Snouts to the trough lads – and lasses! Poor Derek’s not corrupt enough

Having taken some stick for laying into my old mucker Derek Conway, it may be worth drilling down into the psyche of what makes MPs behave the way they do.

Derek’s actions have shone an uncomfortably bright light into the murkier corners of what MPs’ get up to with their bloated allowances. Of course, the genuine employment of wives – and indeed husbands – as MP’s secretaries and researchers can be legitimate for a variety of well-rehearsed reasons. That was demonstrably not the situation in Derek Conway’s case.

The truth is that the Commons is stuffed with old dossers who use the place like a community care programme for superannuated politicians. They sit there, struggling on £60,000 a year with the school fees, painfully aware that many of their friends outside of politics earn many times more, with no real power, becoming increasingly miffed as they see uppity special advisers slide seamlessly into well-paid “public affairs” consultancies.

So with minimal regulation of how allowances are spent, the temptation is just too great - they think they can get away with a few thousand extra miles on the car allowance  or plumping up other claims. They think they’re under-paid and under-valued - and they just cheat at what they see as the margins. 

None of these boys are being paid for their good looks…

Of course what really pisses them off is seeing the way their better placed comrades really have their snouts stuck in the trough. That well known working-class hero Ian McCartney MP - yes, mini-Prescott himself - rakes in £115,000 a year as an “adviser” to US nuclear engineering company Fluor. That’ll buy a few pints of mild and bitter for the lads in t’welfare.

Then there’s Richard Caborn MP who takes a reported £96,000 a year as “non-executive” director of Amec - which just happens to be lobbying for profitable nuclear contracts – very non-exec in Caborn’s case, I suspect. Other former Labour MPs, Lord O’Neill and Brian Wilson are on the same game.

All made their careers, remember, as MPs in a Labour Party which was virulently against both civil and military nuclear programmes – though Wilson in fairness was always pro-nuclear. None of these boys are being paid for their business acumen or good looks. They’re being well paid for access to government ministers. Up the People! 

I’m damn sure Lady Cherie wouldn’t have been paid more than a few pennies…

And then there is Cherie. Who knows how many hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pounds, she has, is and will be making through her after dinner speeches and forthcoming book. What we do know is that Lady Cherie has made as much as £30,000 a speech. We also know that she does not have to declare her income from speeches and the advance for her recent autobiography is a well-kept secret (President Tony is receiving £5m for his effort). We also know that they both keep the vast majority of the proceeds from such activities. And there was I thinking that 18 years of Tory rule had been in vain!

Now I’m absolutely certain that if Lady Cherie was just a barrister, or even a QC married to a jobbing MP, she would be superb at her job and excellent after-dinner company. But I’m also damn sure she wouldn’t have been paid more than a few pennies for her thoughts. Maybe even her husband would have to cheat his allowances to pay their way. Poor Derek. His real crime was not to be successful enough for him and his family to rip the system off within the rules! 

Phillip Oppenheim