compete openly with all other qualified applicants to get a public salary courtesy of her husband? Is Anne Jenkin, in place on the public payroll, just one more employee of Bernard Jenkin's, or does she, if we're being grown-up about this, have quite a different status, one her, ahem, 'co-workers' are liable to be all too well aware of? Who can say? But if we're going to go down the childish road of pretending that parliament is an offshoot of an especially PC New Labour quango, these are precisely the issues we, or rather, all too many current Tory MPs, are going to have to start addressing.

But let's not stop there, as this crapulent Parliament's-just-a-public-sector-job-like-any-other garbage insists we mustn't. Take the dear leader. Before the last election he had a sinecure directorship of a pub chain, Urbium, tossed his way by a relative (Viscount Astor). Embarrassed by this - bogus cries of him being pro 'binge drinking' went up - by the Davis camp during the leadership election, Cameron very, very reluctantly gave his 28K p.a. bung up. Why did he have this job? Did he get it on merit? Did he bring special skills to the board of Urbium beyond being related to another Board member? Who cares? let the private sector do what it wants. Yet the logic that says, "MPs are public employees" requires us to ask, why should David Cameron, MP, ever have been getting outside money like this? What other manner of public employee would have been allowed to supplement their public salary in this fashion? The answer is, outside of the BBC, none of them would be.

None of this is to defend what Conway has done. It is, however, to suggest that being in Parliament is not ‘a job’, and is in fact more analogous to being a vocation. Treat MPs like local government workers by all means, but from top to bottom of the parliamentary party, there’s a lot more than Conway you’ll have to chuck out.

[cjcjc]

Can any member of the public report this man to the police if we believe a crime has been committed?
Or has someone done that already?

[Robert Winterton]

'I could name you at least another 20 Tory MPs who have a very similar view on an MPs role to that of Conway.'

Posted by: London Tory | January 30, 2008 at 10:43

Go ahead name them and stop continually casting aspersions!

[cjcjc]

"Treat MPs like local government workers by all means, but from top to bottom of the parliamentary party, there’s a lot more than Conway you’ll have to chuck out."

Chuck them out then.
And oh, the snobbery of "local government workers"...pathetic.

Voters want MPs to be treated no differently from how *they themselves are treated*.
Got that?

[ACT]

[Patiently, slow, steady voice, go -] I wasn't being 'snobbish' about those ceaseless toilers in local government, I was attempting to make the point that they, and everyone else paid for out of our taxes are chalk to the cheese of MPs. Voters are not MPs, they are voters. MPs are of course different. They have an enormous range of historic privileges, of speech, from arrest, necessary to discharge their function as the voters' representatives. But this - your Soviet-style appeal for Democratic Egalitarian Representation notwithstanding - isn't a question of treating MPs 'differently'. It's a matter of accepting that if we are to allow MPs to employ people, let them employ them, and let's not pretend that those employees have ended up on the 'public payroll' in the manner of a civil servant, or those Gods amongst men, local government workers. Heroes of the People's Corporate Struggle as I'm sure they all are.

[Yet Another Anon]

It would make sense to switch constituency offices to being independently managed and appointed with a proper system of conducting selecting staff with the local MP having no involvement on this and standard systems of detailed record keeping - this would reduce the potential for nepotism, make constituency offices non-partisan even where one MP had been MP there for a very long time and provide more continuity in constituencies where there is a high turnover of MPs.

Options would be either to have them as some kind of Private Charity Limited by Guarantee or even put them out to competitive tender.

[London Tory]

@Robert Winterton

I don't need to name them. Just look in Hansard at the % of votes they bother to turn up for. Just check with their local associations on the number of times they were in their constituencies each month. Just check with their merchant banks or company secretaries how many hours they put in in the boardroom during the same period.

Why are you so touchy on this subject, and others? Do you think that the letters M.P after someones name entitles them to no criticism, censure or even examination? That is precisely the mentality that gives us MPs like Con-away.

[cjcjc]

(Do MPs have immunity from arrest?)

"your Soviet-style appeal for Democratic Egalitarian Representation notwithstanding"

Please carry on in this bizarre style all you like.
Roger Gale was doing the same thing on the radio yesterday. (Are you he?)

Sorry. It's gone too far, and it's too late. And your "honourable" MPs - with their massively overhyped sense of their own financial (and other) worth - have only themselves to blame.

[Paul Oakley]

Perhaps MPs could follow the good example of Philip Hollobone. . . .

[Comstock]

He's standing down then.

[Comstock]

Sorry meant to post the link

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7218031.stm

[Wayne]

He may however be innocent! Neil Hamilton was totally innocent as proven by Jonathon Hunt in his book Trial by Conspiracy.