In defence of MPs not publishing their expenses

[ciphergoth]

(Copied from a comment I made elsewhere)

Gosh, but my MP is quick. I read about MPs moving to conceal their expenses again, and was moved to write to him. But I only got as far filling in my address in the letter on writetothem.com and thinking about what I wanted to write when I got the reply. It went like this:

Dear ciphergoth,

Thanks for writing. It says here I'm supposed to give some guff about costs of documenting these things, but you wouldn't buy that and I wouldn't want to insult you with it. If you promise not to tell anyone, I'll tell you the real reason.

We spend absolutely footling amounts of money compared to the money that we control as MPs. We could be twice as profligate as we are and it would make no difference to the national spend at all. In fact if that profligacy made us 0.1% more efficient at our jobs, it would totally be worth it, because if we can save 0.1% we've saved all our salaries and expenses many, many times. But the tabloids care because it's not hard to make a reasonable expense sound unreasonable, and it's always a story, a story that takes our time and attention away from the things that really matter.

We wouldn't mind being as accountable as everyone else, but we know we're not going to get treated fairly, and frankly we don't need the bother. We thought saying all this out loud wouldn't work, though, so frankly it seemed best for everyone's long term interests just to bury it while we were fucking up the big stuff.

Your loving MP, Keith.

What do you think?

(NB in case it isn't clear, my MP didn't really write the letter above)

Comments

[apathysketchpad.com (from livejournal.com)]

It's an interesting idea, but I think the principle is important enough that no numbers could overrule it. I almost don't care about the actual expenses so much as how the current MPs vote on it; if the government pushed it through and then everyone who voted for it (or abstained) was lost their seat at the next election, getting the decision reversed would be relatively unimportant to me. But any MP who feels they should be unaccountable to the public with regard to their use of tax money has so fundamentally missed the point of government that they shouldn't be allowed to do it.

In any case, if MPs never did anything if they thought tabloids would get the wrong end of the stick then (a) they'd never do anything and (b) tabloids would just make [more] stuff up. If you don't want to be scrutinised, don't apply for an important job in the public sector.