Lessons on expenses for MPs
Most businessmen will react to the revelations of MPs expenses with anger, cynicism or wry amusement. But how many could survive public exposure of their own expenses claims?
Boardroom excesses do become public when they are pension contributions or relocation allowances or when an employment contract foolishly provides too much detail on a director’s demands.
But the minutiae of restaurant bills and travel are rarely revealed and beneath board level companies still have allowances for overnight stays or meals away; mileage payments that bear little correlation to journeys taken or re-imbursements for entertainment with no questions asked about the recipient. Drinks with office colleagues are put down as hospitality for external contacts.
There are office cultures that use expenses as bonuses, expecting star performers to submit high claims that reflect their business success rather than any outlay. Blind eyes are turned to dinners with spouses at restaurants near the worker’s home so long as the employee is delivering.
In theory, past expenses claims are the perfect excuse for sacking any but the most honest of employees – except that any threatened worker would know their boss was equally guilty.
That said, the corporate world has lessons to offer to the politicians as they wrestle to find a scheme for paying expenses that is fair and avoids embarrassment. The MPs’ problem that they need a home in the constituency and a home at Westminster is well known to an army of corporate employees who must divide their time between the company HQ and the territory where they sell or the remote site where they work.
Lesson one is the need for receipts. Lesson two is an accounting system that scrutinises them and is not afraid to reject claims.
There is no need for MPs to buy a home or have it furnished at taxpayers’ expense; if they choose to buy rather than rent modestly, that should be their choice and their cost. There is no justification for profiting from the need to occupy two homes.
Nor should food, cleaning substances and the like be claimable. MPs have to buy such items wherever they are and do now consume twice as much because they have two homes. Travel should be booked through a central booking agency that buys wisely and checks claims.
And as with employees, all such spending should potentially be taxed as a benefit. That requires HMRC to be tough with its own masters.
Further, realistic budgets for MPs’ expenses should be set and adhered to. In industry, if the cash isn’t there is doesn’t get paid.
Out of those controls must come a change in culture that means MPs claim because they made essential spending, not because allowances are available.
But Westminster might have a lesson for commerce too. If all business claims were published publicly, right down to supermarket bills, the transparency might well temper the amount sought.
