Oh I'm going to upset people here .
The point of asking is to find what people think.
Face the facts. He paid rent to his long term partner. You clealry aren't allowed to do that.
Why not? Sure there's a rule, but when the payments started there was no rule and why should there be a rule?
It's just like Jaqui Smith bailing out her sister, when she herself was a guarantor on the mortgage. It's fraud.
Fraud is obtaining money by deception which you are not entitled to. I cant find it now but the BBC had an online article about his resignation where they had an inset box I presume exactly quoting the parliamentary regulations. It said something like 'no payments can be made to a relative (including for example a spouse or civil partner)'. A definition as clear as mud in this context. The purpose of the 'for example' must be to make clear how close a relationship must be to count. It did not say 'for example a mistress or person you shagged at least five times'. So presumably such people do not count. If the BBc quoted the rules properly, then once again parliament has drafted rules you can drive a coach and horses through, or which were not intended to include anything except a legally recognised marriage.
Secondly, the rules do not prevent you paying for accomodation which you share with a spouse or partner. Unlike social security or housing benefit rules, parliamentary allowances do not depend on how much your partner earns or whether they earn enough to pay for your accommodation. The principle behind them is that an MP is entitled to have London accommodation paid for. So the case is not at all like failing to declare a spouse if you are unemployed. You get extra expenses for a spouse as an MP, not less. If he had organised his expenses more openly he could like as not have claimed more. Unlike some MPs the expenses were for something which he needed, received and was in principle entitled to. It wasnt paying for someone else's house which he never lived in, which I think was the case with a certain MPs sister.
Being Gay is not a crime,
It is if your Catholic, apparently.
He knew the rules. He lied. End of.
The rules changed giving him a choice of coming clean on his relationship or lying. He decided it was more important to keep the relationship secret than to make an accurate expenses claim. I dont want to go too far on this because we dont know the real details, but if you start from the premise the most important thing is to preserve the secret, not having a career in parliament, then this sort of lie tends to snowball once you start out that way. Hes a lib dem. Frankly had no realistic expectation of ever being in the political limelight and the newspapers had already passed on exposing his personal situation (they knew, apparently). He took steps to regularise the expenses claim by getting a separate flat, though in my view while he may have made it watertight by the rules is now making a less honest claim.
If any person can't tell the truth to their parents, they won't find it a problem when they're a Government minister.
Laws was interviewed before all this happened about his views generally and said he felt it more important to maintain personal relationships than other things. I would interpret this as meaning it is more important to preserve whatever relationships are the source of the problem here than to be an MP. I do not want us reduced to the situation where people feel they are unable to enter parliament because of the harm it will do to their personal lives. That simply means preventing lots of good, normal, representative people from being MPs and meaning we are stuck with the bubble people who value being in parliament more than anything else.
He subsidised his boyfriend's mortgage without declaring it.
He certainly wouldn't be the first!
If he was on the dole he'd be prosecuted!!! Make no mistake! Hetero or Homo
But as an MP they would give him more money for declaring he was living with someone, not less!!!
People who serve in Govt. must be/should be whiter than white.
You really want people so unlike real people to be running the country? The whole problem with MPs is they dont understand real people. The question is not the detailed rules of how an MP claims his £20,000 housing allowance but whether he deserves one at all. Do you get one? I dont.
He should resign his seat. Despite what he's done, I'm sure he'd get re-elected, & then at least he'd have a mandate to sit in Government.
If you think he'd get re-elected (and I think your right), why do you think we ought to get the taxpayer to pay for another election?
But of course, he won't!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why should he? MPs are elected for a full parliamentary term.
They're all quite sickening, whichever political hue, aren't they?
So what do you think about my suggestion that housing allowance should be abolished and they should simply have an increased salary equal to a bit less than the average they are each claiming now? (which would be more than Laws claimed)
