Political

What happened to the 21 Conservative MPs who voted to block expenses reform in summer 2008?

As I wrote previously about the voting down in the summer of 2008 of plans to reform MPs’ expenses:

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.

A year and a half on from those 21 voting against changing the expense rules, what do we now know about them? Here’s a summary of what has since come out about their expense claims:

The record of these 21 is much worse than that of the House of Commons overall – which prompts some fairly unappetising conclusions about why at least some of them voted the way they did to block expense reform.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All comments and data you submit with them will be handled in line with the privacy and moderation policies.