More than 20 MPs broke rules on declaring hospitality in questions or debates after visiting locations such as the Maldives, Cyprus and Gibraltar.
Between them, the MPs - from all the major parties - breached parliamentary regulations on more than 400 occasions.
Lincoln inherited an America bankrupted and divided by his predecessor James Buchanan (who until recent times held the unchallenged reputation as America’s worst president ever). Lincoln himself had a difficult wife and a 10-year-old son who died whilst he was in the White House.
Yet he managed to rebuild the economy, end the civil war, end slavery, and restore the reputation of politics in America in the five years before he was eventually shot dead in the theatre down the road from the White House.
The fate of nations, of monarchs and of the British people have been sealed in the Commons.says Nick Robinson
Yet now the reputation of the mother of all parliaments has been brought low by rules written and exploited here by claims for a kitkat, a tin of pet food and a bottle of shampoo... for TVs, furnishings and mortgages for the second homes of those who represent us.
I suspect that the story about Brown paying his brother £6,000 for cleaning services could be as damaging to the Prime Minister outside the Westminster Village as the McBride story was to him inside. One of the few remaining things Brown had going for him was the idea that whatever you thought of him he didn’t appear to be a politician on the make and on the take. Headlines about paying his brother £6,000 for cleaning blow away the image of him as a frugal Son of the Manse. It makes him appear just as bad as the rest of them.
You get the impression with one or two of the Cabinet Ministers that a story has been manufactured out of very little. But for most of them, there are questions which need to be answered, and I am afraid that the stock answer of "It was approved by the Fees Office" or "It's within the rules" is simply not good enough.
Clegg and Cameron seem quiet today don’t they? The usual attack dogs seem strangely muzzled. Chris Grayling isn’t growling. Norman Baker isn’t barking into broadcaster’s microphones. Wonder why? Could it be because no matter what their party, they are all at it?
Members of Parliament have only themselves to blame for all this. They should have realised years ago that the game was up. From the moment in the early 1990s that sleaze scandals relating to the behaviour of MPs broke, they should have been on notice that anything they did that was less than honourable would out in the end.
none of this would have come to light without the tireless work of freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke. Heather fought for 4 years to get the ruling that eventually resulted the receipts being gathered for publication. MPs and the Commons and the Speaker fought tooth and nail to stymie her.Three cheers for Heather - she puts some hacks to shame.
The various scams and ruses documented in the Telegraph aren't really corruption, at least not in the worst sense; they don't involve ministers taking money that influences their decisions, or to turn a blind eye, etc. They are more akin to theft. But they will still, I expect, be very damaging.but adds that
Financial sleaze always looks worse for Labour politicians in a way, because they sell themselves more on their noble motives than the Tories.
It would be amusing - in a Frankie Howerd, "Titter ye not" kind of way - were it not such a mockery of the taxpayer.
it is little more than a common scamhe says adding that
if any of the civil servants who work under Jacqui Smith were caught trying the same stunt, they'd be arrested and sent to jail. So would any of the policemen under her charge.
the circle is closed. The government that won a landslide in 1997 after
Tory MPs were revealed to have taken cash for parliamentary questions now faces
far graver allegations: cash for laws. Along the way, almost every policy that
distinguished it from John Major's corrupt and pointless regime has been
abandoned
Why should we be surprised that Labour lords are renting themselves out like tarts on a street corner?
Decent behaviour at Westminster has been replaced by the morality of the brothel. Never mind arresting innocent Tories, shouldn’t Scotland Yard investigate Labour corruption?
Lord Mandelson is like a political cluster bomb. Since he arrived back in Britain less than a month ago he has shown that he has lost none of his ability to attract the most explosive controversy. But his years in Brussels appear to have brought a new edge. With previous scandals, over his home loan from the then Labour paymaster general, Geoffrey Robinson, or his troubled relationship with the Indian billionaires the Hinduja brothers, he was content to bring only his own party into disrepute. This time his activities look set to drag in the opposition as well.
What a fuss about nothing. If the Conservatives had taken money from a British company (legal) as a conduit for money from an overseas resident (illegal) that would have been an interesting story and a complex web to untangle
Tony Blair personally intervened to secure Formula One's exemption from the tobacco advertising ban just hours after meeting Bernie Ecclestone, the motorsport's billionaire boss
casts doubt on the version of events given by officials both to Parliament and to lobby journalists when the sleaze scandal first broke in 1997. The documents also show that civil servants believed draft statements on the affair, which were about to be made public, were "disingenuous
But Commons officials are letting the MP repay the cash in 12 instalments of £1,096 taken from his monthly pay.
The easy repayment terms, only made public after a long battle with the Parliamentary authorities, has led to fresh anger.
Key donors who bankrolled new Labour are now reluctant to support Brown, claiming he lacks the qualities required to salvage the party’s fortunes.
— The millionaire businessman Sir Maurice Hatter, who has donated more than £176,000 to the party since 2001, said it was time for a change of leader.
“He hasn’t got the charisma,” he said. “He was a good number two, but he is not a number one. I just don’t think he is a prime minister.”
The home secretary is at the centre of the worst race row to engulf the police service for almost a decade as chief constables stand accused of blocking an inquiry into discrimination against Muslim officers.
Jacqui Smith will be asked to intervene tomorrow after the damning revelation that at least 20 police forces refused to co-operate with the first audit into the treatment of Muslim and black officers. Information from those forces that did take part suggested there was routine racial discrimination against them.
More than 100 MPs are using their expenses to commit a multi-million-pound tax dodge, it was claimed last night.
They are accused of using huge sums in parliamentary allowances to fund a second home while telling HM Revenue & Customs that it is in fact their main home.
Because MPs' second homes are usually in London, where property is more expensive, they can avoid massive capital gains tax bills by nominating the second home as their main home, because main homes are exempt from the tax.
Documents show that Paul Cottingham was given secretarial allowances worth £8,143 a month to administer in 2002. This was the maximum allowance available at the time. Euro-MPs can now receive an allowance for staff of £160,000 a year.
Mr Cashman says that he currently pays his civil partner an annual salary of £30,000 inclusive of expenses. However, he has so far not disclosed how the rest of the allowance is distributed after being given to Mr Cottingham. It is known he employs at least one other Brussels-based assistant.
The frenzied attack against Conservative MPs and MEPs, orchestrated by and emanating from the left wing BBC and press has equalled that of an animal in its death throes. The more terminal the position looks for Labour, the more desperate the BBC and left wing press becomeshe says adding
My daughter Jenny, who is 20, begins work for me this week for six weeks as a paid intern.
She told me I shouldn’t put what she earns on the blog as it is against her human rights. I told her that as an MP's daughter, she doesn’t have any. She is being paid £7.50 per hour.
She has superb computer skills and one of her first jobs will be to start working through a packing case of letters, cards and emails received following the abortion vote along with the full in tray ready and waiting on her desk.
If Michael Crick or any other journalist would like to check it out she is working from my staff office, just be our guest.
Philip Bushill-Matthews MEP, until yesterday Giles Chichester's Deputy and now acting leader of the Tory delegation to the European Parliament, has replaced Den Dover MEP with Richard Ashworth MEP as Chief Whip. Mr Dover is facing his own ethical questions but is protesting his innocence.
On David Cameron’s instructions the Conservative Party’s new Head of Compliance, Hugh Thomas, will be sent to Brussels next week. His visit will have two purposes:
To reinforce the importance of the existing guidelines on MEP allowances announced in April, and to establish arrangements for regular publication of a breakdown of allowances on an equivalent basis to Members of Parliament.
Assess the efficiency of their current reporting procedures around expenses and office costs.
Hugh Thomas will also assess if further steps need to be taken before reporting back to David Cameron.
David Cameron is a lucky politician: the resignation of the leader of the Tories' MEPs in a financial scandal coincided, very conveniently, with the seizure of British diplomats by Robert Mugabe's thugs in Zimbabwe.and
For once, you might say the Conservatives have something to be grateful to Mugabe for. A good day to bury bad news, you might also say.
Embarrassingly, Chichester was the person ordered by Cameron after the Derek Conway scandal at Westminster to make sure Tory MEPs' finances were all ship shape.
there are still, right now, 13 Tory MEPs who refuse to disclose what they have done with their expenses. Den Dover has a very similar set-up to Chichester, with hundreds of thousands of pounds paid to a family firm based in his home, he has a lot of questions to answer.and is currently looking in the affairs of another MEP.
Most people who've covered the House of Commons over the years have known about - but generally kept quiet about - the tidy sum that MPs were making through having their second homes in London effectively paid for by the taxpayer
It was named such, because staff used the John Lewis website as their guide to "reasonsable prices". Rather than Matalan.
The detailed expenses of every Member of Parliament are likely to be made public for the first time. An all party committee chaired by the Speaker looks set to recommend that the claims made by MPs over the past three years should be published later this year.
faces the prospect of an Electoral Commission inquiry over a substantial donation that passed through several hands and was declared by four people, including Derek Conway.
bought a flat in London before becoming an MP and his Manchester constituency home, which he acquired several years later. He was able to claim thousands of pounds of MPs’ expenses on the London home and is accused of exploiting a tax loophole to avoid a huge bill on its sale.
claimed more than £20,000 in housing expenses last year, explaining that he had to paint his property and remove moss from the garden.
