A source close to the Standards and Privileges Committee pointed out to Guido that the police could not use the evidence gathered by the Committee during their investigation because it was subject to parliamentary privilege. Now that it has been published however it is no longer privileged and can be used by the forces of the law.

Guido has spoken to m’learned counsel and they have confirmed this is the case. He has therefore just put in a new complaint to the Met:

This ain’t over…

The Standards and Privileges Committee report on Denis MacShane is so damning that Labour HQ have already said his career is over. The report found that MacShane:

• Claimed nearly £20,000 a year in expenses for an office based in the garage of his South Yorkshire home.
• Signed claims with a “nom de plume” purporting to come from a General Manager who did not in fact exist.
• Knowingly submitted nineteen false invoices over a period of four financial years which were plainly intended to deceive the Parliamentary expenses authorities.
• Claimed thousands of pounds for eight computers that got ‘lost’ or were taken by interns.
• Claimed £12,900 for invoices from his EPI slush fund. He didn’t provide a single receipt for payments.

Do not pass go. Do not collect £200. Go straight to jail… if there was any justice.

Standards and Privileges Committee report into Denis MacShane…

“The real mischief of Mr MacShane’s actions was that the method he adopted of submitting false invoices, as the Commissioner said, bypassed the checks and controls the House had instituted in a way which enabled Mr MacShane to spend public money as he thought fit.”

The Electoral Commission have confirmed to Guido that they have asked the Labour Party for an explanation as to why Luciana Berger accepted an apparently illegal donation from a dormant company. Guido previously revealed how Berger’s CLP received a £5,000 donation from Purple Apple Facilities Management in April 2011, despite the company being declared dormant the previous year. Last night the Electoral Commission confirmed it had received a letter from Tory MP Karen Lumley enquiring as to whether Berger had broken the law on political donations:

When Guido first put the charge to Luciana she refused to respond. Now she doesn’t have a choice…

You might have thought that any self-respecting ambitious shadow cabinet minister and future party leadership contender would want to keep a safe distance from the sleazy world of expenses cheats. Not Yvette Cooper.

The shadow home secretary trousered a donation of nearly £5,000 from shamed ex-Labour MP and so-called ‘Expenses Queen’ Barbara Follett this month. Follett lost her job at the last election after she was exposed as one of the worst expenses troughers of all, amongst other things claiming £500 to clean a Chinese rug. Her novelist husband Ken bankrolled Ed Balls’ leadership campaign, and overall the Folletts have donated almost £60,000 to the Balls-Coopers this Parliament. Last time round public pressure decided that Barbara Follett had no role to play in public life. Ed and Yvette clearly disagree…

Regular readers will remember how back in September Tim Yeo quit his lucrative job as chairman of Eco City Vehicles following Guido’s conflict of interest revelations over the summer. There’s nothing like an early resignation to head off increasing scrutiny.

The latest Register of Members’ Interests shows that Yeo pocketed £40,000 for 91 hours work at Eco City over the last year, a generous £440-an-hour. Unlike in previous years, strangely Yeo omitted to declare earnings from Eco City month by month, only to reveal them in bulk when Number 10 came calling. On top of the Eco City cash, Yeo trousered another £15,000 from his green interests in the last month alone. And still he remains as chair of the Energy and Climate Change select committee…

Coincidently Eco City, who make green taxis, will benefit hugely from black cab firm Manganese Bronze going into administration. Stay tuned…

The Register of Members’ Interests reveals that Dominic Grieve’s PPS Jessica Lee owns a flat in London from which rental income is received. In spite of this Lee bills the taxpayer £1,430-a-month to rent another house in London. A rent-swapper caught red-handed. But this one does not end there…

Lee shares the expenses-funded flat with fellow Tory MP Stuart Andrew, who in turn owns another property (albeit in Leeds) from which he receives rental income. Both Lee and Andrew claim a hefty £1,430-a-month each – his people have confirmed to Guido that the total rent for the London property stands at £2,860-a-month. With MPs limited to claiming £1,666-a-month for London accommodation, that’s a clever way of getting round the rules for a nice pad…

Guido has contacted Lee’s office at least five times over the last few days, but despite repeated assurances of a response, she is refusing to comment. George Osborne says households should not receive more than £26,000-a-year in benefits. The Lee-Andrew household is raking in over £34,000-a-year of our cash in benefits…

The rent-swappers who own one London home are bad enough, but it takes a certain kind of trougher to bill the taxpayer for hotel stays when he already has two properties in the capital to choose from. Back during the original expenses scandal David Amess hid in a hairdressers after being doorstepped over his greedy second home claims. Once again the Tory MP has been caught red handed.

Amess owns a flat in east London which he rents out, claiming over £7,000 in expenses for the rent on a south west London flat in which he lives. But being a rent-swapper who makes money from the taxpayer isn’t enough for Amess. Despite charging us for the rent on the home he is registered as living in, the Tory MP has claimed another £8,000 expenses to stay in London hotels over the last year. All the while his taxpayer-funded rented home is left empty. Amess has been in parliament for nearly thirty years. Now would be a good time for him to announce his retirement…

Now we get to the greediest, most repulsive rent-swappers of all. Guido called out troughing Kevin Barron live on Sky in 2009, and once again the expenses-hungry Labour MP has been taking the taxpayer for a ride. This time the little piggy has had a little help from a friend.

Barron charged us £1,500-a-month to rent a three-bedroom London home owned by shadow cabinet office minister John Trickett. Barron began renting his fellow Labour MP’s home after flogging his own taxpayer-funded house for a £500,000 profit. Not content with sorting himself out at our expense, now Barron is funnelling taxpayers’ money straight into the bank account of his oinking pal Trickett. As soon as Trickett got wind the story was about to break he put the property up for sale.

Barron, unbelievably, is still the chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, while Trickett is responsible for shining light on government sleaze. These two are some of the most disgraceful rent-swappers of all. They know they can get away with it due to their safe Labour seats.

It’s down to Ed to make them pay…

This rent-swapping malarkey is bringing out some statements that remind you just how out of touch Members of Parliament can be. Some MPs might be admitting their guilt but expenses-hungry LibDem Don Foster is playing dumb. The sanctimonious self-serving communities minister even talks about himself in the third person:

“I genuinely don’t quite know what the story is. I used to live in a property that I owned in Westminster, and I was able under the previous rules to claim the interest on the mortgage. When IPSA changed the rules I was no longer able to do that so I had to move into rented property, and I could have sold the flat or rented it out. It is mine, I paid for it, and I chose at the bottom of the market to rent it, and that is what I currently do. I may one day sell it, or may carry on renting it out. It is an absolute disgrace that we have a system that says Don Foster can’t live in a property he owns, and claim about £400 per month less than he currently claims. They changed the rule to make it look supposedly better, but it has cost the taxpayer hundreds of pounds more per MP than it needed to have done just to look good, and I have absolutely no idea what it is I am doing wrong.”

The old flat might belong to Don, however he didn’t pay for it, taxpayers paid for it for years. The new system expects MPs to pay their own mortgage on properties they own. What Don is doing wrong is “contriving a tenancy” to maximise his expenses.  As the property is yours Don, as you so proudly state, then why not live in it and pay to do so out of your salary? Why should the taxpayer pay for you to rent when you have you own property already? Foster refused to respond to Guido over the weekend.

Foster is despised by many is his student-packed constituency of Bath as a result of his refusal to address the university following the tuition fees u-turn. Other prospective LibDem candidates have already been sniffing around in anticipation that Foster may stand down at the next election. The fact that he is a shamed rent-swapper may hasten his demise…