The MPs who blocked expenses reform last summer

Last summer an unholy alliance of Labour and Conservative MPs voted to block a series of major reforms to MP expenses, such as requiring receipts for all claims, having outside checks and major changes to the Additional Costs Allowance (ACA).

I commented on Dawn Butler’s role in this yesterday and on looking through the details of the vote it is good to see that all the Liberal Democrat MP voting went through the lobbies in favour of reform. Of course, the bulk of the blame for blocking the reforms must lie with the Labour Party as 146 of their MPs voted to block the reforms. But given David Cameron’s strident recent comments, it’s striking to see that seven of his frontbenchers, and 21 MPs in total, voted to block reform when they had the chance. This was enough to see the measure defeated.

The 21 Conservative MPs who voted to block reform were:

David Amess
James Arbuthnot
Henry Bellingham
Brian Binley
John Butterfill
Christopher Chope
John Greenway
Gerald Howarth
Bernard Jenkin
Julie Kirkbride
Eleanor Laing
Andrew MacKay
Anne McIntosh
Andrew Rosindell
Hugo Swire
Peter Tapsell
Angela Watkinson
Ann Widdecombe
David Wilshire
Ann Winterton
Nicholas Winterton

(Source: Public Whip, which also has the list of Labour MPs who voted to block reform)