How many Labour MPs are on the fiddle?

The latest development in the "Cash for Conways" scandal is the pathetic sight of the party leaders trying to outdo each other in making minor concessions to the idea of transparency.

We've had Cameron telling us that 70 of his MPs employ family members and that he's going to tell which frontbenchers do April.

Why April? Why not now? He knows who they are. Why can't he tell us? And why only the frontbenchers?

Someone of a more cynical frame of mind than me might conclude that rather more than 70 had family members "on the payroll" but that only these 70 were actually making them do any work in return. The others have a couple of months to exorcise these ghost workers so that the boy Dave can present a clean bill of health for the new financial year.

Apart from the departure of Conway, one good thing to come out of this has been the reaction of the Tory grassroots. The deluge of invective from ordinary Conservatives suggest that the party rank and file are of a rather better character than their representatives in Westminster. It's also instructive to compare this reaction to that of the Labour grassroots over the Hain revelations. The red corner was virtually silent on the issue. Only one Labour Home article actually covered the issue directly and started thusly:

Poor Peter Hain, he is being hounded for failing to declare donations to his DL election campaign. Its something that can be easily overlooked in the heat of an election campaign. Its wasn't his fault unless he was made directly aware of it himself.

A couple of commenters said he should go, but the rest were more concerned about the embarrassment to the party. It rather smacks of a bunch of people whose attitude to wrongdoing is "my party, right or wrong". Which may be how we got into this mess in the first place.

Then again, one can wonder just what Labour MPs are hiding themselves. These figures show how MPs voted on the third reading of the bill to exclude MPs expenses from the Freedom of Information Act.

 

So it looks very much to me like a very large number of Labour MPs were very keen to support a Conservative private member's bill. Far more than would have been needed to win the vote.

I wonder why? 

Either way, I think we should keep a very close eye on the expenses issue, because I think the folks in Westminster are hoping we're going to forget about it. 

Comments

[Phil A]

It might be instructive to get the list of those who supported the bill and start digging...

[Bishop Hill]

If you follow the link above you'll get to the voting record on this issue. Don't know how you get the expenses detail though.