Are the Tories actually fit to govern or are they just as corrupt and rotten as their Labour Party clones? This is the question being asked in Westminster after three Conservative Shadow Cabinet ministers were each told to pay back more than £4,000 swindled from the taxpayers.
Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke has been told to pay back £4,733 he claimed for gardening and cleaning.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley has been told to pay back £4,482 he claimed for home improvements.
Tory chief whip Patrick McLoughlin has been told to pay back £4,058 he claimed for cleaning and mortgage payments.
The Tory swindlers are in illustrious company. In terms of letters of demand sent to almost all MPs this week by expenses review investigator Sir Thomas Legg, they are joined by Gordon Brown himself who has been told to pay back in excess of £12,000 he swindled via “expenses.”
The money is made up of £10,716 for cleaning, dry cleaning and laundry claims above the £2,000 annual limit, £303 spent on gardening above the £1,000 limit and a £1,396 decorating bill.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw has been told to pay £600 after being paid twice for a claim in 2004, and Lord Mandelson has been told to pay back £800 for “tree surgery work” in the garden of his constituency home.
Chancellor Alistair Darling has been told to pay back £554 which he claimed for a chest of drawers and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has been told to pay back £910 in “gardening” claims.
Tory frontbencher Chris Grayling was asked to produce receipts to justify a £700 repair bill, but his colleague Douglas Hogg, who famously made the taxpayer pay for the cleaning of his moat, has not been told to repay anything.
Incredibly, the Tory, Labour and Lib-Dem ticks are complaining about Sir Thomas’s review, claiming that it is unfair because it is retrospective.
Tory Ann Widdecombe said there was a “big question about the legality of the review” and was joined in this opinion by prominent Labour backbencher Sir Stuart Bell, who said there was a “sense of grievance about the retrospective limits placed on gardening and cleaning claims.”
Some are apparently considering putting the issue to a vote in the House of Commons, although this is unlikely and would most certainly spell political suicide.
