Billy and the Baroness

Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, September 23rd, 2009 - 10 comments
Categories: bill english, corruption, uk politics - Tags:

beggar billIn an extraordinary coincidence, the Attorney-General in the UK is about to lose her job for pretty much the same rort as Bill English has been pulling here:

[Baroness Scotland] receives a £38,280-a-year “night subsistence allowance” widely understood to be for ministers whose primary home is outside London even though she owns a large house in the capital…

…A parliamentary guide to ministerial salaries makes clear that the payments are intended for ‘ministers in the House of Lords who maintain a second home in London”…

…A spokeswoman for the Attorney insisted that she is entitled to the allowance, which is paid automatically to her by the department rather than being claimed as an expense, as legislation does not specify where the peer should live to qualify.

But other Government ministers who are also members of the House of Lords, including the Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, do not take the allowance…

…A spokesman for the Cabinet Office said that the payments were not against the rules as they stand.

But he added: ‘It is true to say that that was the intention behind this allowance, before it was brought in in 1991: to allow a peer who is a minister to maintain a second home in London…

Labour MPs are calling for their minister to go. PM Gordon Brown’s office is going through the act of saying Baroness Scotland won’t be fired but it’s understood (ie Downing St has leaked) that she will go in a mini-reshuffle later this week. Over there, ministers simply aren’t allowed to remain in office in circumstances like these.

We used to have the same standards here.

10 comments on “Billy and the Baroness ”

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  1. Brett Dale 1
    23 September 2009 at 10:56 am

    WE didn’t have the same standards under Aunty Helen.

    • snoozer 1.1
      23 September 2009 at 11:00 am

      She fired ministers at a rate of one every nine months.

      Name a situation where a minister was carrying out something like this rort and was allowed to stay on as a minister.

    • poptart 1.2
      23 September 2009 at 11:00 am

      How quickly your own standards slip Brett.

  2. the sprout 2
    23 September 2009 at 11:01 am

    Seems like English doesn’t need to be accountable to the reasonable standards as the UK Attorney-General.

    Why would that be I wonder?

  3. Red Rosa 3
    23 September 2009 at 12:19 pm

    English and Scotland – there has to be a connection (or at least a good pun or two) there somewhere!

  4. Maynard J 4
    23 September 2009 at 12:47 pm

    Did Key say that there would be *more* accountability, or a different level of accountability when compared to Labour?

    If the latter, then he is right. If the former, then no.

  5. Rich 5
    23 September 2009 at 3:45 pm

    I thought she was mostly in trouble for employing an “illegal” Tongan servant, ignoring the UK’s pro-racism laws..

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