Questions over team investigating sleaze [ CHECK NOTES AT FOOT ] --- From "The Telegraph" - quote A committee set up to review MPs' perks and expenses is dominated by establishment figures who oppose public scrutiny of their financial affairs or are tainted by allegations of "sleaze", it has been disclosed. The MPs on the six-person committee charged with opening up the hidden system of expenses include David Maclean, who campaigned to exclude Parliament from freedom of information laws; Sir Stuart Bell, a Labour backbencher who has employed his son and wife; the Liberal Democrat Nick Harvey, who works as a part-time lobbyist and Harriet Harman, facing a police probe for taking donations from a conduit for a north-east businessman during her campaign to become Labour's deputy leader. The committee is chaired by Speaker Michael Martin - who has been criticised for his use of Commons perks. The final member of the committee is the Tory MP Theresa May. The committee will not report until October despite the urgency of the matters being investigated. This is regarded as an inappropriate response to public concern over the abuse in the system of MPs' expenses which costs taxpayers more than £87 million. The influential parliamentary standards and privileges committee said yesterday it believed MPs should make public the names of relatives who worked for them. It wants measures in place by April. Its recommendation is expected to be approved by Parliament in the next few weeks. Tomorrow, there will be a two-day hearing of the Information Tribunal to decide whether all information on previous expense claims should be made public. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has ordered his MPs to pre-empt the official review and publish a full breakdown within months of how they spend all their expenses. Each MP claims an average of £135,850 annually to pay for second homes, staff and travel. However, a wide array of items - such as groceries - can currently be claimed without the need to produce receipts in a practice described as "unacceptable" by Mr Cameron. Over the past week, more than 170 MPs have admitted employing family members including "about five members of the shadow cabinet". Mr Cameron yesterday admitted it was "indefensible" for the married Conservative MPs Sir Nicholas and Ann Winterton to claim thousands of pounds in housing costs after paying their mortgage off. The couple transferred their London flat into a family trust in an apparent attempt to avoid inheritance tax while claiming £165,000 in rent. Although the arrangement was cleared by the Commons authorities, the couple's expenses have added to public disquiet over MPs' financial arrangements. From April, all Conservative frontbenchers will be required to disclose how much they spend on staff, housing, council tax and travel allowances. Mr Cameron said that he would publish the information in July although this led to accusations that MPs would have time to clear up their affairs before making the public declarations. Mr Cameron is desperate to prove that his party is in favour of greater transparency and accountability after the Tory MP Derek Conway was censured for paying his sons from his Commons allowance despite their being "no evidence" of any work being carried out. By Robert Winnett, Deputy Political Editor Last Updated: 1:13am GMT 06/02/2008 www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/06/nsleaze106.xml ----------------------------------------------- `Perceptions' note: Any MP (congress-man) who wants more money than the average wage in his home constituency is a crook. Because that's the level of income he must be able to live on if he is to fairly represent those constituents. Instead of, as they do now, representing only the rich. -- Because they represent only the rich, our present MPs (congressmen) are frauds - parasitic, thieving scum. That harsh description is solely because they live on the unjust taxes taken, by force in many cases, from hard-working folk and pensioners who are made to go hungry - just to give luxuries to greedy perverts. Our so-called `representatives'. --- note2 Inside info on the recent scandal which provoked all this media waffle is outlined at www.perceptions.couk.com/real-life.txt ----------------------------------------------- evidence file for: Call page - www.perceptions.couk.com/call.html BBC Cover-up - www.perceptions.couk.com/coverup.html UK Scam text file - www.perceptions.couk.com/scam6.txt Immoral Bishops - www.perceptions.couk.com/morals.html Banned pages "UK Swindle" - www.perceptions.couk.com/tax.html#link (& links) ----------------------------------------------- FURTHER REFERENCES GO - "search perceptions" - in SEARCH-ENGINE file-ID www.perceptions.couk.com/ukrich33.txt