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

[lovingboth]

Dear MP,

Nice try. I agree that you have made some horrendous mistakes in 'fucking up the big stuff' and that compared to, say, the financial consequences of your vote for the invasion of Iraq, the cost to the public of your second home in London is tiny.

Alas, you know that some of your Parliamentary colleagues have their noses so deep in the trough that it's a wonder they can see daylight. Allowances for staff are to help you do your job, not fund your children's lives of never ending piss-ups. In order to make an informed choice at election time, the voters need to know who is taking the piss. Getting rid of just one useless MP would increase efficiency by more than 0.1%.

It would have helped if so many of you hadn't voted for a string of privacy reducing measures with the justification that the innocent have nothing to hide. If that's good enough for us, it's good enough for you. (See also the way that keeping benefits low apparently 'incentivises' the poor, and the insistence on means testing several of them when not doing so would actually be cheaper.)

You also know that under the current system, the majority of MPs have no influence on policy and no qualifications for the job beyond being able to be chosen by few members of their party in one of its safe seats. (Having the right skin colour and genitals helps greatly, doesn't it?) Similarly, you know that publishing details of party funding is helping reduce the abuses there.

All this increases the cynicism much of the public feel towards politicians and politics in general. It actively helps extremist groups like the BNP who seek the 'none of the above' vote. The effect is most strong with the European Parliament where the abuses are larger and the controls even weaker, but it is there at all levels of government.

In this case, the vast bulk of the money has been spent in scanning what receipts exist. Publish them!