I've come to this a bit late, but Paul Waugh reports that Caroline Spelman is set to be completely vindicated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner when he publishes his report into allegations that she paid her Nanny out of parliamentary funds. It's not been an easy six months for the Tory Party chairman and I know how hurt she has been by some of the attacks on her from people who ought to have known better. I wish I could say they were all from outside the Conservative Party.
There will now be much speculation about her future. One thing is certain, she will retain her Shadow Cabinet status, and deservedly so.
David Cameron will now be free to carry out the reshuffle which has been delayed since the autumn. Tim Montgomerie has been in full reshuffle mode today, detailing his six reshuffle hopes. I shall return to the subject myself in the next few days.
46 comments:
While I have no great animus against Caroline Spelman, there is a significant difference between "no evidence of deliberate wrongdoing" and "completely vindicated".
The latter really is a matter of opinion. I'm not sure that I agree with Guido on this, but he does at least have a case to make.
Well, that's good news. She can now join the spotless ranks of Peter Hain, OJ Simpson and others who were wrongly accused of misdoing.
What a crock
New Labour, Blue Labour.
Yeah, still a bit smelly.
WV: redneco - bit harsh!
I think I agree with Guido on this one.
"Mrs Spelman has insisted all along that Ms Haynes was paid only for secretarial work and her nannying duties were rewarded separately with free board and lodging."
And yet people have been attacking her in spite of this full, frank and in no way implausible explanation? For shame.
In any other walk of life, this is called theft. If Dave Lightweight wants to give her a job that's his lookout. I'm sure we'll hear no more about it. Is she even going to repay the money?
What does it take to get an MP found guilty of fraud?
They must be the most protected species on the planet.
Cameron (and Spelman) will pay the price for this. How can the Conservatives now complain of 'Labour sleaze' when the public perception is that the Tories are no better? - this could cost Cameron a few marginals come the GE. Cameron really has lost his PR antennae on this one…
Excellent news!
This is profoundly depressing. It was so blatantly crooked.
Presumably the Party would be in a stronger position if they had arranged for the money to be repaid ten years ago when they found out about it. The problem is that she has been reselected and given frontbench appointments knowing full well what she's done. If they fire her now it can't be because of what she's done, they've known that for years. It can only be as a punishment for letting the press find out about it.
If she'd have died, you'd have beaten those MSM buggers to the story I bet!
Good day to chuck out the trash - can't get any story past this Gaza thing. Footnote.
Fawkes is right. This stinks. It also does nothing to restore faith in the political system. If Cameron has any balls she should be sacked.
"Shadow Chancellor George Osborne told the BBC Ms Spelman "is someone of enormous integrity and honesty".
Mr Osbourne added that the MP for Meriden, who has recently taken charge of improving the Conservatives' record on expenses, was "the last person in Parliament" who would do something wrong. "
[bbc, June 08]
And let's not forget the role of Central Office in attempting to help her concoct the cover story that subsequently unravelled.
Jimmy - unlike Ali Campbell did and now does again. Don't throw stones eh?
This only shows that at absolute worse, Mrs. Spelman played slightly lose with the rules and got caught out on a technicality, and at best didn't really do anything much more that many other MPs were doing.
It strikes me as more about breaking the spirit than the letter of the law.
It was a non story really, wasn't it?
Dick,
If you're accusing someone in the Labour Party of stealing then spit it out.
Scipio
It's not "technical". She stole public money to pay for her childcare by pretending that her nanny was her constituency secretary. Anywhere else, if you steal from work, you go to prison.
As Guido said...
Somebody did the secretarial work, and if the nanny didn't, as the loudmouthed idiots commenting here appear to know for a fact, then who did? If you can't produce him/her, you - like Guido, currently doing a great imitation of a Daily Mail reader contemplating an immigrant - have no case. You, and he, never did. If you think you do, perhaps you'd like to explain why Ms Spelman insisted that the Commissioner for Standards investigate, despite his initial refusal to do so? It was, fools, because she had no case to answer.
"If you can't produce him/her, you... have no case."
Is that how expenses claims work in your experience? Nice work if you can get it.
You may want to refresh your memory as to the story
I blogged this back in November, but it passed others by without comment.
"Lieutenant-General Sir David Richards, who takes over as chief of the general staff in August, expressed his concern that servicemen were pilfering and abusing the Army's joint personnel administration (JPA).
Introduced last year, the JPA system allows expenses to be claimed by soldiers via computer, which are checked randomly.
In a document published on The Sunday Times website - which the Ministry of Defence confirmed was genuine - Sir David wrote: "I am becoming concerned over the prevalence of fraudulent behaviour as well as what I can at best describe as 'sharp practice' and at worst dishonesty."
He added: "There are soldiers and even some officers who view JPA as a 'cash machine' and are processing fraudulent claims in the belief that if caught they will claim ignorance and hope to refund the monies with no further action."
as I said....Well, why not ?.. it works well enough for MPs
I've been appalled by the way so many people have leapt on this story as evidence of wrong-doing by Caroline Spelman. I used to work for a MP a few years ago, around the time "Nannygate" was going on, and had to deal with the minefield of the House of Commons rules on expenses on almost a daily basis. It was a complete nightmare - even the advisers in F&A were confused by the rules, and it became dangerously easy to slip up unintentionally. I know things have changed now, and the rules are clearer, but back then it was a major headache.
I also find it hard to imagine that a lady of Spelman's intelligence (not to mention wealth!) would have been rubbing her hands together with glee at the thought of fleecing taxpayers for a free nanny. The image just doesn't fit.
I do wish people would stop piling on the bandwagon and look at this issue more cooly. It seems to me that she made an honest mistake, and having dealt with the system myself I know firsthand how easy it is to do!
Another crooked MP gets away with it. No story there, is there?
@ Jimmy
"Anywhere else, if you steal from work, you go to prison"
Don't be so silly. Stealing from work is a commonplace. It's a question of degree. You've never done it of course, so you wouldn't really understand. But it's really quite easy, it just takes a little ingenuity that's all.
Now, care to comment on the 'expenses' and kickbacks enjoyed by other politicians from other political parties? Perhaps you'd like to start with a few Ministers and then work your way down through Mr and Mrs Speaker to the lower orders.
Englishrose/Unsworth et al...
You are missing the whole point - this case has gained such traction that Labour activists must be thinking they have just received a late Christmas present. We are beyond splitting hairs over when is an abuse of the system (whether simply perceived or otherwise) serious enough to warrant dismissal. The whole point of voting for a future Conservative Government is that they are above this sort of thing - by giving Spelman a pat on the head and saying 'no problem here' will turn-off the very people (floating voters) who may have been considering taking a chance on the Conservatives at the next GE. If Spelman had any honour or loyalty to the Party, she would have resigned and if Dave had any cojones, he would have ensured that it happened. Instead, we can probably kiss goodbye to several ultra-marginals because of this whitewash.
Unsworth,
Guidelines below. Ms. Spelman is in the 2-3 years bracket.
Theft
Breach of trust – White-collar dishonesty
R v Clark [1998] 2 Cr.App.R.(S) 95
(superseding R v Barrick (1985) 7 Cr.App.R.(S) 142)
* Due to the increasing scale of ‘white-collar’ dishonesty (in the form of theft and fraud), both in terms of complexity of execution and in the rewards that could be obtained, such cases warranted longer sentences than were originally contemplated in Barrick.
* The Court focused particularly on cases where accountants, solicitors, bank employees (and postmen) had used their position of trust to defraud.
* Revised monetary figures stated in Barrick to be in line with inflation (as at 1997).
* As was pointed out in Barrick, the amount stolen is not the only factor to be considered. There are many others including those specifically identified in that judgment, which were:
o quality and degree of trust in and rank of the offender
o the period over which the frauds were perpetrated
o the use made of the money/property stolen
o the effect on the victim
o the impact of the offences on the public and public confidence
o the effect on fellow employees and partners
o the effect on the offender
o the offender’s own history
o matters of personal mitigation
o long delay between the discovery of the offences and the start of trial (2 years or more)
* Discount should be given for a guilty plea.
* Consecutive sentences may be appropriate where the sums involved were exceptionally large, and not stolen on a single occasion, or the dishonesty was directed at more than one victim.
Guidelines
The following guidelines apply where there is a contested trial.
Amount stolen
Guideline sentence
Amount stolen is not small, but is less than £17,500
Custodial terms from the very short to 21 months
£17,500 to £100,000
2 – 3 years custodial sentence
£100,000 to £250,000
3 – 4 years custodial sentence
£250,000 to £1 million
5 – 9 years custodial sentence
£1 million or more
Custodial sentence of 10 years or more
Current Sentencing Practice Reference: B6-1.2
@ Jimmy
Yes, and?
These are 'guidelines' for convicted persons. You've got to prosecute, prove and convict before you can get anywhere near these 'guidelines', don't you see? It's called Law in Action. (Nice bit of cut 'n paste, by the way. Do you want to have a crack at the Bench Book as well?)
But perhaps you'll be taking out a private prosecution against Ms Spelman - and possibly so many others of all parties. I do so look forward to reading about it.
Unsworth,
As I recall you took issue with my assertion that those who stole from work went to prison. It's true I did not specifically point out the requirement for a conviction. I did not imagine that needed to be pointed out. And yes I pasted. Was I supposed to type it out? Perhaps I could have hired a nanny to do it.
One in the eye of David Cameron, who used the BBC, and specifically Michael Crick, to hound the token moral and social conservative (with links to things like CARE) whom he had felt obliged to make Party Chairman as a sort of fig-leaf.
Crick, of course, was the man who invented the myth of the Militant Tendency, which in reality barely existed beyond Merseyside and had far fewer members than even the International Socialists, the Workers' Revolutionary Party (for some reason depicted by Nick Cohen in What's Left as of earth-shattering importance) or the International Marxist Group (of which Alistair Darling was a stalwart).
But they were university-based, like the Communist Party. The purge of untypically working-class, frightfully provincial (why, even Scouse) Militant could be depicted as the purge of Trotskyism in particular, and Marxism in general. It was no such thing.
On the contrary, thanks to Crick and his Myth of Militant, the International Socialists, the Workers' Revolutionary Party, the International Marxist Group, the Communist Party, and all the others who had followed academic Marxism from economics to the culture wars in the pursuit of entirely unchanged objectives were able to create New Labour.
Of which the principal present expression is the Cameron Tories.
"which in reality barely existed beyond Merseyside"
No idea where you got that gem from, but I can assure you these people were everywhere.
Trots were everywhere, Jimmy. But Militant wasn't. The whole thing was cooked up by Crick to make his name.
Leaving the much larger, but impecccably middle-class and largely London-based, outfits to do exactly as they have been doing ever since.
In any case, I recently heard Derek Hatton on the radio, saying how proud he was to have built so many council houses "with gardens front and back". That is a long way from Trotskyism. It is a pure Old Labour.
Whereas how many council houses "with gardens front and back" has New Labour built? There is a reason for that.
And it is the same reason why all the things that New Labour HAS done would be retained and continued under Cameron, the latest frontman of The Project, which is the only thing that really matters, all else (the Conservative Party as surely as the Labour Party) being merely the superstructure.
I can assure you I moved around a fair bit at the time and I met these people everywhere. Not a scouse accent anywhere. Perhaps they were in on it?
Perhaps you are in on it, Jimmy? Actually, I think that you just mean Trots generally. You have swallowed the line that they were all Militant.
There was certainly MI5 infiltration of the Trots, although with the Cold War on you'd have thought that they had other things to do.
But do you know who is now the Chairman of the Select Committee that deals with these matters? How times change...
@ Jimmy
So your point is what, exactly? You say those who steal from work "go to prison", then you say those who steal and are convicted go to prison, but even then you're wrong because - as even you may possibly understand - not all those convicted go to prison. Some are actually still roaming the streets.
But how many of those who steal do get charged? For that matter how many MPs do you think are guilty of theft? Any hard evidence at all? Maybe you need to get it to the police pretty pronto, eh? After all, they're obliged to consider such allegations.
Do you think you might need the services of a nanny to help you with the arduous task of rounding up convincing evidence of MPs (of all persuasions) doing a bit of thieving? After all, there must be quite a few, some of them on Government benches, too.
"You have swallowed the line that they were all Militant."
That's how they described themselves. Perhaps they were pulling my leg.
"not all those convicted go to prison."
Not quite all no. But it is the usual punishment,
"But how many of those who steal do get charged? "
Is that a serious question?
Are you saying she's innocent or that you have no problem with it?
@ Jimmy
I know that you'll find this terribly hard to comprehend, but the game is 'Innocent until charged, proved and convicted'. For someone who clearly enjoys a bit of cut and paste you're showing a remarkable lack of understanding of the basic legal tenets. If and when all of that happens I'll voice an opinion as to guilt or otherwise of Ms Spelman.
Oh, and as to the 'usual punishment' for those guilty of theft, you're entirely wrong - yet again. Take a close look at the stats from the Home Office. They may surprise you. And before you ask, no, you can do your own research.
"'Innocent until charged, proved and convicted'."
Ah I see the problem. You have the criminal justice system confused with the internet.
"Oh, and as to the 'usual punishment' for those guilty of theft, you're entirely wrong"
I said nothing about the usual punishment for theft. I referred to the usual punishment for theft from work. Did you spot that? I even, as you pointed out, posted the guidelines. What part did you not understand?
smells to me !
Give them all a 10k pay rise ...and then ZERO expenses ...sorts that out
referendum on that ..we decide not them .... don't like it ..then sod off
ban on nepotism ...need a researcher get one from a civil service pool ..accountable and salaried... cap the number of researchers /secretaries... ratioed to number of party seats..say one per 3 MP's
what business allows expenses to run at twice the claimants annual wage ..?
effin mickytake at the trough ..all of the pigs
oh ,,,and MP's only get full pay for full attendance
sponging tossers .....
minimum 20 years experience in non politically orientated jobs before being allowed consideration for selection as an MP...
Pay rises automatically linked to the civil service rises .
Pension funds set at national average
End of final salary .
automatic Jail sentences for perjury in parliament. min 10 years
corruption ...min 20years
death penalty for treason
Ban on all paid lobbyists
All defence ministers have to visit front lines in standard army equipment and vehicles once a month.
(snatches or better still a supacat jackal) and the bloody FO ...make then sit on the bonnet ..heh.. or even tie them to it !
All chancellors must have at least 2 years in defence ,survivors can then progress to the chancellery unless too severely disabled ...
Chancellors and prime ministers personally accountable for a percentage of tax payers loss.
urph ...beers run out ...nobby !
Gordo's so happy that Gaza's kicked off ...takes his economic incompetence of the news agenda.
a pox on them all
@ Jimmy
The internet? No, I don't think so. Unless you believe that the internet should solely be used by idiots, that is. One can hardly confuse a system of communication with a structure of law, but there are those who tend to make rash and stupid statements on the net, of course.
So:
"Anywhere else, if you steal from work, you go to prison"
Then, after reconsideration:
""not all those convicted go to prison."
Not quite all no. But it is the usual punishment,"
The "usual punishment" for those who steal from work? Any evidence for this statement?
Marks and Spencer (as but one example) hold that 50% of their employees are likely to steal from work. This is an assumption on their part, true, but not without some justification. If that is so one would expect to see large numbers of their ex-employees in court. Actually it doesn't happen, otherwise we'd expect to see very large numbers of those working in retail being banged up.
The whole basis of Sentencing Guidlines in recent years has been to avoid sending convicts of all types to jail, i.e. to give out non-custodial sentences. Why? Simply because NuLab has failed to build enough clinks to accommodate those who fall foul of its ever increasing legislation and draconian oppression. They simply didn't understand that More Laws = More Criminals. What a bunch of clowns.
Still, maybe that doesn't suit your political position, eh? Maybe you're confusing what you'd like to see happening with what actually goes on in the real world out here. This is a not uncommon syndrome amongst the Nulab bretheren.
"Any evidence for this statement?"
You mean apart from the sentencing guidelines already posted? Short of actually sending somebody round to read it to you and explain the long words, I'm not sure what more I can do.
@ Jimmy
See, you have to understand that the 'guidelines' are not 'rules'. Magistrates, even today, despite NuLab's best efforts, have a degree of flexibility. You conveniently ignored Mitigation, Charging, Conviction and decisions of the blessed CPS.
And you started here:
"Anywhere else, if you steal from work, you go to prison"
Now we've established that you have no evidence for that position you want instead to say that the Guidelines are actually what happens every day in court.
As I've already pointed out - the majority of those who steal from work do not go to prison. In fact the majority are never even charged or detected. As I said, take a look at the Home Office stats.
It's yet another common mistake of the Nulab brethren to believe that by issuing guidelines or introducing new laws they have real effects on society - including ensuring that those who steal from work get sent to prison. They don't.
Unsworth,
I don't wish to be discourteous, but I know a little bit about this subject. You don't, and I'm finding your attempts to pretend that you do rather puzzling.
OK Jimmy, put your credentials down - if you really have any. If you wish to have a reproductive organ measurement contest I'll be much entertained.
You know a little bit about this subject? Yes.
Now, about all these people stealing from work and being sent to prison - any sign of some facts yet? Or are we merely to continue this descent into the world of petty insult and ad hominem bollocks?
You 'don't wish to be discourteous'? Well no one is forcing you.
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