Politicians’ expenses come under the spotlight

Once again it seems that politicians are plundering the public purse to feather their own nests. So what's the answer: tougher rules, spot audits, limits on the amount that can be claimed in expenses?

"An extremely capable person who operates e-mail and who uses a mobile phone" was how ex-Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain recently described his 80-year-old mother, to whom he pays £5,400 a year of public money for "secretarial assistance", including writing his Christmas cards, according to The Times.

This admission came hard on the heels of the news that Derek Conway, the Conservative MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, had paid nearly £400,000 of taxpayers' money to his wife and two sons, one of whom, Freddie, conceded under cross-examination that he knew no-one at Westminster, had never met his father's secretary for whom he supposedly "filleted post and stuffed envelopes" and had no recollection of why he had received £10,000 bonuses from his father.

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