While most of the focus has been on Ken and his lack of transparency recently, Guido did wonder why the LibDem candidate Brian Paddick only released the last three years of his financials, unlike the four years from the others. Guido has worked out why…

In the missing fourth back year (2007/8) Brian Paddick received a large lump sum as part of his leaving package from the Met. Whilst the debate about public sector pensions can be saved for another day and Guido can’t have a go at Paddick for accepting what was rightfully his, however absurdly generous it was, it was a little rum to deliberately try to hide the evidence. Guido and his bean counting co-conspirators have worked out that this pay off would have been just shy of £400,000. Tax free…

His campaign initially refused to comment on the figures. However we know that Brian Paddick earned £125,667 as Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met and he is on the 1987 Police Pension Scheme. His healthy pension is two thirds of his final salary (£83,778). The key figure is how much he commuted from an annual income into a lump sum and what commutation factor was applied…

Paddick retired at age 49 years and 1 month, so his commutation factor is 19. (Whilst the commutation factors are said to be from 1 October 2007, these were later backdated to 1 December 2006 following a judicial review.) From the figures that Paddick did release, we know that he receives an annual income from his pension of £63,397. Therefore he commuted the following amount (in terms of annual income forfeited) £83,778 – £63,397 = £20,381. So multiply that £20,381 by 19 and we get £387,239. And in a perk of the job this is tax free...

Guido suspects that in 2007/8 Paddick’s effective rate of income tax was even less than Livingstone’s 14.5%. In response to this figure a spokesman for Brian Paddick said: “All Mayoral candidates agreed to publish their tax details from the last Mayoral election in 2008. Brian has fulfilled this commitment, unlike certain other candidates.” The agreement was four years if we are going to be picky…