JohnBM:Liberal

Chris McCafferty, Labour MP for the Calder Valley has defended using her expenses to pay the leader of the Calderdale Council Labour group, Tim Swift £5000 a year in consultancy fees.

Calder Valley MP Mrs McCafferty has defended the payments, which ended last year.

She said: “MPs need help to do their work and I chose Tim as my consultant, which I am perfectly entitled to do. He was my agent, for which he did not get paid, he has helped to prepare my annual report, write Press releases, laid out leaflets and carried out research.

“I could have employed someone else but I wanted the best person for the job.”

Source: Halifax Courier (My highlighting)

A few unanswered questions here:

1. Was the consultancy post in lieu of being an unpaid election agent – if so, was it recorded in her election expenses?
2. Did Cllr. Swift register this work with the Register of Member’s Interests at Calderdale Council?
3. Did Cllr. Swift register with the inland revenue as a soletrader for tax purposes?
4. Was the leader of the Calderdale Labour group laying out leaflets, writing press releases and carrying out research from a political viewpoint (Labour) rather than a parliamentary (Chris McCafferty) viewpoint? Should this be paid for by the taxpayer?
5. Wouldn’t it be better for the public purse for Chris McCafferty to pay an intern or junior MP wannabe for doing this kind of work?
6. Doesn’t the leader of Labour Group on Calderdale have more pressing things to be doing than writing press releases for the local MP?

The Tories are famous in Calderdale for using Ashcroft monies (£25,000 in 2007) for political campaigning but at least it isn’t taxpayer’s money.

After having a little rumage through my local Calder Valley Labour MP, Chris McCafferty’s redacted expenses forms and I came across something quite interesting.

She seems to be paying the leader of the Calderdale Council Labour group, Tim Swift, £1250 per quarter for consultancy fees from her expenses.

As I do not have the money for paying expensive lawyers, I shall not be making any unsubstantiated accusations or assumptions about these payments but I thought it was worth drawing attention to.

By censoring the expenses the Parliamentary Fee Offices has created more questions than answers.

I do hope Chris and Tim are able to “fill in the blanks” so to speak.

Source: BBC News Page 74

<rant>

The biggest and most annoying fallout of the MPs expenses saga is the continuous assault by the media on all politicians at all levels.

In the last ten days, not a day has gone by when I haven’t heard somebody, either in passing or in the media, saying: “politicians are just in it for themselves” or similar comments.

Being a town councillor on Hebden Royd Town Council, this attitude annoys me.

HR Town Councillors do not get any allowances or expenses and all travel/childcare etc. has to come out of our own pockets. The only exception is the mayor who has an allowance to cover the cost of being in ten places at the same time.

I spend many hours a week doing voluntary work either as a charity trustee, school governor,  general volunteer or as a town councillor.

It is only for being a councillor that I have my motives questioned.

Every MP who has fiddled the expenses system needs to think long and hard about the damage that they have done to UK politics as a whole.

The only cure to the current parliamentary malaise is to call a general election and let the electorate purge those MPs who they think have been fiddling the books.

</rant>