MP’s expenses / Labour Party Meeting
Also on Wednesday evening was a meeting that I caught the tail end of in
Hayfield, that had been set up by Tom Levitt MP, for constituents who had
contacted him with regards to the MP's expenses.
The meeting which was attended by just under 20 people had received a
presentation from Tom around the set up and some of the figures for MP's
expenses and at the point I had arrived was in a general question and answer
set up, both on issues around Tom's expenses and on how they fix the system.
The audience was a mixture of local residents with some Labour Party folk in
attendance, and there were a number of supportive comments from people who
weren't necessarily Tom supporters but were supportive of his actions (or at
least they gave that impression by the end of the meeting).
There were also comments around it not just been corrupt MP's but also
around the system been corrupt, and that whilst highlighting these issues is
important there was also a need for MP's to get on with the job they are
supposed to be doing and get back to dealing with some of the other major
issues such as the current recession etc.
In terms of how we fix the system there was again a good range of views from
the constitutional and voting changes highlighted in most papers, to other
saying the role of MP's needs to be looked at with the current split between
executive and legislative not necessarily working as well as it could.
As flagged up previously Friday evening saw this month's constituency Labour
Party Meeting which is well as discussing a whole range of other issues,
also spent some time discussing the MP's expenses issue.
The discussion covered a wide range of issues over the problem, and looked
for strong action to be taken against those MP's that have defrauded the
system, along with measures to address the concerns over staff, second homes
etc. One thing however that the discussion didn't look for was for Tom to
stand down or for the constituency party to start the process to deselect
him.