The reception at the Speaker’s private apartments overlooking the Thames was
meant to be in honour of parliamentary historians who dig around the
political turmoils of the past.
However, as the chardonnay flowed, a contemporary scandal was on everybody’s
lips. It was Tuesday evening, hours after Derek Conway, the Conservative MP
for Old Bexley & Sidcup, had seen his career ended by disclosures that
he had paid nearly £400,000 of taxpayers’ money to his two sons and his
wife.
The guests of Michael Martin, the Speaker, were discussing the decision of
David Cameron to withdraw the party whip from Conway, forcing him to resign
as an MP. Most agreed that the Tory leader had made the right call and some
went even further, believing that Conway’s payments of up to £15,000 a year
to his undergraduate sons Freddie and Henry were tantamount to fraud.
The Speaker disagreed. To the amazement of those around him, he said he
thought the ruling by the Commons standards committee, which recommended
that Conway face 10 days’ suspension from the House and pay back £13,161 of
public money, was sufficient punishment. “Hasn’t Derek suffered enough?”
Martin opined.
The Speaker’s friends might argue that he was simply expressing sympathy for
an old friend. The Glaswegian former sheet-metal worker always regarded
Conway, a comprehensive-school-educated Geordie, as a fellow member of the
working class first and a Tory second. Yet Martin’s failure to agree with
Cameron’s zero-tolerance approach seemed to exemplify Westminster’s
complacent attitude to taxpayer-funded perks and its reluctance to reform.
The Conway affair has caused questions to be asked about how many similar
arrangements there are in Westminster and what the political establishment
proposes to do about it as public anger mounts.
THE revelations about “Conway Family plc”, as the MP himself cheerfully called
it, began last May when The Sunday Times disclosed how he was paying his Old
Harrovian son Freddie £981 a month as a parliamentary researcher. At the
time Freddie was studying at New-castle University, about 300 miles north of
Westminster. The arrangement looked highly suspicious.
But it was only with the publication last Monday of the report on the affair
by Sir Philip Mawer, the parliamentary standards commissioner, that the
breathtaking audacity of the scam emerged.
Under cross-examination by Mawer, Freddie had revealed the extraordinary
working practices of the Conways. Mawer asked how often he was at
Westminster. Not much, said Freddie, 22. He tended to do the work in the
university library or, during holidays, on the computer at his father’s
London flat.
Did he know anyone at Westminster, such as his father’s secretary? No, he
replied, he couldn’t recall her name. He’d never really met her. In fact, he
didn’t really know anyone at Westminster, nor could he recall why his father
had deemed him worthy of bonuses worth £10,000.
The damning report immediately led to questions about the employment status of
Freddie’s older brother Henry, 25, who received £32,000 of taxpayers’ cash
for his work as a research assistant while he studied history of dress at
the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
Rarely has such an exotic figure appeared in a British political scandal. A
part-time nightclub impresario, fashion writer and inveterate partygoer,
Henry Conway could have been taken from the pages of The Line of Beauty,
Alan Hollinghurst’s literary novel of gay hedonism in the 1980s.
A gallery of pictures, many culled from the internet, have appeared throughout
the week: “blond and bouncy” Henry escorting the former EastEnders star
Martine McCutcheon to a party; Henry wearing long stripy socks as part of a
distinctly high-fashion ensemble; Henry with a giant peacock brooch in his
hair.
He appeared to be revelling in his new celebrity. In an e-mail to 800 friends,
the self-styled “Queen Sloane” promised that his regular Thursday night at
the Mahiki nightclub in Mayfair – where Princes William and Harry are
regulars – would go ahead: “I will be storming forth in my usual skinnies
and boots, and of course good hair.”
The week’s disclosures left an unavoidable impression of privileged young men
enjoying a hedonistic lifestyle – all at taxpayers’ expense.
Things continued to get worse for the MP. On Thursday came revelations that
one of Henry’s close friends, Michael Pratte, a Canadian student, was paid
£11,500 a year for 17½ hours a week.
If it had not been already, the final nail was hammered into the coffin of
Conway’s career the following day with the disclosure that he had halved the
salary of his secretary Lisa Rayson while employing his wife Colette, his
sons and their friend. Conway was said to have told Rayson that money was
tight.
By this time Conway had already been cast into the political wilderness. It
took Cameron 24 hours from receiving the standards committee report to
decide to withdraw the whip. Some wondered why it took him so long.
Last night Conway insisted that he had committed no crime. “I am not a crook,”
he told The Mail on Sunday. “I still believe I have done nothing wrong.”
He claimed that his sons seemed invisible at Westminster because they worked
from his flat in nearby Victoria. “Lots of MPs have family who work from
home,” Conway said. “I’m not unique at all.”
He added of Freddie: “A lot of students do part-time work. He was working for
his father rather than McDonald’s.” Critics will point out that the young
Conways were on rather better wages than average burger-flippers.
AROUND Westminster, other MPs were getting twitchy about their own
arrangements this weekend. Many had long used the generous system of
parliamentary allowances to augment their relatively modest salary of about
£60,000 (see panel). Conway himself had been able to send his boys to
Harrow, which would cost about £24,000 a year for each, only by virtue of a
trust fund set up by his wife’s wealthy family.
It emerged last night that a husband-and-wife MP couple had claimed £165,000
in allowances to pay rent on a London flat on which they had paid off the
mortgage six years ago. Sir Nicholas Winterton and his wife Ann, both Tory
MPs, were able to claim the money under Commons rules because ownership of
the property had been passed to a family trust to which they paid rent.
The easiest way of boosting the family coffers, however, is to employ a member
of the family as a secretary or research assistant. There was widespread
public shock last week as it emerged that well over 100 MPs, including 70
Tories, employ one or more members of their family.
Further inquiries by this newspaper have unearthed a wide range of employment
practices that, while falling within Commons rules, would rarely be found in
the private sector.
Peter Hain provides a good example of how MPs can enable family members to
pick up some extra money. The former cabinet minister, who was forced to
resign from the front bench last month over the funding of his campaign for
the Labour deputy leadership, is paying his 80-year-old mother Adelaine
£5,400 a year for part-time “secretarial assistance”. Although as a minister
he was supported by civil servants, special advisers, private secretaries
and secretaries, she provided help with “back-up work”.
Anne Milton, the Tory MP, gave her husband Graham Henderson a one-off payment
of £5,500 last March for doing reading for her, as part of a local health
campaign. “I paid my husband retrospectively for some work he had done. It
was mostly reading, doing notes for me,” she said.
Other relative-employees of MPs seem to be able to combine their duties with
other roles. Mark Fisher, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, employed his
stepson Crispin Hunt as a “full-time” researcher for five years until last
Christmas on a salary of £30,000. Yet at the same time Hunt was able to
pursue a successful career in the music business, which included producing
songs for Natalie Imbruglia, the Grammy-nominated singer.
Many MPs paid salaries that taxpayers would consider extremely generous. Bob
Spink, Conservative MP for Castle Point, employs his ex-wife Janet for
£28,000 a year although she now lives in Wimborne, Dorset, 150 miles from
the constituency. Spink said she worked on his “diary, ongoing campaigns and
case work, bulk mailings and some databases”.
Some MPs regard paid internships for their children as acceptable practice,
even though few eager students without family members in politics would have
such opportunities.
Phil Hope, the Cabinet Office minister, said he had employed both his
children, Emma and Nick, during their holidays. They are reading politics at
university.
The culture of jobs for the relatives extends across every party and right to
the top. This weekend Cameron admitted that he employed his sister-in-law as
a correspondence secretary. Alice Sheffield, 27, half-sister of Cameron’s
wife Samantha, receives £15,000 a year from Tory party funds for a three-day
week. She spends the rest of the week running a cosmetics website called
Bare Faced Cheek.
THE fallout from the Conway debacle has produced promises of action from all
the parties. On Friday Cameron ordered Tory MPs to reveal whether they
employed any family members, admitting that a straw poll had indicated that
about 70 did. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, made a similar
declaration, followed by Gordon Brown. The prime minister told Geoff Hoon,
the chief whip, that he expected transparency from all the party’s MPs.
It was not quite clear what that means in practice. “Gordon will not be
rushing into anything,” said a senior No 10 source. “David Cameron is trying
to make out this is a problem affecting all politicians. In fact, what we
have here is a single Conservative. He was caught. He was punished. In a
sense, it shows the system still works.”
But Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the committee on standards in public
life, said this weekend that a “proper review of the whole arrangement might
do everybody a service”.
He added: “I think you can rely on the vast majority of MPs to behave with
honour and integrity, but that’s not really the point. You’ve only got to
get one to abuse that and then all of them are tarred with the same brush,
which is why the principle of transparency and accountability and audit must
be right, to protect them and their reputation, as much as to protect public
money.”
MPs will be looking nervously at the Scottish system, where every receipt and
ticket stub submitted to the Holyrood parliament has been open to the
public. David McLetchie was forced to resign as leader of the Scottish
Tories in October 2005 after the release of his taxi expenses showed he had
billed taxpayers while working part-time as a solicitor.
Yesterday Ben Wallace, a Tory MP who is a former member of the Holyrood
parliament, followed the Scottish lead by publishing a complete breakdown of
his expenses, including a £1 parking ticket.
The moral authority in parliament lies with Kelly but authority of the hard,
political kind sits with the Speaker. In his role as chairman of the House
of Commons commission, Martin has influence over everything from appointing
key staff to drawing up rules on expenses. The commission has been blamed
for resisting previous demands for tighter regulations including random spot
checks – a proposal that will be aired again at a Commons committee tomorrow
– and publishing more detailed breakdowns of accommodation claims.
At a tribunal hearing this week the commission will seek to prevent greater
detail about expenses from being made public at a tribunal hearing. It is
appealing against a decision by the information commissioner to order MPs to
disclose in detail how they spend their allowance for second homes.
Martin’s defensiveness may be linked to allegations about his own perks. Last
year he claimed £17,166 in accommodation allowances, even though he has a
grace-and-favour Commons apartment. In December it emerged that his wife
Mary had claimed £4,280.20 for taxis since May 2004. A spokesman said she
needed taxis to shop for food for official functions.
One confidant said: “The Speaker is like the Queen at Balmoral after the death
of Diana. The world is changing around him and so are the expectations of
the public. But he is stuck in the past.”
Yesterday Martin’s office refused to comment on his plans for reform of the
system. But, to judge by past form, supporters of radical change should
expect to be disappointed.
How MPs use their allowances and expenses to bump up their salaries
The basic salary of an MP is £60,675 – about the same as an airline pilot or
head teacher of a modest secondary school, writes Jonathan Oliver. However,
a complex series of tax-free perks means that their real standard of living
is much higher.
On average, they receive an additional £135,850 in allowances. Not all of this
goes straight into their pockets, but there are many ways in which MPs can
enrich themselves.
Additional costs allowance This allowance is worth £23,000 a year tax
free and is designed to reimburse MPs for the “necessary costs incurred”
when staying overnight away from their main home.
Most use it to pay the mortgage interest on their second homes in London, if
their constituencies are outside the capital. With the rising property
prices of recent years, MPs stand to make huge profits when they eventually
sell up.
The average price of an apartment in Westminster, where many MPs live, has
soared by 236% since 1997, the year of Tony Blair’s landslide victory when
many new Labour MPs were elected.
Mileage Members can claim a generous 40p a mile for journeys between
Westminster and their constituency. But no proof of these trips is required.
MPs allege that some colleagues share cars, with each putting in separate
mileage claims.
Petty cash No expense less than £250 requires a receipt. Unscrupulous
MPs could buy a more expensive item and recoup the cost through a series of
claims for less than the £250 threshold.
European minibreaks on expenses MPs receive three trips a year to
European cities with accommodation paid for two nights. Some backbenchers
use this to help constituents facing difficulties overseas, but others
arrange a brief meeting with a local official and treat the rest of the
visit as a mini-break.
Free parking MPs can park for nothing under the Commons – a saving of
£26 a day.
Reporting team
Jonathan Oliver, Marie Woolf, Isabel Oakeshott, Holly Watt, Roger Waite,
Christopher Thompson, Ed Caesar, Gemma Soames
