Tory grandee Sir Peter Viggers forced to quit over £30,000 gardening bill
Times: The purge of Conservative MPs caught up in the expenses scandal intensified last night as David Cameron forced out a grandee who had claimed £30,000 for gardening.
Off with their heads? As Gordon dithers while Westminster burns, rejects Cameron’s calls for an immediate election and admits that a conservative government being elected at a snap election would cause chaos Richard Gordon, QC, writing in the Times states – |
“Thinking the unthinkable is what constitutional lawyers are paid to do. Many are now saying that with the daily revelations about improper expenses claims from beleaguered MPs the Queen should step in and dissolve Parliament — against the Government’s wishes — forcing a general election to compel MPs to stand for immediate re-election after a scandal on the scale of that of the pre 1832 rotten boroughs. Trust has now been destroyed. It can, so the argument runs, be rebuilt only by a neutral third party, the Queen, and not by a self-interested and wholly discredited cabal of politicians. ”
I suspect that an immediate election would do more harm than good at present and The Queen would be best advised to keep well out of this sorry mess. The prospect of an immediate election at a time when we are in the midst of a serious financial situation is not one that appeals greatly – a view quite possibly shared by many who sit back and reflect on the wider picture. While The Queen may have constitutional prerogatives to dissolve Parliament, in the event that she stays her hand, the timing of the next election will be at the discretion of Gordon Brown – assuming, of course, that the Labour Party men in togas, knives hidden within the folds of cloth, do not call upon the prime minister late of an evening shortly.
Far more interesting is the nature and scale of the cull of MPs coming. Tory grandees are dropping like flies. Hogg, Steen and now Sir Peter ‘Donald Duck’ Viggers are standing down… what will Gordon Brown’s Star Chamber do. Hazel Blears, we are told by the PM, has behaved unacceptably. Unacceptably enough to be removed? There are others, at a senior level within the Labour Party who should be considering their position. They may also have to look at their shoulders frequently to see if their collars are being felt by PC Plod. Jonathan Fisher, QC, in a most interesting article in The Time today writes: ” A police investigation into the MPs expenses scandal will swiftly identify false accounting as the criminal offence most likely to have been committed by the most egregious of the SW1 claimants. ”
Bar Boy, commenting on my blog yesterday wrote: “Do any of you grown up lawyer experts have a view over those of our esteemed parliamantarian troughers who also happen to be barristers, such as Hogg, Straw and Hoon. No one, to my knowledge, has yet commented on this aspect. The Bar is very insistent, to the point of being annoyingly repetitive, when banging on about standards and conduct, blah, blah, yawn etc. Should, for example, Inner, now be making an example of governing bencher Straw, and passing him the pearl handled revolver ? ”
He has a point. I may be making a telephone call to the Bar Council this morning and make yet another nuisance of myself.
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An early dissolution would suit the outgoing troughers, who will get their resettlement grant providing they can hang on to their seat until dissolution. The jammy gits then get the dosh (our dosh) for their grant, which looks as though, for the older ones, it is equivalent to around a year’s worth of their parliamentary salary. On my reading of the rules, if they stand down whilst parliament is still sitting, they get nothing.
Duck Bill Fattypuss springs to mind…
Bar Boy,
In this and your previous post, you have hit the nail on the head.
Charon,
False accounting seems remarkably restrictive-does it not let a lot of MPs off the hook?
[…] He’s Ducked | The end of the beginning.. the beginning of the end? | Is there a danger that democracy is being undermined? | Podcast with Tom Harris MP on expenses and other matters (including twitter) | A Parliament of Crooks? | 16th May Postcard: The Exorcist returns to The House (of Commons) | A personal Statement from Rex Charon MP | Podcast with Carl Gardner on MP Expenses – The potential criminal offences | It’s a Moat point | It’s a dog’s life… but someone has to pay for it | Until the going down of the sun… we shall remember them | 9-10th May Postcard from John Lewis | Milking a cow is a bit like milking expenses | […]
[…] He’s Ducked | The end of the beginning.. the beginning of the end? | Is there a danger that democracy is being undermined? | Podcast with Tom Harris MP on expenses and other matters (including twitter) | A Parliament of Crooks? | 16th May Postcard: The Exorcist returns to The House (of Commons) | A personal Statement from Rex Charon MP | Podcast with Carl Gardner on MP Expenses – The potential criminal offences | It’s a Moat point | It’s a dog’s life… but someone has to pay for it | Until the going down of the sun… we shall remember them | 9-10th May Postcard from John Lewis | Milking a cow is a bit like milking expenses | Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)5th February: News up on Insite and the #legalitshow tag!…Le Blog… critique et revue…Pleased to get a mention…You have the right to watch this Miami Law trailer […]