Expenses: At half-time, Cameron 1, Brown 0

MPs may grumble, but David Cameron has seized the initiative. He is ordering his frontbenchers, and firmly asking his backbenchers, to declare much more about their expenses. He wants them to reveal the salaries of family members, the names of all their staff and to list the amounts claimed in rent and mortgage payments (in a form reproduced below the fold). On the Wintertons, Cameron called their behaviour "indefensible" but hinted that further punishment can come only after a formal investigation (strangely, no Labour MP has yet complained to the Standards Commissioner). Cameron implicitly criticised the Commons authorities and the Speaker for their choice of individuals to conduct the expenses probe, including David Maclean (the anti-FOI campaigner ... and don't expect a result before the autumn, by the way). He demurred from going too far, joking that he still wanted to be called by Michael Martin at PMQs tomorrow. There's the rub: few are prepared to speak critically of the Speaker because of his vast power over their lives.

But what Cameron achieved today was to successfully communicate that the Tories understand that there is a problem here and are ready to deal with it.

We wait to see how Brown responds. At lobby, his spokesman announced that he was writing to the Speaker to ask for greater transparency on expenses, but we haven't seen the letter. Let's see if he is busy photocopying Cameron's form.

Comments

[Northernhousewife]

Who would have thought Cameron could turn this to his advantage.Looing at the polls he has. The man's a political genius.
We have 'Teflon Tony'.
Now we have ' ? Dave'.
Answers [clean ones] on a post card.

[Ted]

On the Wintertons wasn't their defence that they were acting within the rules and had cleared matters with HoC authorities?

So today we hear from Mr & Mrs Balls regarding their change of main residence from London to constituency home (which resulted in large jump in mortgage interest relief claimed) "Ed and Yvette have at all times acted within the Green Book rules, and always in full consultation with the House of Commons authorities."

and from Gordon Brown who claimed for his London flat, despite having a flat in no10 at the time "his claims had been within the rules."

Does it really take until Autumn to clarify those rules? They seem pretty elastic at present.

No doubt Brown will accuse Cameron of jumping on a bandwagon , then come up with the same set of proposals himself, stating that this was what he intended doing all along.
Brown doesn't have an original thought in his head.

[benj40]

You can tell it's half time as both teams have stepped back and are pissing all over the pitch.

Whatever the result, the losers are the next generation to run out on to the turf.