From the free city taxi service to the overseas travel allowance and the first-class air fares, wide-eyed MEPs genuinely cannot believe the many perks of the Brussels gravy train when they first arrive in the capital city of the EU.

They describe a system of allowances so generous that they find it difficult not to be sucked into a culture of complacency about the use of public money, which makes Westminster look like an ascetic monastic order.

Just like Giles Chichester, the Conservative MEP who quit as group leader yesterday, many MEPs have been encouraged by the parliamentary authorities to use an arm’s-length company to take care of the bureaucracy of Brussels life, from paying office bills to remunerating staff.

Mr Chichester came unstuck because of a conflict of interest by using a family business, of which he was a paid director, and which was a company with the stated aim of producing and selling maps.

But the parliamentary authorities do not expect to see much of a breakdown of what happens to the annual parliamentary assistants’ allowance of €186,000 (£148,600) and the other expenses schemes, which can be paid into these service companies. One MEP described his bemusement when he was handed back an accounts form by a Parliament official who told him that he had put down too much information about what he did with the money.

Another opportunity is presented to unscrupulous MEPs through the mechanism used to pay their generous second pension. The money for this is switched to their pension account from another pot, their general office expenditure allowance of about £50,000 a year, which they are supposed to refund from their own bank account. There is no systematic check on whether MEPs rigorously reimburse the general office expenditure allowance, and several years ago they voted down an amendment to bring in a specific check on whether this money was being repaid.

An inquiry into the scams used by MEPs to siphon off money from the public purse was carried out last year by an auditor for the MEPs’ Budget Committee. It showed that one MEP paid an assistant a Christmas bonus that was worth 19 times his salary. Several others set up arm’s-length companies to pay expenses to bogus staff and others seemed to funnel money to their political parties while claiming to be paying assistants.

But the committee voted to keep the report secret and it is still available to read by MEPs on the committee only, who must take a vow of silence about its contents and read it in a sealed room without taking notes.

When some of the secrets were discussed by Chris Davies, a Liberal Democrat MEP on the committee, he was attacked by fellow MEPs for “a misuse of information and a misuse of parliamentary obligations”.

Another of the tempting treats that MEPs can access is the overseas travel allowance, an annual pot of €3,500 a year for trips outside Europe on EU business. It is alleged that a British MEP claimed a holiday in Thailand on expenses because he had a 30-minute meeting at the European Commission office in Bangkok.

The many possibilities for financial rewards as well as the attraction of the excellent restaurants in Brussels and Strasbourg – the two homes of the European Parliament – have led to the MEP experience being described as a gravy train. From next month there will be an actual train that benefits the lavish lifestyle of a hard-working European parliamentarian. The Strasbourg Express will leave from Brussels for the first time on July 7, taking MEPs and their assistants from one Parliament site to the other without having to use public transport. Each exclusive return journey will cost the taxpayer about £158,000. MEPs will pay £170 for a return ticket but they will then be reimbursed.

Whoops-a-daisy moments

— Harold Macmillian tried to brush off the resignation of three of his Treasury ministers, including Peter Thorneycroft, his Chancellor, as “a little local difficulty” while touring the Commonwealth in 1958

— Ron Davies, Labour's Welsh Secretary, resigned in 1998 after what he called a “moment of madness” in which he agreed to go for a meal with a stranger he met on Clapham Common, a well-known gay meeting place. He was robbed at knife-point by the man, then picked up another man and a woman who stole his car

— Robert Armstrong, a civil servant, admitted being “economical with the truth” during the Spycatcher trial – an attempt by the Government to ban a book by Peter Wright, an MI5 officer

— Alan Clark confessed to having been “economical with the actualité” during the investigation of the arms-to-Iraq affair in 1992

— In 1998 the US President, Bill Clinton, owned up to his affair with Monica Lewinsky in a televised address to America by saying: “Indeed I did have a relationship with Ms Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong"

Grassroots phrase

— “Whoops a daisy” is said after a trip or stumble. It may have evolved from “ups a daisy”, which, according to Clough Robinson's The Dialect of Leeds and Its Neighbourhood (1862), echoes the “spring-leap from the ground” of the daisy flower.

— The phrase first appeared in America at the end of the 19th century. It was recorded in written form as “Whoopsie Daisy!” in The New Yorker, in September, 1925

Sources: www.phrases.org.uk; www.straightdope.com; Random House; Times archives

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