I was slightly bemused to watch David Cameron talk on BBC Breakfast just now about the legislation that needs to be brought forward from the Kelly Report into MPs' Expenses.
One of the specific things he mentioned was that MPs shouldn't be members of two Parliaments, which smacks of breathtaking hypocrisy given that John Lamont, MSP for Roxburgh and Berwickshire is the Conservative candidate for the Westminster seat of Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk.
If Cameron accepts Kelly's recommendation, surely he should insist that Lamont either steps down as an MSP now or before the election or resigns as a candidate. You shouldn't need a law to guide you to doing the right thing - if it's wrong, it's wrong, end of story. The tales of MPs making clearly preposterous claims - duck islands, second home maintenance for a home miles away from the constituency, flipping for maximum financial gain, that sort of thing - and justifying it because it was within the rules comes to mind.
Alternatively, privately he maybe thinks that Lamont doesn't have a chance of winning against hard working local MP Michael Moore so the issue of him actually being in two parliaments isn't actually going to become a reality.
Either way, it's a mess for the Tories.
3 comments:
This simply doesn't make sense.
Cameron is against dual mandates, so I would expect the Tory chap to resign his Scottish Parliament seat if elected to Westminster.
But why should he resign before he gets elected? That is not holding a dual mandate.
Would you expect someone to resign from their current job if they were applying for another? Or would they wait until they had the new job?
Presumably even if you ignore the hypocrisy running a campaign for the MP position is going to rather eat into his time and distract from MSPing. Then remember that his boss says he can't have both jobs, so it is more like umm.. running a massive time consuming campaign for someone while being paid large sums to represent someone else...sorry, couldn't really think of anything comparable..Advertising chap spending the time he was supposed to be representing Coca Cola preparing a pitch for Pepsi maybe Not just tea breaks, but whole swathes of his working week of course.
If nothing else then a dual-mandated John Lamont should be avoided because he'd possibly single-handedly bankrupt the country with his office expenses claims!!
Post a Comment