Mark Pack

With all the genuine expenses targets available, you’d have through the Taxpayers’ Alliance would have found a better target than attacking a Plaid MP, Adam Price, for using part of his Parliamentary expenses to pay for his staff to go on training courses.

MPs, rightly, get to employ staff via the expenses schemes. (How else, for example, would an MP deal with the hundreds of letters and emails that many get each day?) If people are being employed to work for MPs, then in return MPs should be good bosses. Part of that involves identifying training needs for their staff and making sure they get that training.

The training Adam Price arrange wasn’t something completely unrelated to this job his staff have to do. If he’d been sending staff off on courses in knitting yogurt or melting chocolate, then fair enough. But the courses were directly relevant, covering topics such as dealing with the media.

So what does the Taxpayers’ Alliance attack amount to? It amounts to saying, “It’s outrageous that MPs are being decent employers! How dare they! We want bad staff!”

Yes, well.

Hat-tip: Peter Black on Freedom Central