Michael Barnbrook, the BNP’s very own parliamentary sleazebuster, is at it again. After having successfully ended the career of Tory MP Derek Conway he has now turned his sights on some more dodgy dealings by Westminster’s ‘snouts in the trough’ MPs.
First on his ‘hit-list’ are husband and wife Tory MPs Sir Nicholas and Ann Winterton. They are alleged to have obtained almost £130,000 of expenses over six years to pay for rent on a home they had, in fact, already bought! The London flat was put into a family trust, and the rent was then paid to the trust also – ‘creative accounting’ which even Arthur Daley would have been proud of. This arrangement, we should add, was actually approved by House of Commons officials, which merely goes to show that parliament cannot be trusted to police itself.
Former police Inspector Michael Barnbrook complained about this to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards who initially refused to investigate. Undeterred, Michael Barnbrook wrote again and the Commissioner finally conceded that there was “sufficient evidence” for a “preliminary enquiry”. Although Sir Nicholas may not have acted illegally, he has surely broken the spirit of the rules and claimed expenses which he did not genuinely need.
Next in Michael Barnbrook’s line of fire is the Speaker, former Labour MP Michael Martin. Mr Martin obtained ‘Air Miles’ from flights on official business and paid for from the public purse, and then used these to obtain free flights for members of his family. These ‘official’ flights, costing over £10,000 last year alone, were largely, in fact, simply flights between London and Glasgow where the Martins have a home. Furthermore, it has been reported that he and his wife fly business class – at our expense, of course, and thus accruing even more Air Miles. This is a Speaker who clearly likes his frills, and not just those on the fancy clothes he wears in parliament.
As with the Winterton scandal, what Mr Martin has done seems not t be technically in breach of the rules (rules agreed by MPs themselves) but is certainly against the guidance that MPs receive which states that Air Miles obtained from publicly-funded official flights should be used to reduce the cost of future such flights and not for personal gain.
Ironically, Michael Martin is not only chairman of the Commons Members Estimates Committee, which oversees MPs’ expenses, but is also heading a ‘root and branch’ parliamentary inquiry into MPs’ expenses, set up as a result of the Derek Conway scandal. Clearly the Speaker is unfit to do either of these job and should immediately step down from these positions.
The Parliamentary Commissioner has not yet indicated whether he will investigate the Speaker as a result of Michael Barnbrook’s complaint. Watch this space!
The final scandal has nothing to do with MPs, but is the way these stories have been reported in the media. The Evening Standard, the Mirror, and the Daily Telegraph all reported these stories, but not one mentioned that Michael Barnbrook (whom they all named) is a member of the BNP – even though he specifically asked all the journalists he spoke to to include this fact in their stories. At least the Daily Telegraph got one thing right, describing Michael Barnbrook as “a thorn in MPs’ sides”. Amazingly, the only media organisation which had the decency to admit that this scourge of parliamentary sleaze is a member of the BNP was the BBC – will wonders never cease?
