Expenses, sleaze, and the strange case of Haslar

The scandal surrounding MPs' generous expenses claims and second home allowances has reached Gosport. Over the last 5 years – approximately the time of a parliamentary session – Gosport's Member of Parliament, Sir Peter Viggers MP, has cost us no less than £940,000 in salary, allowances, expenses and such like.

Some of this I do not begrudge. An MP's annual salary of £60,000-plus is a lot of money, but it is roughly equivalent to the salaries of many managers, and a good deal less than top civil servants and even local authority chiefs.

I also have no reason to grumble – from what I have seen – at the claims he has made to pay his staff to help him carry out his Parliamentary duties. Every MP has a duty to serve their constituents, as well as perform their job as a Member of the House of Commons. In an age when government and ministers have concentrated so much power, it is more important than ever that opposition backbenchers have the resources to scrutinise the executive, and to effectively oppose their excesses.

But what is completely unacceptable is that Sir Peter has REPEATEDLY claimed the absolute maximum possible for “additional cost allowances” - the hugely controversial “second home allowance”. Putting aside for a moment the question of whether or not MPs should have the right to buy second homes at taxpayers' expense, we have no idea whether his second home costs more or less than what he has claimed. He has simply claimed the limit of what the skewed and absurd rules (which MPs themselves wrote) allow an MP to claim. In fact, in the last few years, he has come TOP of the national 'league' of MPs and their second homes claims on more than one occasion.

On top of that, he has ALSO come near the top of the table for other expenses claims, including “incidental expenses” - the definition of which is so vague as to be virtually meaningless – and has made claims which,whilst within the aforementioned rules, will cause eyebrows to go up around Gosport, such as the claiming of £1,000 to cover his wife's travel expenses.

There are two salient points which come out of this episode.

The first is that it is high time that MPs, who are paid such generous salaries and expenses, actually proved their worth. The fact that public confidence in politicians is at an all-time low is justification enough. In Gosport, there is one issue which virtually everyone agrees on and which virtually everyone believes is the most important issue in the borough and the constituency. That issue is Haslar Hospital.

The job of an MP – above all else – is to promote the views and fight the cause of his or her constituents. Here in Gosport, our MP has been quiet on Haslar for far too long – save the occasional flurry of publicity – and even when he has claimed to have acted, it is clear that he has been largely ineffectual. He hasn't even been able to persuade his own party leader, David Cameron, of the merits of Haslar Hospital (Cameron, you may recall, famously told 'The News' his view that Haslar had “no future”).

For Peter Viggers to miss a key demonstration in defence of Haslar just weeks before it is due to be closed is an unforgivable error of judgement. He did not send his apologies, he did not send a representative, he did not even send a telegram of support to the organisers. If the message that local people got from this was loud and clear, then the message that the Government will have heard will have been even clearer – namely, that if the elected MP for Gosport isn't bothered about fighting the closure, then there is nothing to stop them from going ahead.

If – as widely predicted – Haslar's doors do shut this summer, a large part of the blame can be laid at the feet of our local MP who – at the critical moment – turned and walked away.

The other point is that the revelations of Mr Viggers' claims should not be seen in a vacuum. In recent weeks, there have been a number of related revelations in Gosport. For example, the Mayor of Gosport – like Mr Viggers, a Conservative – has ordered a £30,000 Chauffeur-driven limousine (complete with personalised number plate) in which to perform his ceremonial duties. The cost of this monstrosity is to be borne by local Council taxpayers. Another recent revelation is that the local Conservative Association ordered a lavish “make-over” of its offices on Stoke Road, and then – with the connivance of Mr Viggers – sent the £18,000 bill to the taxpayer.

In spite of David Cameron's PR-wash of the Tories, it seems that - in Gosport at least - the undisputed masters of sleaze are still the Conservatives. As for Peter Viggers, the combination of outrageous expenses and political invisibility could combine to bring about his downfall.