Search Results

4 February 2010 : Press Release

Sir Michael Spicer MP comments on expenses repayment

Sir Michael Spicer, Member of Parliament for West Worcestershire, today said,

‘When in 1979 I became part of the Government, I sold the business I had founded and with the proceeds simultaneously bought a house in London and one in the constituency. Each was large enough to house a growing family of three children, and within the constituency, to entertain official guests who ranged from the Speaker of the House of Commons to the Chinese Ambassador.

For the purpose of maintaining a second house to the standard of repair and tidiness expected of an MP, there was an allowance which I claimed. I did so within the conventions, guidelines and rules operating at the time (while I was working in Parliament I could not myself clean the house or maintain the garden in the constituency).

In today’s report on MPs’ Expenses Sir Paul Kennedy, the appeal judge, makes the following points:

“Claims for Cleaning and Gardening ……..It is, for anyone, irritating to say the least, to have a claim made in good faith years ago measured against a limit which has only just been set, and to be recommended to repay any “excess”. It is infinitely more irritating and potentially very damaging to reputation, if the exercise takes place in the full glare of media publicity……….I do, however, consider it unfortunate that the Review should, in relation to cleaning and gardening claims, have invoked again “the requirement of propriety”. That carries with it the inevitable implication that those who made claims in excess of the retrospectively imposed limits were lacking in propriety, and in the appeals I have seen I found little, if any, evidence of that………….

Furniture and Household Equipment

……..As with cleaning and gardening claims much can be said, and has been said, to me about the injustice of exposing old claims to a guideline of which the claimant was unaware at the time the claims were made, and of recommending repayment of any “excess”. It may well result in unfair and damaging publicity.”

I shall nevertheless settle the demand that has now been made of me in order to draw a line under the matter.’