The ‘flippers’ get away with it

Doesn’t it seem odd that MPs are being told to pay back money claimed on cleaning or gardening while those who had their snouts deepest in the trough, flipping the designation of their main home to avoid paying Capital Gains Tax or to wring the maximum possible from the poor taxpayer, get off Scot free?

Yet that’s the situation after the new Speaker, John Bercow, rejected Nick Clegg’s plea to widen the Legg enquiry. His decision was backed by the Members Estimates Committee which includes Leader of the House Harriet Harman who has, all along, done all she can to avoid details of MPs’ expenses coming to light. So Jacqui Smith gets away with her flipping £100,000 rip-off, as do all the other flippers including, let us not forget, Bercow himself, who avoided paying CGT on two places by designating them his main residence in turn.

As for Sir Christopher Kelly’s inquiry, leaks indicate that it will ban MPs from employing family members (possibly leading to MPs flipping their wives) and insist that second homes be rented in future. MPs within an hour’s commute of Westminster, around 100 of them, will not be able to claim second-home expenses in future.

That will be bad news for Tory party chairman Eric Pickles. His attempt to justify his second home earlier in the year on Question Time is a classic example of car-crash TV. Odd, though, that Pickles thinks he lives 37 miles away from Westminster when a quick look at Google Maps reveals that his Mountnessing home is actually 27 miles away.

To be fair to Pickles, he’s always been open about his relatively modest expenses, publishing them on his website. But if the Conservatives are re-elected, it’ll be some satisfaction to those commuting into the capital – crammed into carriages so tightly that it would be illegal if they were cattle – to know that the Tory chairman is one of them.