+++ Michael Martin to resign as Speaker today +++

Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons is to resign this afternoon.

Unsurprising news really after yesterday's performance.

I hope the House of Commons can now select someone who can really reform it. Congratulations to Douglas Carswell for his successful campaign.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - 60,000 and counting

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown aint getting any better and the "Please go" petition on the No 10 website has passed 60,000 signatures today.

In fact if anything, Brown's dithering and indecisiveness about the whole expenses debacle and even his unwillingness to take a lead in the dire situation Michael Martin finds himself (Nick Robinson reported today on his blog that he thinks Martin would have had a nod and a wink from Brown that he could carry on fighting - terrible misjudgement) it just shows how out of touch he is.

I am sure a better PM would have got a grip of this much sooner. So, all the more reason if you have not already done so to go and sign it. The next target to aim for is probably 70,664 when it will enter the top 10 of all petitions the No 10 site has ever had (it is currently 14th).

Andrew MacKay's meeting in Bracknell

Andrew MacKay has just announced that the public meeting he has called for constituents to be able to cross-examine him about this will be this Friday 22nd May at 7:00pm at the Kerith Centre in Bracknell. It is a ticket only event and you need to call 01344 868286 or e-mail bracknellca@tory.org. The full details and map link are here.

I have managed to order a ticket today so I will be there but what I want to know is why have they gone for a ticket only event? Presumably they were concerned about numbers as Peter Henley indicated to me last week but making it ticket only will surely exclude some people. Andrew MacKay said that he would allow any constituent to ask him questions but it sounds like this might not happen now if more people wish to attend than there are tickets available.

Absolutely astonishing scenes in the chamber

I have not read or seen any media or blog comment on what has just happened in the chamber. This is just my immediate view.

The Speaker's statement was completely inadequate. He seemed to just be saying he would get the great and the good together and sort it all out. He apologised and said the whole house bears responsibility for what has happened which needed to be said but was an absolute bare minimum. He also seemed to be trying to say that he had been trying to sort the problem out since last year (3rd July motion that was defeated) when the whole way through he has thrown up obstacles and done everything in his power to avoid transparency.

There then began a bizarre 10 or so minutes where member were invited to give points of order. I am no expert of the vagaries of parliamentary process but it seemed to be that almost every point that was raised was inadmissible in some way shape or form. There were several direct attacks on the Speaker, not least from Douglas Carswell. the Speaker seemed to be unsure if the motion tabled for tomorrow was a Substantive motion or an Early Day Motion. He had to check with cone of the clerks and the response seemed somewhat hedged and almost like it was designed to save the Speaker from embarrassment. You could actually hear Douglas Carswell angrily arguing with the Speaker off-mic that he was wrong. There were several other interventions that attacked him and few that supported him.

There was an astonishing attack from a senior Tory (I think it was Sir Patrick McCormack) who said he were in a constitutional crisis and he reluctantly said it could not be resolved with the current speaker remaining in the chair.

Near the end, Susan Kramer asked if an opposition day could be moved forward to allow a debate on the future of the Speaker if the Government would not allow time for one. He obfuscated and answered a different question.

This whole farago to me just demonstrates exactly what is wrong with parliament in the first place. All the traditions and conventions just stifle debate and there is clearly no mechanism to be able to deal with what was needed today. An honest discussion about the Speaker and preferably he would have seen that he no longer had support and stepped down. Or was voted our through a no confidence motion.

Instead this is going to drag on now. It looks like Martin is trying to put obstacles in the way and also has set a meeting for 48 hours from now which he will chair which would require him to still be Speaker after tomorrow. What a mess.

Somebody needs to get a grip on this now. I think Cameron and Brown have to follow Nick Clegg's lead and call for him to go. If they cannot bring themselves do this publicly they should do it in private and insist he goes. Today. Otherwise they should threaten to go public. This is surely his last chance to go with any sort of dignity before he is ultimately defenestrated in an awful public manner that nobody wants and he does not deserve.

Mr Martin, please resign. Now.

UPDATE: I have just e-mailed the Speaker asking him to resign and you can do so too: martinm@parliament.uk

Other Reckonings - 17th May 2009

• Ben Goldacre questions the methods used by Baroness Susan Greenfield.
• Constantly Furious thinks that Guido is mistaken. Although he puts it more vituperatively than that.
• In an insightful post, Skipper thinks that the expenses scandal might just trigger radical constitutional change. Do you know, I think he just might be right...
• Liberal Conspiracy thinks that Nadine Dorries has more questions to answer over her expenses. I predict she will respond in a forthright manner!

Is Charlotte Gore the most influential Lib Dem blogger?

Following Nick Clegg's announcement that the Speaker of the House Michael Martin must go (an unprecedented step for a party leader) I am asking myself, could it have been influenced by this post by Charlotte Gore on Liberal Vision?

I know that the blogs are closely monitored by the leadership and could it be that the feelings of the grass roots here have helped gird Clegg's loins here?

I for one fully support Nick in what he has done here. Someone had to do it. Martin is useless and has to go. Blind adherence to convention is what has got MPs into this mess in the first place. It will take some mould breaking like this to resolve this crisis.

Lets all hold on tight and see what happens next!

MPs Expenses and safe seats correlation - update

Since my blog post yesterday about the MPs expenses scandal and the correlation that I seem to have discovered between the likelihood of an MP being caught up in this scandal and the safeness of their parliamentary seat, I have gone through the data again. This is because I discovered there was an anomaly in that Margaret Hodge had appeared in my source data twice (not sure why this was). Also, the Telegraph list here was updated at about 3:00pm yesterday so there are a few more people added to the list.

The new result is a value of 262.4 with 94 MPs implicated. We would have expected if there was no correlation between safeness of seat and implication in the scandal for this figure to be 323 (646/2). So it is still a long way from the median and implies a link between safeness of seat and likelihood of being involved in this scandal.

The quartile graph now looks like this:

As you can see there is still a clear gradation in each quartile indicating that the safer the seat, the more likely the MP is to be implicated.

UPDATE1: This post has now been linked to by Polly Toynbee of The Guardian in this excellent rallying call for constitutional change.

If I am right about this correlation then there are surely very serious questions to be asked about our electoral system. Advocates of First Past the Post always claim as one of their main arguments that the constituency link needs to be maintained (even though Single Transferable Vote, a much more proportional system with multi-member constituencies that the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Count advocate also has a constituency link). However looking at the above analysis it strikes me that FPTP does not serve its constituents well at all when it comes to this scandal.

When the dust of this scandal finally settles, I think we need a full "drains up" job in Westminster where everything is looked at in close detail. Proper analysis should be performed on the question I have posed, whether there is a correlation here and action taken to address this. I personally think an electoral system where there are no safe seats and the electorate can give their verdict without needing to vote tactically and where every vote counts towards the final result is needed.

UPDATE2: WARNING - From here on down it gets very technical!

Andy Hinton who blogs here has done some statistical analysis on this data now. Andy is not a statistician himself but has some experience of running stats tests from his degree (and he certainly knows more than me!). I have all the details he sent me but here is a synopsis of the two tests that he has run:

Firstly, he performed a "t-test for unequal sample size/variance" which he suggests is the best sort of test for this sort of data. I will let Andy take it from here:

It gives us ample grounds to think there's something in your hypothesis. The effect is significant at p<0.001.>

However, disclaimer: The t-test is only strictly valid for normally distributed populations. It is fairly robust for large samples like the one we're looking at, but... The problem is that it is impossible to have a majority of less than 0, so there is a cut-off point which skews the distribution of majorities somewhat, especially for the innocent MPs (whose average majority is closer to that cut-off). I don't think this completely invalidates the test, but if someone who was more of a stats geek than myself wanted to have a look, they might have some ideas about getting round it.

So it would appear that there is a 1 in 1000 chance that the effect we have seen would happen by chance, albeit caveated with what Andy says towards the end.

Andy then ran another test. Again, over to him:

I have added a sheet where I do a Wilcoxon Rank Sum test (also known as a Mann-Whitney test), which looks at the rankings rather than the absolute values. That should make the test more valid, and help us get around the skew problem. This time, I get p = 0.0003! ie. A 0.03% chance of getting that result randomly.

I think we're on pretty safe ground to say that this is a statistically significant effect.

So with this test there is a less than 1 in 3000 chance that the effect would have been by chance. Andy's overall view on the two tests when I asked him which one was best is:

As I understand it, as long as the assumptions are not violated, the first test is the more sensitive and preferable, since it is the one looking at the actual data rather than simply the ranks, so it is taking account of more of the information we have.

However, if the skew of the data is sufficient to invalidate that test, the second is, in technical terms, non-parametric, and therefore it's the more widely applicable. As long as I have performed it correctly, there shouldn't any problems about the second test. BUT, the second test is the one I have the less experience in performing, so I would be less surprised if I had made a mistake in doing that one.

So.. no simple answer, really. I think, probably, I'd go with the second one, but would be much happier saying so after some peer-review!

My feeling is that I have now had someone who is fairly knowledgeable about statistics run two different tests and whilst there are caveats, it is looking like the effect I have discovered is statistically significant.

Any statisticians reading this who want to offer their opinion or get hold of the data and run your own test(s) and/or peer review Andy's work please let me know.

UPDATE3: I have been invited onto Radio 4's "More or Less" to talk about my findings regarding this correlation this week. It's broadcast at 1:30pm this Friday afternoon (22nd May) and repeated this Sunday at 8:00pm.  See this post for more details.

UPDATE4: Government minister Ben Bradshaw has now referenced this research on national television.

UPDATE5: I have done an updated version of the analysis here.

Has our electoral system contributed to the MPs expenses scandal?

This is going to be a longish post so apologies in advance but please stick with it as I think I have uncovered something very interesting.

I had a thought when I was walking the dog yesterday. Could our First Past the Post electoral system have contributed to the scandal of MPs expenses?

My reasoning was that in our system, there are a lot of safe seats. In a typical General Election maybe a hundred or so change hands between the parties. In a landslide this can go up but you still have maybe 2/3rds of MPs who have very little to worry about in terms of the chances of them losing their seat. I then wondered if there was any sort of correlation between how safe a seat is and the likelihood of its MP having been involved in this expenses scandal.

When I got home, I noticed that Alix had posted a similar thought on LDV. I added a comment asking if anybody had tried any sort of statistical analysis of this. I have not seen anyone respond to this so for now I have assumed that they have not. I thought, therefore I would have a stab at this myself.

The first thing I should say is that I am not a statistician. I did however study stats as part of my Computing and Maths degree and am generally OK with numbers. The method I have used is as follows:

1) I found a list of all MPs from 2005 on this Keele university website. I took this data and put it into MS Excel and then sorted the MPs so that they are ordered by majority, largest to smallest and numbered 1 for the largest, 2 for the second largest and so on until I got to 647 (I assume there are 647 because the Speaker is included).

2) I found a page on the Telegraph website that lists all the MPs that have been covered in one way or another by them since this scandal broke as of 9:35am on Friday 15th May. I then went through this list and removed anyone for whom the coverage was positive (yes, there are a few) or Norman Baker who is about as clean as you can get but they were desperate to find something so he was included! I have also excluded Northern Ireland MPs from this because I felt that their majorities are generally very large because of the specific political situation there and it could distort things.

3) I noted the position in the majority listing for each MP who was implicated in one way or another.

4) I then totalled up all the numbers and divided this by the number of MPs implicated (74).

Now, what I think is that if there is no correlation between size of majority (safeness of seat) and the likelihood of being implicated in this expenses scandal I would expect the number to come out at 323 (646/2) or thereabouts. If there was an even distribution throughout the list this is what we should see. If the number is lower than 323 then it means that there is some correlation between safeness of seat and likelihood of being implicated (weak at first but getting stronger the further away from 323 we get). Commensurately, if the number is higher than 323, this would mean that there is actually a negative correlation and that we could conclude an MP was more likely to be implicated in this scandal if they had a smaller than median average majority.

The number comes out at just over 253.

Now I repeat, I am not a statistician or an expert on methodological analysis for this sort of thing. I fully accept that there may be flaws in my methodology here. I know that there may be interference from other factors that may contribute to the result. But still, I think this is a significant deviation from the median safe seat number you would expect if there was no correlation at all.

After this, it got me thinking even more. I decided to do a little bit more analysis on this. I divided the data set up into 4 sections. The top 25% of safe seats, the second 25%, the third 25% and the bottom 25%. Because 647 does not divide perfectly into 4 I have had to make them very slightly different sizes. I then totalled up the number of implicated MPs in each quartile. I have taken a snapshot of the result from Excel and put it here:

Now again, I need to caveat that this is not scientific etc. etc. However, using this methodology again there is a clear increase in the likelihood of an MP being implicated in the expenses scandal the safer their seat. It is in fact a fairly steady progression until it leaps up in the top quartile. Using this data, an MP is more than 3 times more likely to have been implicated in this scandal if their seat is in the top quartile as compared with the bottom quartile. They are almost twice as likely when comparing the top quartile with the second quartile.

I had suspected there might be a correlation but I had not expected it to be this stark.

If I am right about this then there are surely very serious questions to be asked about our electoral system. Advocates of First Past the Post always claim as one of their main arguments that the constituency link needs to be maintained (even though STV, a much more proportional system with multi-member constituencies that the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Count advocate also has a constituency link). However looking at the above analysis it strikes me that FPTP does not serve its constituents well at all when it comes to this scandal.

When the dust of this scandal finally settles, I think we need a full "drains up" job in Westminster where everything is looked at in close detail. Proper analysis should be performed on the question I have posed, whether there is a correlation here and action taken to address this. I personally think an electoral system where there are no safe seats and the electorate can give their verdict without needing to vote tactically and where every vote counts towards the final result is needed.

UPDATE1: I have been in touch with Iain Dale and he feels that my exclusion of Norman Baker and the Northern Ireland MPs is wrong. I do not want to appear partisan here about NB, that was not my intention so I have redone the exercises including NB and all the NI MPs mentioned by the Telegraph as of 9:35am yesterday.

With these extra MPs added in the total becomes 82 and the figure is now just below 254.5 so there is a marginal difference which moves it back very slightly towards the median.

I have also redone the chart and graph which still looks similar with the top three quartiles all increasing and the bottom one not:

Costigan Quist has also posted an excellent analysis of this situation and what the alternatives are on his blog.

UPDATE2: I have posted a more up to date version of this here.

UPDATE3: I have noticed a lot of traffic to this post from StumbleUpon. Welcome to all stumblers and if you like this post please give it the stumble "thumbs up" and let other people know about it too.

Is Andrew MacKay kidding himself?

I watched the BBC 6 o'clock news earlier today and was interested to see a piece they did from Bracknell with local MP Andrew MacKay who is currently mired in scandal about his second home allowance. During a brief interview he claimed that the feedback he is getting has indicated that he has the backing of the vast majority of his constituents.

However there is currently a poll on the "Get Bracknell" website (affiliated with the Bracknell Forest Standard) which indicates that following the unacceptable expenses claims 80% of respondents think he should step down as MP and only 12% think he should definitely stay:

These two things do not seem to tally with each other. Is Mr MacKay kidding himself? It could be a very interesting public constituency meeting next Friday.

A letter from Andrew MacKay MP about expenses

In July last year, I e-mailed Andrew MacKay my local MP as a concerned constituent asking him why he had voted against transparency on MP's expenses. Here is a copy of the text from my e-mail:

Dear Andrew MacKay,

I am interested to know why you voted yesterday against the measure which would have caused MPs expenses to be audited by an external body.

I thought this measure was wholly sensible and would over time have helped to start to restore the reputation of parliament and MPs expenses claims in the eyes of the public.

I run a company and we all have to spend time each month collating expenses and justifying expenditure on things. I am struggling to understand why it should be any different for MPs.

Would you be able to take a little bit of time to explain your reasoning on this?

Yours sincerely,

Mark Thompson.

Mr MacKay duly responded by letter a few days later:

The salient text of his letter is:

"Let me say immediately I am totally in favour of transparency and that is why later this month conservative MPs are publishing all their expenses online which I am sure is the right way forward. I voted against the motion because it included a daily attendance allowance which I believe to be demeaning for Members of Parliament and quite wrong."

At the time, I took this at face value. I am not sure in what form Tory MPs expenses were published online but there was clearly not much detail as it is only with the leaked information to the Telegraph that the scale of what has been going on has now been uncovered.

I always try to judge people by their actions rather than their words. Mr MacKay's actions in opposing the external audit, whatever he might have claimed his reasons were caused a delay in the release of the expenses. And lo and behold, when they ended up in the public domain he is now involved in probably the biggest scandal of any MP and his future as an MP is seriously in question.

I will leave it up to you to judge how those two facts sit with each other.

Andrew MacKay's meeting - Is there a big enough venue?

Yesterday, I noticed Peter Henley (BBC South Today political editor) on Twitter was tweeting from outside the place where Andrew MacKay is staying in our Bracknell constituency. He said that people were coming by to ask about when the meeting was going to be. I asked Peter if he knew and he tweeted in response:

@MarkJThompson not totally fixed..they're worried they can't find the right venue - mad stad?!

Which obvously means the Majedski Stadium (Reading FC's home ground)! I guess they have been overwhelmed with interest from people wanting to attend and are concerned the venues they are looking at won’t be large enough. I am not surprised. I sense a very strong groundswell of opinion here in the constituency. A poll on the "Get Bracknell" local news website at the time of writing has 79% of respondents saying that he should stand down as an MP.

I have asked Peter to keep us all informed on Twitter. You can follow him on Twitter here and me here.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 14th May 2009

The Live Chat for BBC's Question Time will start here from 10:30pm this evening.

I suspect there will be at least one question about my Member of Parliament and it will be interesting to see how Ming deals with the inevitable questions about his claims too.

Now finished. It was a very intense episode and an interesting chat. Thanks to all who attended. Please pop by every Thursday when QT is on for more Live Chats.

Andrew MacKay - My Member of Parliament

Andrew MacKay is my MP. I live in his Bracknell constituency. Today he has quit his role as a senior adviser to David Cameron (or been forced to stand down) because of a scandal involving him and his wife claiming second home allowances on both of their family homes.

According to his comments during the interview linked to above (where Matthew Amroliwala ripped him to shreds) they have two family homes. Mr MacKay claimed that their London home was their second home and his wife (Julie Kirkbride) claimed that their Midlands home was their second home. This has apparently been going on for 8 or 9 years. It is estimated that the amount they have claimed that should not have been here is well over £100,000.

He has apologised and is now saying that he is going to speak to his constituents about his position and to explain himself. He will arrange a meeting next week in the consitutency next week where people can make their feeling felt.

Right, well seeing as he is asking, here is my view Mr MacKay as one of your constituents.

I am absolutely disgusted by your behaviour. Of all the things I have heard that MPs have been up to with these claims in the last week (and there have been a lot of very bad things) this is the worst and I am utterly ashamed that it is my Member of Parliament who has done this. If a member of the public had done a comparable thing on their expenses they would be fired and would almost certainly be investigated for fraud. Offering to repay the money and claiming that they thought it was OK or were advised as such would be no defence. In the interview you said it was brought to your attention recently. Did it really need to be? Did you not know that a married couple of MPs claiming for 2 second home allowances was morally wrong?

I think you should do what David Davis did last year and stand down forcing a by-election in Bracknell. I think you should then seek a new mandate from the electorate in the constituency in order to continue as an MP. We can then give you our verdict at the ballot box.

You can rest assured that I will be attending the public meeting next week to make this point to you in person.

UPDATE1: Bracknell Blog also has a post on this situation.

UPDATE2: I did indeed attend the meeting and here is my post about it.

Is Elliot Morley now toast?

Apparently he claimed £16,000 in mortgage interest payments on a house where the mortgage was already paid off. This is now getting to the point where claims of "it was within the rules" can surely no longer be applied. Can someone explain to me how what Morley is alleged to have done here is not fraudulent?

There are already murmurings about a possible by election and I would not be surprised if his majority of 8,963 was not overturned by the voters of Scunthorpe in disgust at this.

In praise of Douglas Carswell MP

I do not agree with all of his political views by any stretch but Douglas Carswell the Conservative MP has really impressed me recently. He seems to have a genuine grasp of what is wrong with politics and is determined to do something about it.

It is he who is trying to drum up support for the motion to have the hopeless Michael Martin removed as speaker. As Mark Littlewood said on 5 live earlier today, it should not fall to a back bench MP to have to do this but the establishment will not move so Douglas has stepped in. Kudos to him for that. It is a brave move and the hierachies of both main parties do not like mavericks so he is potentially damaging his chance of advancement but somebody has to do it. I just hope he now gets plenty of support from across the house. Martin has to go.

But the thing that has most impressed me is his support for electoral reform. Most Tories who talk about reform end up suggesting less MPs or something else that would not fix the system and instead be in their favour electorally. Whereas Douglas is in favour of STV with multi-member constituencies. It is unusual for a Tory to advocate this but he has done so today in a blog post where he also advocates open primaries which I am also in favour of.

I wish there were more Conservative MPs like Mr Carswell who are willing to stand up and be counted as well as seriously and honestly debate the state of democracy and politics without the knee-jerk recourse to solutions that would lead to partisan advantage.

EDIT: I have just spent 35 minutes watching a speech he gave at Oxford University a couple of months ago about what is wrong with politics in this country and I have found that I agree with most of what he says.

"Pay It Back" campaign - great results

What we have been arguing for with the "Pay It Back" campaign is now happening all across the political spectrum. As Constantly Furious points out today, Government Minister Phil Hope has now pledged to pay back £41,709 for claims he made that went beyond the spirit of the rules and Margaret Moran and Hazel Blears have also pledged to pay back aubstantial amounts. On top of this David Cameron has insisted that Tory MPs also do so under threat of expulsion from the party.

Make no mistake, if it was not for the general public outcry and demands from the blogosphere like ours for these actions to be taken, they would not be happening. Our campaigning makes a difference.

There are still lots of MPs however who have not paid back anything and who should be looking hard at their claims and doing so. Even the ones that have not been made public yet as they surely will. They should pre-empt this and offer to pay back money now.

So please sign our petition and keep the pressure on them. Job half-done I would say so far!

Carrie Gracie is paid £92,000 per year

I hadn't even heard of Carrie Gracie until Guido posted this earlier today. During a rather robust exchange with Lord Foulkes on the BBC News Channel she was challenged about what her salary is (he was trying to embarrass her) and she said that she earns £92,000 per year.

Now fair play to her for coming straight out and saying it but that is almost 4 times the national average salary. For a newsreader that I would guess most people have never heard of on a digital TV channel. Is that not perhaps a bit high for a junior journalist paid for from the license fee? It certainly makes me wonder what the more well known presenters are paid.

Incidentally, I can imagine that Paxman, Humphries et. al. will also be asked this now that Ms Gracie has set the precedent. It will be interesting to see how they handle it if it does come up.

"Pay It Back" campaign - Cameron is on board!

So the day after I launched the "Pay It Back" campaign, David Cameron has done pretty much exactly what I suggested for his own MPs (upon pain of being banished from the party). Fair play to him.

It will be interesting to see how the other parties respond to this and I fear there are still dubious claims to come out but if the other parties do follow suit then this could be one of the shortest campaigns ever!

However, we are not there yet. Please help us keep up the pressure by signing the petition and tweeting about it (#payitback). The more the public make their feelings clear like this, the quicker the other parties will do something about it.

"Pay It Back" campaign - petition is growing

The "Pay it back" campaign petition has gathered a few signatures since yesterday.

There is no sign that these expenses stories are drying up yet. the Telegraph has more revelations today about Tory grandees.

A grand gesture is needed by MPs and paying back what goes against the spirit of the rules is the way to do this. Please sign the petition if you agree with me.

Also, follow the campaign on Twitter (#Payitback). (I am here: @MarkJThompson). There have been a number of tweets from various people already.

"Pay It Back" petition launched

To go with the "Pay It Back" campaign I launched earlier today, I have now started a petition here.

Please go and sign it if you agree that MPs should pay back any expenses that go beyond the spirit of the rules.

"Pay it back" campaign

The MPs expenses stories keep coming and coming. It has reached the point now where politicians such as David Cameron and Gordon Brown see that they have to apologise for what has happened, although in both cases their statements seem to me to be a little bit hedged and equivocal.

The political classes are in an absolute mess of their own making now. They can argue until they are blue in the face that it was "within the rules" but the rules clearly stink and are obviously going to be radically changed anyway.

It is very dangerous for our political system to be in this sort of state and for the public to hold them all in such low esteem/contempt. There needs to be a strong gesture from MPs to show that they properly understand the depth of public feeling and that they are willing to make amends.

I think the only way for them to do this now is to pay back any money that breaches the spirit of the claim rules. I am not saying they have to pay everything back. Administatively this would be very difficult to adjudge. However each MP will have a good knowledge of what they have claimed for and in the light of the public reaction, they should be able to make a good fist of deciding what should be repaid. A good yardstick would be, if they had known at the time that it would have been made public, would they have claimed it. If not, they should repay it.

I think this should also extend to paying the captial gains tax on any second homes that have been "flipped" in order to avoid this. I know that within the inland revenue rules this is allowed but it looks absolutely dreadful. Law makers and legislators should be setting an example to the rest of us and should pay their fair share of taxes. Especially in the current economic climate.

So, I call upon all MPs of all parties to do the right thing. If MPs start doing this, they would get some credit from the electorate that they were doing the right thing and at least trying to make amends. It may start to drain the poison from the issue. I dread to think what will happen if there is not some strong gesture like this. I also call upon fellow bloggers to start pushing this and hopefully it will gain some traction with the MSM.

When John Prescott launched his "Give up the bonus" campaign against the bankers recently he was widely lauded for it. the message was simple, and so it is with this campaign.

"Pay it back".

UPDATE1: Have also launched it on Twitter (#Payitback). Follow me here: @MarkJThompson

UPDATE2: Constantly Furious has already promoted this campaign on his blog. Thanks to him for creating the image used at the top.

UPDATE3: I can see that more bloggers are also picking up on this theme.

UPDATE4: I have now launched a petition here. New blog post about it here.

+++ Alan Duncan claims details released +++

Just seen that in the Telegraph tomorrow, Alan Duncan's claims for gardening are under scrutiny.

This looks pretty bad to me. It seems that he was claiming for paying a gardener thousands of pounds for the upkeep of less than an acre at 16 hours per week. This seems to go far beyond what is needed to support his parliamentary work.

Mr Duncan has set himself up for this after his very poor performance on Have I Got News For You a few weeks back where he came across as smarmy and arrogant when asked about this issue. What compounds this is that like Barbara Follet, Mr Duncan is extremely independently wealthy so this sort of behaviour looks particularly grubby.

Unsurprisngly his response has been to insist that the claims are legitimate and were approved by the fees office. That is the defence of all MPs and it is wearing extremely thin.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition is still there

With all the other stuff going on at the moment about MP's expenses, it seems to have slipped off the media's agenda but the "Please Go" petition asking Gordon Brown to resign is still there on the Downing Street petitions website. At the time of writing, the numbers have just gone past 56,000 which is almost double the next largest one.

Brown is still an awful Prime Minister with no democratic legitimacy and if like me you think the time has come for him to go, please go and sign the petition.

There have been some suspicions that not all the signatures are being added and the rate of increase tapered off rather oddly, just as the media coverage was ramping up a week or so ago. I posted about it here last week. If you have problems relating to this, please contact Kalvis Jansons the petition's creator via this Google group.

Dizzy's electoral recall idea

Dizzy has today posted a suggestion which, in the light of all the expenses shenanigans going on at the moment is perhaps timely. He suggests that it should be possible in certain circumstances for an MP to be called to stand for re-election in his/her consitituency using an electoral recall mechanism.

I know that this sort of thing is done in the US. Indeed, as I recall it is the mechanism that was used to get Arnold Schwarzenegger in as Governor of California.

The point of this sort of facility is to make sure that you cannot have a situation whereby somebody is elected as an MP, within say 6 months does something that would make lots of the people who elected them disgusted and can then sit back safe in the knowledge that they cannot be touched for another 3 or 4 years until parliament is next dissolved. The current system is anti-democratic.

As Dizzy also points out there would be risks with a system like this that an MP could be called upon to constantly re-fight for his/her seat by vexatious opponents, but it is surely not beyond the wit of man to come up with a system that allows recall in warranted circumstances.

If anybody knows of a good reason not to have something like this, perhaps they could comment. I cannot think of one at the moment.

MPs should be subject to the same rules as the rest of us

There is an excellent comment in the thread attached to this Telegraph Matthew D'Ancona comment piece online today from "Mark" at 6:59am (no, it's not me!):

MP's are now in the process of arguing ad infinitum about how to reform their expenses. And has been said numerous times, they are missing the point. 

There is a very simple way to reform MP's expenses and allowances. It is to put them on the same footing as everyone else in the country. HMRC have reams of guidelines as to what is allowable regarding allowances and rates such as pence per mile. Indeed, such things as travelling to ones habitual place of work are not claimable as they are assumed to be part of the compensation one receives in salary. Any expense claim that I submit will be rejected by my company unless it falls within the HMRC rules. Why should these people be any different ? 

If MP's are subjected to the same rules as the rest of us and scrutinised by HMRC inspectors, then they would pay a lot more attention to the legislation that they pass.

He is spot on here. If MPs were subject to their own rules and pettifogging laws, then those laws would be more likely to be reasonable. I run my own business and I know ho much bureaucracy there is associated with taxes and also for personal tax returns. For MPs to be excluded (and as Tim Worstall points out here they are specifically excluded from some of the HMRC requirements on expenses through legislation) is completely unjustifiable.

They clearly see themselves as an elite above everybody else and who need to be treated as a special case. This was typified a few weeks back by Eric Pickles car crash moment on BBC's Question Time.

This cannot be allowed to continue.

Seven reasons I joined the Lib Dems

Having been tagged by Stephen from LDV with their latest meme, here are my 7 reasons I joined the Lib Dems. Well, they are more like a 7 steps to how I came to join but here goes anyway:

1) I have been fascinated by politics for years, ever since I studied British Government and Politics in the early 90's.

2) I had resisted getting directly involved and had contented myself with watching from the sidelines, watching the political programmes and reading biographies and all the political comment but a couple of years ago I decided to get more directly involved.

3) I started by attending a couple of talks in the House of Commons organised by the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Count about the First Past the Post electoral system and what could be done to change it to something more proportional. Electoral reform has for many years been one of my pet issues and I started to look around for how I could actually do something to help try and change things. Starting this blog in late 2007 was my first step. But I was very aware that the only mainstream party that advocated proper reform were the Lib Dems.

4) During the 2005 election campaign I had sat down with the main policies of each of the main parties and done a tick/cross exercise against each of them. It was clear at that point that I agreed with most of the Lib Dem policies and only a few of the Tory and Labour policies. That is why I voted for them in 2005.

5) Polly Toynbee is a strong advocate of electoral reform and I corresponded with her about the fact that I wanted to do something about it. An idea I had had was to form a specific one-issue political party and to try and run candidates in marginal constituencies to highlight the problem with the system. If any candidate had got more votes than the majority in the seat then we could have claimed to have made a difference and perhaps garnered more publicity on the back of this. However Polly suggested that the best way to do something was to join the Lib Dems.

6) I spent a lot more time deliberating and after a lot of thinking I started to realise that rather than being content to stay out of party politics, I was actually an instinctive liberal on all sorts of issues. Drug laws, freedom of information, ID cards, law and order and many other issues to numerous to list here. In the end I could see no good reason to remain on the sidelines any longer.

7) So I got involved in helping Sue Doughty in Guildford (the nearest Lib Dem target seat to where I live) and everybody was really friendly and I very much enjoyed leafletting and canvassing with them a few times. I then joined the party last summer and got involved with my local constituency party. Since then I have been to the one-day conference,  at the LSE, joined the committee of my local party, helped set up a local blog for the party to help with campaigning, donated my computer programming skills to the party via the technology coding group and done lots more things in both my local party and in Guildford. I am certain I am in the right party for me as I wrote previously in an article for LDV.

So, that's how I got here. Since joining there have been many, many reasons I have seen that have cemented my conviction that I have done the right thing in joining but I guess that is for another meme....

MPs badgering the fees office

One of the most unedifying aspects of the leaked information about the expense claims so far has been the way some MPs have badgered the fees office about expense claims and in some cases bludgeoned them into submission.

Andy Burnham joked in a letter to them that if he did not get reimbursed for his flat moving costs (more than £16,000) then he "might be in line for divorce!". This betrays to me a sense of entitlement far beyond what should be expected. It is not the job of the tax payer to satisy Mr Burnham's wifes desires in this way. He hassled and hassled and eventually got his way. This to me makes a mockery of the claims by MPs and their spokespeople that everything was above board and approved by the fees office if they were being harranged and bullied in this way.

This quote from an unnamed former Labour minister from the Telegraph article is absolutely breathtaking in its arrogance:

One former Labour minister said: "I object to your decision not to reimburse me for the costs of purchasing a baby's cot for use in my London home... perhaps you might write to me explaining where my son should sleep next time he visits me in London?"

How about you buy a cot from your £64,000 salary like the rest of us would have to? The more I read, the more disgusted I get and I suspect much of the rest of the country feels the same way.

Barbara Follett's Folly

Lordy, lordy. It's difficult to know where to begin with the revelations about MPs that are now coming thick and fast from The Telegraph.

There is lots of comment elsewhere but I wanted to focus firstly on this particular vignette:

Barbara Follett, the multi-millionaire Tourism Minister, claimed for private security patrols outside her London home costing more than £25,000. The parliamentary fees office, which is supposed to monitor claims, warned Mrs Follett that her claims may appear "excessive" if made public, but she was not deterred, saying she felt unsafe in Soho after being mugged.

WTF!? She got mugged so the tax payer was forced to shell out more than the average UK salary to make her feel a bit safer!? I got mugged when I was a student. It was a horrible experience and I felt very unsafe walking around at night for years afterwards. I would have loved private security patrols around my house but of course I live on Planet Earth.

The claims for toilet seats and refurbishment of second homes are disgusting but at least they have some vague relevance to an MPs ability to live in 2 different homes (as an aside it is clear that they have massively taken the mickey on these and they will certainly deservedly lose this perk) but to get a taxpayer funded private police force because you were mugged? That is so far removed from the reality of everyday people that I would be amazed if Follett (who has a majority of 3,139) is not turfed out in 12 months. Her Stevenage constituency party would do well to deselect her before that.

Oh, and one final thing, her husband is a multi-millionaire author for whom £25,000 would have been nothing and yet she still sent us the bill.

UPDATE: ConstantlyFurious in the comments has suggested that there should actually be a by-election and has a blog post to this effect too. Her behaviour is so egregious here that it might become inevitable. Is that the Chiltern Hundreds I can hear a callin'...

Bracknell Blog

A new blog has recently been launched in my local area (Bracknell in Berkshire) that I am involved with which is aiming to focus primarily on local issues.

If you live in Bracknell, Sandhurst, Crowthorne or and of the surrounding areas you might want to get involved: http://bracknellblog.blogspot.com/

MPs should publish all details immediately

The Telegraph has a sensational scoop today with the leaked information about 13 Cabinet Ministers and their expenses. There seem to be some suspicious things going on such as Brown only having repaid an "oversight" when the Telegraph approached him yesterday, Jack Straw having claimed a full council tax rebate even though he already had a 50% discount on this and others. The revelations certainly do not make for edifying reading. The official line is that no resignations are necessary but I am not so sure and it is not for those involved to decide this. Once the details sink in, we will see how bad the revelations have gone down with the public.

It is also worth noting that the Telegraph has published these in completely unexpurgated form. The way that the Commons plans to publish these officially is to have some of the details blanked out which would have made it difficult to discern some of the anomalies.

The publishing of this information is manifestly in the public interest and the Telegraph were right to do so. However a leak of this sort was largely inevitiable. The Commons has thrown up barrier after barrier to this and on the current timetable they are not planning to release any information officially until July. They should change their minds and publish everything immediately. Otherwise they risk a further drip-drip of information leaking out into the public domain with the timetable controlled by the press who are bound to do this in the way that best sells newspapers, i.e. to eke the story out fot as long as possible and that can only be damaging.

Better to have it all come out in one go, and yes, I am sure there will be further claims that will raise very difficult questions and may even result in resignations and even possible by-elections but at least a line will be drawn under it all and MPs can start to try and recover from this dreadful episode.

Their secretiveness has got them into this mess and they need to get a grip and regaing control. Openness is the only way to do this now.

Other blog reaction here, here, here and here.

BBC Question Time Live Chat starts at 10:30pm

Live Chat thread is here. All are welcome.

BBC Question Time Live Chat - 7th May 2009

The Live Chat for BBC's Question Time will start here from 10:30pm this evening. See you later!

UPDATE: I will be doing this every Thursday from 10:30 whenever Question Time is on (other commitments permitting) so please feel free to pop by and join in.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - Tory asks him about it at PMQs

A Tory backbencher, Andrew Rosindell asked Gordon Brown about the "Please Go" petition at Prime Minister's Questions today in the House of Commons. He pointed out that the number of signatures on the list are now more than twice the number of votes he got in his constituency at the last general election (which as I have posted about previously when the signatures passed this number is his only democratic mandate at all, as an MP for Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath).

Brown's response was to bat this question away by claiming that Mr Rosindell should be "ashamed" for not asking about policy.

I can assure Mr Brown that people like myself who have signed this petition and want him to go are not ashamed of doing this, or having our representatives in parliament bring it up like this. I am however ashamed that our Prime Minister has no democratic mandate to lead this country, is politcally tone deaf, has completely ballsed up our economy and yet has not accepted any responsibility for this. At all.

If you disagree with Gordon's analysis and think it is time he went then go to the petition and add your name to the 50,000+ people who have already done so in the last 2 weeks.

Jack Straw had the measure of Brown nine years ago

I am currently reading Chris Mullin's excellent political diaires "A View From the Foothills". One particular entry jumped out at me:

Monday, 13 March 2000

At supper in the Tea Room the talk was of New Labour's tendency to double and triple count new public spending. We were joined by Jack Straw, who said the idea was Gordon's and he had been against it from the outset. He added, "Fancy tactics never work. They always catch up with you in the end."

So why is it that what was obvious to Straw a decade ago is still not clear to Brown now? He was up to the same old tricks again a few weeks ago with the supposed $1 Trillion pledge from the G20 summit.

I also makes me wonder why Jack Straw was so keen to be Brown's campaign manager for his "election" "campaign" as leader if he was so scornful of one of his major tactical approaches.

Labour are brave letting Brown front their Euro election broadcast!

Just saw the latest Labour Party Election Broadcast for the Euro elections on the TV. It features Gordon Brown telling us how great he is and what he has done for us and how awful it would be under "the alternative", presumably the Conservatives.

It is quite brave of Labour to have Brown fronting this and also releasing it on Youtube after his disastrous outing via this medium about MPs expenses a couple of weeks ago. Also, I don't understand why they are trying to turn the European elections into a referendum on Brown's performance. Do they not know how unpopular he is?

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - 50,000 and counting

The "Please go" petition on the No 10 website has just passed 50,000 this morning.

The rate of increase has slowed down in the last few days which I have posted about previously wondering why that might be but it is still by far and away the most rapidly growing petition on the site. As far as I am aware there has as of yet been no response from No 10.

It looks like the 50,000 are not the only ones who want to get rid of Brown. Even members of his own cabinet are now criticising him in about as blatant a way as possible without actually resigning. The decision as to whether or not he resigns could soon be taken out of his hands, but I hope that people still sign the petition to keep the pressure up.

Campaigning in Bracknell

I spent a few hours on Saturday in Bracknell town centre campaigning with members of my local party. We were selling jumble on the Bandstand and myself and two other members (including Ray, the PPC) walked all around the centre handling out leaflets and talking to people.

I was very encouraged by how many people were willing to take leaflets and only one person ostentatiously screwed it up and dropped it on the floor! I was also pleasantly surprised to see how willing many people were to listen to what we had to say. Bracknell and Bracknell Forest Council are Tory fiefdoms with little other representation and lots of people were saying to me that this is not right and that some decent opposition was needed. They took the words right out of my mouth!

There was a BNP stand right next to our stall in the centre with a few volunteers and they seemed to attract a reasonable amount of interest. That should just make us all the more determined to campaign hard ourselves and make sure we counter their arguments. There was an interesting point where who I assume was a BNP member started shouting questions about the EU at us where he seemed to be blaming us for the fact that Peter Mandelson got paid one million pounds when he ceased to be an EU commissioner. I am not sure why he thought we were responsible for this! He also had a bee in his bonnet about the EU accounts and the fact that they have never passed an audit. I have written about this before myself and am as concerned as anyone that the EU structures are reformed to root out corruption and problems of this nature. Again, I am not sure why he thought we were responsible for this.

Still, all in all it was a very good day and I enjoyed pounding the pavements in the traditional style.

If they want change, Cabinet Ministers need to resign

The criticism of the government/Gordon Brown by Hazel Blears as reported in The Observer is interesting and it seems pretty clear to me that it is the opening shot in a new round of Cabinet infighting. There are also reports that both Alan Johnson and Jack Straw have refused to say whether they will run for the leadership.

The problem is that speaking in code and muttering about "not getting the message across" is all well and good and can be parsed by political pundits and the rest but it is not clear enough.

When Thatcher was toppled in 1990, it came about because Geoffrey Howe who had been Chancellor and was then Foreign Secretary resigned and criticsed her directly in his resignation speech, suggesting that others should challenge her. John Redwood also had the courage to resign and challenge John Major in 1995 although he was not a big or credible enough beast to fell Mr Major but if someone like Portillo or Hesseltine had done so the outcome could have been very different.

My point is that for there to be change, there usually needs to be a grand gesture to precipitate it that nobdy can misinterpret or misunderstand. It seems to me that much of the Cabinet realise that Brown has to go if they are to stand any chance of avoiding complete annihilation at the next election but none of them so far have had the guts to actually do something about it.

I know that (s)he who wields the dagger seldom wears the crown but somebody has to step up. They will all be out on their arses in 12 month's time anyway and will likely be out of power for a generation so really, what do they have to lose?

Nick Cohen - Fear and Filth at Brown's No 10

Nick Cohen has written a superb article for Standpoint magazine this month. You can read the online version of it here.

He uses his experience and actual first hand evidence of Brown's henchmen at work to illustrate how Brown got to the top and the underhand tactics he has used since getting there. It makes it clear that the McBride/Draper Sleazegate scandal was far from a one-off and is fact symptomatic of how people close to the Prime Minister operate.

Probably the best MSM article I have read this year so far.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition - Next Stop, All Time Top 10!

The "Gordon Brown resign" petition is now at around 46,000 signatures and is already No 1 of the active petitions. However if it can get more than 70,663 then it will enter the Top 10 of all the petitions they have ever had since the site was first created a few years ago under Tony Blair.

Hopefully that target can be achieved in the next few days.

Also, the petition creator now has a Google Group for discussion about the petition here: Brown "please go" petition HQ.

Nick Herbert nails Brown on Any Questions

I was just listening to Any Questions in the car on my way home and was very impressed with Nick Herbert's answer to the question about whether Gordon Brown can now regain the trust of the electorate. I have transcribed his answer below:

No, I don't believe that Gordon Brown will regain trust. I mean firstly, because of what he has done to the economy in the seriousness of the mismanagement, bringing this country to the edge of bankruptcy. The highest budget deficit since the war, which will take now concerted action to fix and as a consequence increasing taxes for the working people of this country. Claiming to have ended "boom and bust" when he transparently did no such thing.

Secondly, because of the loss of political authority he's suffered a number of reversals this week, he no longer appears to be in control of his own party and he has been humiliated internationally as well. I think importantly becaue of erm, he seems to have lost his political compass. The scrapping of the 10p tax rate hitting the poorest hardest. The Damian McBride e-mails emanating from Downing Street smearing people. The decision on the Gurkahs and having to be overruled by parliament. He just didn't seem to understand the injustice in what he was proposing.

But above all it is, I think the reason that he will not regain trust is because, Gordon Brown, everything that he does is always a political decision. And if you are Prime Minister, you should govern in the national interest, but when he span the troop withdrawal numbers on the eve of David Cameron's conference speech. When he introduced that 10p tax cut simply because he was trying to suggest it was a tax cut - we all know it was a tax con. When he tried this trick this week of suddenly announcing the change in MPs allowances, actually it was on the eve of the Budget simply in order to try and wrong foot his opponents, then it blows up in his face.

It's because of that, because he is always trying to take decisions in narrow political interests rather than the interests of the country. That is why at the end of the day I do not believe he will regain trust.

I think Nick Herbert has this spot on. He has nailed precisely why people don't trust him. Even people who don't closely follow politics can sense that there is something not right about the way he operates and his party will eventually pay a terrible price for his political scheming.

"Gordon Brown resign" petition. Suspicious rate of increase?

I have been following with interest and posting about the "Please Go" petition on the Number 10 petitions website that asks Gordon Brown to resign. I have posted about it several times now.

Kalvis Jansons, the person who started the petition now has a dedicated Google Group to support the petition.

He also posted the following on another thread on my blog which I am happy to reproduce here:

This is a 6 month petition, rather than the more normal 12 month. So, it is harder to break the record for the largest petition ever on Number 10. However, we effective blogging and the very early article in http://theregister.co.uk with title "Go, Brown, Go!", we were off to a fast start. I am working on increasing the rate of growth in the near future, and others are doing it in their way as well.

So, we are still in with a good chance of making this break all the Number 10 petition records. Your blog also helps in this, so keep up the good work.

Others seeing this can help, if they have digg.com accounts, by digging anything on the "Please go" petition on digg. We will reach some new people when we get on the digg.com front page, which should be soon, with a little help.

Also, we have not been on the 10:00 TV news yet. This will provide a big boost, and I am working on that, though any help would be welcome. Note, I am not trying to get on the TV, I want the story and URL mentioned on the TV.

Anyone with ideas, please post them on 10.kalvis.comThis is better than emailing me, as many others are helping and I can direct them to that site as well. Again this will speed things up a bit.

He has mentioned on his groups page that he would like to get to 2,000,000 before the petition runs out on the 22nd October (after 6 months) which would make it the largest petition to site had ever received. He has calculated that we will need an average of 11,000 signatures per day added in order to get this.

However, I am getting a little bit suspicious about the rate of increase. Since I started following the petition a week ago when it was at about 700 the rate of increase seems to have been pretty constant at about 6,000 per day. This is despite the fact that at first there was very little publicity and in the last 2 or 3 days there have been various mentions in newspapers and even on TV. I am confused as to how the rate of increase can be so steady in the face of this.

Is the website capable of handling more than about 6,000 signatures per day? Has anybody noticed any problems in trying to register their signature? I would be interested to know if there is a reason for this. Perhaps it is just a coincidence. It will be interesting to see if the rate goes up as the publicity it will get from the weekend and especially Sunday papers should surely cause a big spike? I will be happy to be proved wrong on my suspicions here and I will be watching the site closely!

UPDATE: Yesterday the growth was only about 3,000 which seems very odd given the exposure the petition had on national TV on Friday evening via the mention on "Have I Got News For You". There is a thread on Kalvis' Google Group for this too.

Andrew Lansley can prove his second job is for the greater good

On BBC Question Time last night, during the inevitable question about MPs expenses, the subject of MPs doing other jobs came up. Andrew Lansley, Shadow Health Secretary admitted he has a second job as a non-executive director of a company and rather commendably also said how much he gets paid for it and how much work he actually does for them (£24,000 per year and 11 or 12 days - nice work if you can get it).

Frank Skinner (who was very good and incisive all night I thought) was incredulous that any MP could afford the time to do any other jobs given how all consuming it seems that an MPs primary duties are. I agree with Frank on this.

Mr Lansley went on to justify his second job by claiming that it gives him outside experience which he feels is warranted. He also made what I thought was a bit of a gaffe at this point by using the phrase "I knew I was going to be in government" - I suspect David Cameron is not happy about this level of confidence being openly expressed by a Shadow Minister. Anyway, he has said that he will give up the position if/when he is in government.

Now, I feel that MPs should devote themselves completely to their primary job and not have any outside interests (indeed I have commented on this before extensively with respect to William Hague). However, if Mr Lansley really feels that he needs the outside experience in order to be able to help him be a better minister then I have a simple suggestion for him. Give up the salary associated with the second job. Pay it to the exchequer, or donate it to charity (I am sure there are many worth causes in his consituency who would be very grateful). If he does this then I, and I suspect many others will respect him much more and his claim of doing the job ultimately to produce better government will be on much more solid ground.

Incidentally, with the way things are going regarding the MPs expenses, the whole outside interests issue could potentially also go nuclear in the near future, especially when MPs have to start filling in timesheets. If Mr Lansley acts on my advice now, he will be able to avoid much of the fallout and would stand as an example to others.