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Greg Mulholland-Working Hard For Leeds North WestMULHOLLAND TABLES EARLY DAY MOTION CALLING FOR MINISTERS WHO ABUSE ALLOWANCES TO BE SACKED
March 31, 2009 6:52 PM
Greg Mulholland, MP for Leeds North West, has today tabled an Early Day Motion demanding that Ministers resign over recent expenses stories. The EDM calls for any Ministers who have made personal financial gain by wrongly claiming expenses to resign or be sacked. Already the EDM has been signed by Labour MPs Lynne Jones and Kelvin Hopkins.
The text of EDM 1215 tabled by Greg today is as follows:
That this house:
believes that the way a number of honourable and right honourable members have used the additional costs allowance (second home allowance) has brought the House of Commons into disrepute;
believes that this allowance should only be used for the necessary and legitimate costs of living in two locations to be able to do the job of Member of Parliament and that this should only apply to those members whose seats are outside London;
believes that House of Commons rules should be changed as quickly as possible so that the allowance can only be used for this and not for personal financial gain by wrongly declaring main and second residences; believes that this should be monitored by an independent body and not by MPs themselves;
further believes that any Minister who is found to have wrongly declared their main and second residences for personal gain should immediately resign and if they refuse to do so should be sacked.
Commenting yesterday on the recent developments Greg said;
"It is clear that some MPs, including some senior ministers have been abusing Parliamentary expenses and they say they have done nothing wrong because they haven't broken the rules.
That just shows the rules are completely inadequate, the point is they have misused public funds for personal gain. In any other job, you would be sacked for doing this.
This brings Parliament into disrepute and there is little Parliament seems able to do about it. But it also brings the integrity of Government Ministers into question and any Minister who has abused the second home allowance should resign and if they don't Gordon Brown should show some authority and sack them".
"MPs from outside London do need accommodation to do their job and that is what the allowance is for. Sadly there have been several instances where people have deliberately exploited loopholes for personal financial gain. Doing this is fraudulent and a clear misappropriation of public funds and should be dealt with appropriately".
Greg also called for the Home Secretary to resign;
"The Home Secretary has lost all credibility and should resign. She should accept that she can no longer do the job and should resign so she can defend herself over her use of allowances. But she simply can't cling on in such circumstances and to do so is preventing the Home Office functioning and is damaging for the country".
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