Stakeholder

“For I know all by rote that I tell. My theme is always one, and ever was: Radix malorum est cupiditas”. So says Chaucer’s Pardoner in The Canterbury Tales.

I had a love-hate relationship with Chaucer. The temptation to translate the Latin as “greed/money is the root of all evil” was not enough for my English teacher, who often reminded us that in its original Greek format it should be the ‘love of money’ and not money itself that is the root of all evil. 

The distinction was never clearer as the expenses debacle continues. Even after the most ludicrous of claims are revealed, many politicians still don’t get that it is not their entitlements that are under scrutiny but their avarice and greed. 

The notion that members of parliament are underpaid is ridiculous and that somehow their compensation for that underpayment should be made up for by extravagant allowances is totally illogical. 

There are nearly 650 members of parliament, two thirds of whom are by and large anonymous outside their own constituencies. 

The argument that many of them forgo better paid or more lucrative careers outside of parliament is rubbish. Want to prove that? Scan their CVs. 

Teachers, postmen, lawyers, farmers, doctors, housewives, miners, steel workers, shop stewards, estate agents, journalists and of course the talentless breed of those who inherited self-importance along with wealth they did not work for.

A trip to the Bar library will prove that barristers, unlike bookmakers, do have some not so well-off members. 

No wonder bookie-turned-TD Ivan Yates retired from Dail Eireann to go back to bookmaking. But back to the claims – an antique rug from New York; a £3,000 plasma TV, an iPod, massage chair and £18,000 for two bookcases. To put it mildly they are taking the proverbial.

Why should MPs be able to claim their grocery bills or their fines or their TV licence? 

The Westminster fees office must seem like the conveyor belt on The Generation Game but with allowances for curtain swags and silk cushions instead of a cuddly toy. The fact that some seem to think because there is a limit on expenses which they haven’t incurred they can still claim to the limit. 

The guiding principle seems to be ‘may your giving hand never stop giving’. You need a thick skin for politics but if the responses are anything to go by a glass jaw and brass neck are also required as indignation and effrontery appear to be the best means of political defence. 

Watching Question Time last Thursday night the audience anger was palpable but Labour’s Margaret Beckett was imperious in her defence and Conservative MP Theresa May was stony-faced with indignation. Only Menzies Campbell seemed genuinely remorseful and humbled by his own limited experience of the expenses debacle.

What is also questionable is the ability of some members of parliament to repay such large amounts of money on demand to the fees office or the tax authorities now that they have been caught out. 

It does not suggest that they are badly off as they claim. Paying back the money is not enough. There has to be a penalty too and the attitudes and actions of Cameron and Brown seem to suggest that both are incapable of understanding the principle of the latter – otherwise front-bench spokespeople would be removed from office. 

The fees office is culpable too, acting like a 21st-century pardoner selling indulgences that some politicians knew to be fraudulent. 

Clearly some politicians genuinely made mistakes. Lady Hermon, for example, mistakenly claimed two extra months rent but because of personal circumstances actually flagged up her confusion at the time to the fees office and asked them to check. They did not reply. Contrast that to some who submitted claims without having to prove they were even present at Westminster at the time. 

Locally, Sinn Fein is obviously embarrassed to have been claiming so much for London living allowances when it makes such a virtue out of not going over. The SDLP and DUP have so far refused to publish their MPs’ expenses, preferring to wait until the House of Commons publish the official list in July. It’s an odd commitment to people who say they are committed to transparency and accountability in government. 

JFK famously said that office-holders will eventually be measured on whether they were “men of judgment and integrity”. That’s two more questions some MPs won’t be answering soon.