They are a disgrace: the view on the doorstep

By Tom Ogg

After a full week of stories in the media showing the disgraceful expenses claims by MPs of all parties, I’ve been out campaigning today as usual for the Labour party. The voters I met today were spitting with rage. It was embarrassing, frankly, going out and defending a political system that at its pinnacle seems to think it is OK to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds, nay, probably millions of pounds, of public money on the wealth and luxuries of our elected representatives. In the middle of the sharpest recession in decades, no less. Not since the Iraq war have I seen so much anger and disappointment.

More than a few people just laughed when they saw my Labour rosette. “Are you serious?” they said. “Listen son, you’re having a laugh if you think I’m voting for Labour”. Slam, door, face. You get the idea.

Another voter said upon seeing the rosette, “sorry, I’ve not got any 800 pound TVs here, no gardeners to put on expenses, and definitely no pornography”. I don’t get any expenses either, I reply. Do you have any problems in the area, anything we can help with, I ask? “Well,” he said, “you could start by stringing up a few MPs up the lamposts”. Slam.

People are angry at what MPs claimed, and rightly so. They are even more angry at MPs’ cheek in trying to defend the claims. Margaret Moran, for example, in her unbelievable defence on TV of using public money for a home 100 miles from her constituency to be able to see her husband “for my psychological health”, should be sacked from the Labour party immediately. She is a disgrace.

What the public are also angry about is the proposed clean up. Speaking to a builder whose income has been halved in this recession, he said he could not believe MPs were able to claim for mortgage interest. Why should the public subsidise MPs being able to borrow money to buy a house? And reap tens of thousands of pounds in capital gains when the price of the house goes up? He raged at me: “I can barely afford to live in London any more. Houses around here sell for millions of pounds, I can’t afford to get a mortgage. Why the hell should MPs use public money to pay for their mortgage?” Labour have forgotten about working people, who want to make an honest living and pay the bills, he said. Its becoming impossible to survive, he said. “They are a disgrace”, he said.

It is a disgrace. Sure, MPs need somewhere to live both at parliament and in their constituency. But are they above renting, like the rest of us? Nick Clegg is right that the biggest scandal is the capital gain for MPs, that they gain when they sell their house that the public have paid for whilst they sit in parliament. But Clegg is too rich (he is a millionaire), and too stuck in the culture of parliament to see that ownership of property is not a right of the ruling class. He is too stuck in the everything-I-can-get culture of parliament to consider that parliament should not be paying for MPs’ mortgages at all. The public should be prepared to pay the rent and bills for a reasonable place to live for MPs whose constituencies are live away from London. Fine. But don’t expect us to pay for MPs to own it.

What is even more galling is the idea that MPs salaries should be increased to compensate for losing the second homes allowance. It is ridiculous to increase MPs salaries in the middle of a recession. It is simply blinkered to argue for an increase in MPs salaries after this expenses scandal. So what if they are paid less than comparable professions? MPs are in disgrace. Sixty grand is more than enough to keep them going, MPs need to learn to live with it. They have abused the system, and the public, to whom MPs are accountable, wants to see MPs punished. Pay rises, mortgage interest payments – these things are the opposite of punishment. If ever public trust in politicians is to be restored, talk of pay rises must be banished, and mortgage payments must be banned.