MercoPress, en Español

Montevideo, December 23rd 2024 - 03:52 UTC

 

 

British MPs handing back money “milked” out of the system

Thursday, May 14th 2009 - 08:07 UTC
Full article

British PM Gordon Brown backed the “extreme but necessary” measure last night as senior Labour figures started following in the footsteps of Tory frontbenchers by handing over money that they were seen to have “milked” out of the system.

anger” by paying £13,332 in capital gains tax (CGT).

MPs must prove themselves “worthy of the public's trust” in the wake of the Westminster expenses scandal, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has declared. He said MPs should apologise for any errors made and put them right, and set about creating a new system that would be seen as “wholly fair”.

Mr Brown, speaking at Prime Minister's Questions, said: “Our responsibility is to create a system of MPs' allowances that's transparent and will be seen by the country as wholly fair and we must prove ourselves worthy of the public's trust.”

And he added: “We must apologise for the mistakes that have been made, we must rectify the errors that have happened.” He said the decision he announced on Tuesday night to have independent scrutiny of the last four years of MPs' expenses was a first step.

Tory leader David Cameron urged him to take up a proposal he adopted for Conservative MPs - to publish their expense claims online as they submit them.

The Prime Minister said that the Members' Allowances Committee was already drawing up “extreme and radical” plans for the independent scrutiny of all expense claims over the past four years. But Mr Cameron said the plans did not go far enough.

“If we just ask a committee whether everyone has obeyed the rules, it will take a long time and then I think find - surprise, surprise - that everyone has obeyed the rules,” he said.

”The issue is not so much whether the rules were obeyed. The issue is about the rules themselves. How much needs to be paid back is not a legal issue, it is a moral and an ethical issue and it requires some political leadership to sort it out.

Categories: Economy, International.

Top Comments

Disclaimer & comment rules

Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!