City MP’s Expenses Revealed

The redacted expenses of all MPs have been published on Parliament’s website, which means MPs are inevitably facing tough questions from their consitutents and local media at the moment. I took a look at the expenses of Mark Field – who represents the Square Mile as part of his Cities of London and Westminster constituency – to see if he had a clean bill of health.

Those hoping for scandals of related employees, second home flipping and moat cleaning will be disappointed in Field’s expenses – he tells me he has never remunerated a member of his family, does not qualify for second home allowances (being an Inner London MP) and indeed, has a history of calling for reform of the system, having written to the Speaker before the current controversy, asking for a ”total root and branch review with a resolve to scrap the ACA and introduce an entirely transparent pay and parliamentary expenses system for the future”.

Whilst Mr Field’s expenses don’t include duck island extragances, they do throw up a couple of questions which I put to the MP directly.

There are a number of claims in the expenses for the services of a PR company called “A Shore Thing”. I asked Mr Field to explain what function they had carried out on his behalf. He said:

“I employed on a part time basis the services of a communications specialist to help me get onto national and regional TV and radio shows as well as promoting my constituency interests in magazines and on websites”

Some may argue that profile raising activities should not be funded from the public purse, but Mark tells me he dispensed with their services after a year and he now has established his own regular media appearances which allows him to get a wider hearing for constituency related matters such as the wrongly imprisoned Sean Hodgson, the future of the antiquarian Cecil Court and the case of Ofcom whistleblower, Bob Winsor.

Some people’s eyes may have been caught by the claims for TV & internet packages that included optional movie and sports channels. When I asked the MP if it was reasonable for these to be included as an office expense, he explained that this was the result of an agreement with the fees office.

I agreed with the Fees Office in autumn 2005 that, rather than estimating an apportionment of costs for my home office computer system (hardware, maintenance, insurance and running costs) also used by my wife and an NTL package, which included internet connection, basic cable TV package (including news and parliamentary programmes) as well as sports and other optional channels, I should cover the full computer costs out of my own pocket and charge the entire monthly NTL bill to my IEP.
 

Mark contends that this arrangement, with him paying for this home computer’s maintenance, insurance etc from his own pocket, was actually beneficial for the taxpayer.

Perhaps the only piece of potential extravagance that I saw in Mark Field’s were claims for a £78 pocket diary planner from Smythsons – the luxury leather goods and stationery shop which is also in his constituency. I put it to Mark that there would have been cheaper alternatives to this luxury item. Mr Field informed me that the pocket diary from Smythsons was a very good one which contained a wide range of contact numbers and reference details and although he claimed for it in 2004 and 2005, he continues to use it in doing his job but asks family members to buy it for him  as a Christmas gift rather than put it through as an expense.

What do you think about Mark Field’s expenses? If you have a point of view, please feel free to add as a comment below.