Both Dave and Nick promised before the election they would change the law to let us recall corrupt MPs. After the election they agreed it was a priority and put it in the Coalition Agreement:

We will bring forward early legislation to introduce a power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP is found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing and having had a petition calling for a by-election signed by 10% of his or her constituents.

Imagine Guido’s shock when pretty much the only piece of legislation proposed by this government that would improve accountability was kicked into the long grass:

“The Government remains committed to establishing a recall mechanism which is transparent, robust and fair. However, we set out in the White Paper that we would consider the results of this process with great care. In order to fulfil that pledge, and to give due consideration to the Committee’s conclusions and recommendations, the Government wishes to take the proper time to reflect on this policy and determine its future direction. That way we can be sure of introducing the most appropriate mechanism for our constitutional framework.”

In other words, never…

However bad your Monday morning might be going, at least you aren’t as hard-up as poor old Andy Burnham. Over the weekend he published his heart-wrenching sob story excuse for why he has been outed as a shamed rent-swapper. It almost brought a tear to Guido’s eye:

“After the 2010 Election, IPSA changed the rules to stop MPs claiming for mortgage interest. I wanted to stay at my flat but I could no longer afford to do so and was forced to leave by August 2012. In June this year, I moved to an unfurnished, rented flat in Kennington. I now claim accommodation expenses on this new property alone. I make no claim in respect of the old flat. However, all this has left me in the unusual situation of having a flat in London on which I have a mortgage to pay but where I am unable to live. I don’t want to sell it so have had to rent it out. The rent I receive covers the mortgage, the agents’ management fee and on-going maintenance costs. IPSA is right to prevent MPs making capital gains on properties with the help of the taxpayer. I support rules to stop this. However, I believe they could have been introduced without asking MPs to move to more expensive rented accommodation. If the rules changed again to reflect this, I would move back to my old flat at the earliest opportunity.”

It wasn’t Andy’s fault he had to send the taxpayer the bill, it was the rules of course! He “couldn’t afford” to pay his own way despite earning three times the average wage as an MP. He was “forced to leave” his home and live in an “unfurnished flat” with the plebs in Kennington. Don’t believe the spin, Burnham’s snout is so far in the trough he is fast looking like one of the most piggy MPs. Poor Burnham is financing his buy-to-let scheme and building up a little nest egg courtesy of the taxpayer. He is the highest-profile rent-swapper yet…

Bill Cash has form for dodgy expenses. Last time round the Staffordshire MP was denounced by David Cameron for claiming over £15,000 to pay his daughter rent for her London flat, so it’s no surprise that Guido has caught him at it again. Millionaire Cash lives in a massive country house in Shropshire, one the biggest houses owned by anybody in the Commons. According to the Register of Members’ Interests he also has a share in a Pimlico property that he receives rental income for. Despite all this Cash has just started renting a new flat in London, charging the taxpayer for his rent on expenses. In April alone he asked taxpayers for over £2,000.

Dave told him last time round that he was on thin ice. Now Cash has crashed through.

Why does one of the richest men in Parliament need to bill the taxpayer for rent when he already owns a house in London and another mansion in Shropshire?

With his über-safe 13,000 majority he’s able to take liberties. And your cash to pay his bills. 

The original expenses scandal cost dozens of corrupt MPs their jobs, the worst offenders ended up behind bars. Now the rent-swapping sleaze that John Bercow is trying to cover up has been blown wide open. This morning Guido is listing the most shameless rent-swappers…

The usual suspects kept cropping up when Guido started digging around last week. Top of the pile was surprise, surprise Denis MacShane, outed in the Times this weekend. In addition to his property back in Rotherham – remember he rented his garage to himself on expenses for £125,000 – MacShame owns a £700,000 house in Pimlico just a few minutes walk from Parliament, which he rents out under the IPSA rules and then claims £1,450-a-month expenses to rent another home in London. Making cash off the back of the taxpayers when he has no reason to exploit the IPSA loophole except to enrich himself…

When The Times confronted him he claimed he had stopped doing it – convenient. We have some further questions for him, when did he stop the fiddle? Why can’t MacShame live in his posh Pimlico pad right next to Westminster? Why does millionaire MacShane have to bill the taxpayer rent for a house he doesn’t need to rent?

Because he is taking us for a ride. Again…

IPSA say MPs renting out property they own “is an issue of their own private financial affairs over which we rightly have no authority”,  hinting that they will review the loophole that allows MPs to rent from other MPs. It will be part of a public consultation next month and Guido suspects that the public are not going to like the fact that some 124 MPs have income from renting property they own and 27 of them are renting flats in London despite the fact that they already own property in the capital.

Despite this, Guido hears the more feeble parts of the Lobby are hesitant with hacks divided as to how heavy to go on this taxpayer subsidised property racket. Hacks for the popular press are grumbling that ‘the FT and Bloomberg are behaving like hand-jobs’ for MPs while the Telegraph, Sun and the Mail want to gun for them over the latest expenses scandal. The argument that because IPSA signed this off it must sounds dangerously like the defence employed in 2009. It didn’t last long that time either…

Peter Luff was one of the worst expense troughers – his expensive tastes demands from the taxpayers last time around included a £625 china service, £1,583 on dining room table, £500 for Aga servicing, £809.91 for a TV and another china set for £367 a few years later. In short he was one of the worst troughers caught in 2009 to survive the 2010 election.

He has responded to revelations that he is, surprise-surprise, a rent-swapper with a David Laws style defence that the taxpayer would have saved money if he had broken the rules rather than merely gamed the system. In the interests of fairness Guido reproduces his argument in full:

“The new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) expenses scheme did not allow MPs to claim the cost of mortgage interest. I could not, therefore, afford to live in my London flat and I had no choice but to sell it or to rent it out. Having only recently purchased it, I chose to rent it out and this information has been in the public domain for two years, it having been properly declared in the Register of Members’ Interests. 

IPSA specified that when MPs are away from home they must live in rented property or stay in a hotel. When I am in London, I now therefore live in a rented flat. This is not my preference – I would have preferred to continue to live in the flat I own, but IPSA’s well-meaning rules designed to safeguard the taxpayers’ interests and promote transparency oblige me to do so. Ironically, the costs to the taxpayer would have been lower had I been allowed to continue with my previous arrangements.”

The obvious question that is unanswered is why a Tory MP on £65,738 thinks that he can’t afford to live in the Kennington flat we have so lavishly furnished with tea sets for him – the mortgage was just £657 a month in 2007 and would be considerably less today with lower interest rates. The average wage in London is less than half what Luff earns. Luff is standing down at the next election before the voters kick him out. Good riddance…

2009:

Published expenses on my website in the spirit of openness, contrary to what's been reported in Courier, I'm not avoiding publication at all—
Linda Riordan MP (@Linda_Riordan) May 19, 2009

I totally accept the interim measures announced by Speaker Martin to limit what MPs can claim. We need root and branch reform and quickly—
Linda Riordan MP (@Linda_Riordan) May 20, 2009

2012.

Via Mark Thompson

The names are coming out. The names of MPs fiddling the system to maximise their expenses by renting their mortgaged property out so that they can then rent another property with the taxpayers picking up the bills for both. Say goodbye at the next election to Linda Riordan, the Labour MP for Halifax, not satisfied with earning three times as much as her constituents she employs her partner in her office on £42,500. Pushing their take from the taxpayer over the £100,000-a-year level.

That just isn’t enough for this little piggie, she rents out her London flat to another MP and skims off an extra £1,000-a-month in profit from the taxpayer, charging a rent of £1,560 on a property where her mortgage costs her some £500-a-month. She also claims £1,473 from the taxpayer to pay the rent for her own property. The combined £3,000 monthly claim represents an extra burden on the taxpayer which would not have been necessary had Riordan not contrived her tenancy. Housing benefits fraudsters go to jail for less.

UPDATE: Linda Riordan is a member of the hard left Socialist Campaign Group.

Her friend Helen Goodman MP thinks Guido is motivated by sexism:

@GuidoFawkes And what about all male MPs who do that? You tweeting them too or is your attack pure sexism?—
Helen Goodman (@HelenGoodmanMP) October 19, 2012

Incidentally, we’re working on more names – mostly male- from all parties…

Another batch of politicians, another expenses scandal. This morning’s Telegraph reveals that John Bercow is attempting under the cover of “security reasons” to cover-up the publication of another round explosive expenses documents that would expose a property merry-go-round between rent-swapping MPs.

Here Guido gives the “How-To” low-down on how sleazy MPs are swapping their rent to line their own pockets:

The first and most simple method of rent-swapping involves the MPs who make money renting out their own previously taxpayer-funded properties while claiming expenses to rent out homes nearby. According to The Telegraph Chris Bryant rents out his mansion flat in Bloomsbury while claiming £2,000 expenses for rent on another London property. We have repeatedly asked him for an explanation this morning without receiving any reply. The Speaker claims the truth cannot be released because it would pose a security risk. Laughable, Guido and anyone else who wants to know, already knows where he lives.

The second, far more serious, category of rent-swapping covers a handful of MPs suspected of renting out properties to each other, effectively an “I’ll pay yours if you pay mine” scheme. MPs are banned from renting homes to relatives but a loophole in the rules allows them to trouser huge sums of money by renting out properties to other current and former MPs. Bercow cites security reasons for not revealing the address or names of landlords, but there is absolutely no reason why he cannot release the names of the MPs involved in this form of rent-swapping. It is a cover up.

There is also potentially a third category: the so-called “phantom” rent swap. This involves the possibility of MPs telling the authorities they have moved when in reality they have not, and then swapping their rent on the quiet.

If these people were claiming housing benefit “Rent Swapping” like this would fall into the category of benefit fraud plain and simple, it is in the parlance of welfare fraud investigators a “contrived tenancy” punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment.

Stay tuned. There is more to come…

It’s a pretty rare event nowadays that someone stands up in the Commons and asks the Chancellor to cut taxes, even more so when the question comes from the opposition Labour benches. Guido was surprised to learn that the shadow climate change minister, lovely Luciana Berger, suggested George Osborne should accelerate plans to cut tax for property developers back in October 2010:

“To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will bring forward proposals to make entrepreneurs’ relief from capital gains tax available to those who rent out property in the private rented sector.”

A tax cut for property developers, an interesting idea you might think. Could this sudden bout of entrepreneur friendly policy advocacy possibly be anything to do with the fact that Luciana trousered a £4,000 donation months earlier from one Anwar Ansari, a property developer? In June 2010 a property developer bungs Luciana several thousand pounds, then only a few months later she stands up in the House and asks the Chancellor to give property developers a tax break. Coincidence?

What’s more, Berger’s CLP then pocketed another £2,500 just a few months down the line from Allerton Priory LLP, a holding company for a property portfolio run by the Hanlons, a father and son property development duo. Could there possibly be a link between these generous donations from property developers and Luciana lobbying the government to cut their taxes? Once is a coincidence, twice is a case for the standards committee…