During the recent furore over MPs attempting to hide their expenses, I wrote to my MP using the wonderful services of http://www.writetothem.com/
Dear Humfrey Malins,
I understand that MPs plan to grant themselves the privilege of
exempting themselves from Freedom of Information requests concerning
their expenses.Whenever I have a business expense, my employer asks for every receipt,
no matter how small. How else is it to correctly pay its tax and
protect itself against fraud?I would like you to remember that it is MY money that you are spending.
I happily pay tax for the betterment of this country. I do not object
to paying your wages or any other reasonable expenses you may have as
you go about your business. What I object to is you hiding your
spending from me. How else am I to gauge whether you are defrauding me
or if you represent value for money?As one of many people who is looking for a change of government at the
next election, you action on this matter will influence my vote.Yours sincerely,
Terence Eden
A scant 2 hours later, I had a reply!
Dear Mr Eden, The House of commons authorities check our expenses to the
last penny, and I have no problem publishing mine. I wonder if you agree
that since Civil servants and the police are public servants whether
they too should publish all their expenses best wishes Humfrey Malins
CBE MP
So, I replied,
Dear Mr Malins,
Many thanks for your swift reply. It’s great to see an MP engaging
with their constituents. Do you have a blog or website where you will
be publishing these figures?I do believe that all Civil Servants should publish these expenses to
the people who employ them.
If, for example, a Police Authority sees that a PC is claiming
extortionate or unusual expenses, they should be able to challenge
them. Ultimately, voters chose whether or not to employ an MP.
Therefore, I think their expenses should be visible to the public.
That said, the same should go for anyone who is employed by the state.
I come from the Open Source Software world – one of our mantras is
“Many eyes make all bugs shallow”. The more people you have looking
for a problem, the easier it is to spot and fix. It also means that
people are less likely to behave maliciously if they know there is a
good chance their misdeeds will be spotted.Would you have any objection to me publishing this correspondence on
my blog – http://shkspr.mobi/blog – ?Many thanks – and please encourage all those in your party to vote to
keep their expenses viewable by all.Terence Eden
Bizarrely, I received a written response a few days later
So, full marks to Mr Malins for being on the ball with this one. It really is great to see what a bit of effort will get you.
Nice one…! A bit late in the day to post but as I saw this via a little bit if surfing to check on some info about this person. So glad this “Tory toff” has gone, conning the taxpayer for the amount of £58k and Woking, his now EX-constituency, was for him only 25mins by train from London!