In a rather strange development, Theresa May, Conservative candidate for Maidenhead, wrote to the Maidenhead Advertiser (15 April edition) with a cut-down version of a letter that she had sent directly to us, and to which we had replied (and posted the details on our website) long before the publication deadline for that edition.

In her letter to the Advertiser, she did not take account of or respond to any of the points that we had made in reply to her. Perhaps she had already sent it before she received our reply, but she had plenty of time to correct it or respond to our points, as we replied to her on 10 April and the publication deadline for the Advertiser was 13 April. At the time of posting this (over a week since we replied to her), she has still not replied to us.

In the 1 April edition of the Advertiser, we had placed an advert (available to view on this site) that ran:

Our local MP was on the Members Estimate Committee, but when the rules on expenses needed to be tightened...

What did Theresa say?

with a picture that conveyed the message that, in our opinion, she had not said anything of significance.

On 7 April, she emailed us, copying the editor of the Advertiser, as follows:

Dear Peter
 
In last week's edition of the Maidenhead Advertiser the Freedom and Responsibility Party, for which you have declared your intention of standing at the General Election in the Maidenhead constituency, placed an advertisement which stated "our local MP was on the Members Estimate Committee, but when the rules on expenses needed to be tightened… What did Theresa Say?" This was followed by a picture of what was obviously the mouth of a woman with a finger over the lips clearly intended to indicate that "Theresa said nothing".
 
I am writing to inform you that this is factually completely wrong.
 
Not only did I make a number of statements on the media about the need to change our expenses system when I was Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and on the Members Estimates committee, but I also spoke on the need for change in the House of Commons. The two key debates were held in July 2008. The first took place when the Members Estimates Committee asked the House to approve changes it proposed to the expenses system. That report and the changes proposed were rejected by the House of Commons. The second debate followed a couple of weeks later when the Conservative Party, The Official Opposition, concerned about the result of that vote and keen to ensure that Parliament did change its expenses system, chose to use one of its Opposition Days in Parliament to bring forward a similar set of proposed changes to the expenses system.
 
I reproduce below some key sections of my speeches on these two occasions. The full debates and my full speeches can be found in Hansard of the days in question.
 
*Thursday 3rd July 2008.*
 
"The debate is important for the following reasons. We all know that to do our jobs we need budgets to meet our office costs. There are probably as many structures as there are MPs, because we all do things differently. Our constituencies are different, and no one model can be imposed on us all. It is also right that we are able to claim for costs incurred for working away from home as would happen in any other field of employment. But the approach that has been taken by MPs to the use of taxpayers’ money for expenses and allowances has over the years been seen by taxpayers to be secretive and to fail to follow best practice.
Above all, Parliament has been seen as failing to recognise that life has changed. Outside this place, in any other business, compliance is the order of the day. We have appeared to be willing to require others to do that which we are not prepared to accept for ourselves. Crucial to that is the issue of audit.
I chair the Audit Committee, which, under various Chairmen, has pressed for proper audit of MPs’ claims since 2004, as the MEC report states in paragraph 27. In what other walk of life would it have been possible regularly to claim expenses for £250 a time without a receipt? In short, we have been seriously out of touch and careless of our duty to taxpayers. Members, before they vote on the issue, should have a care and consider the damage that that has done to the House.
We can argue about the media’s role. They certainly have a lot to answer for, but frankly so do we. The reputation of the House has been damaged and today we have a duty to put in place the changes necessary to restore confidence in Parliament and in MPs’ use of taxpayers’ money and to make this institution fit for the 21st century. There are two areas where people have particularly found us to be out of touch. One is audit and the other is transparency. Transparency has been resolved following the High Court judgment. All Members’ claims will be published with receipts later this year. That will, of course, be of some cost to the House but I believe that it is right to embrace that transparency. It will be an important means of showing taxpayers that their money is being properly spent. The only exception to transparency is the issue of addresses, which I shall touch on later…….
….I believe that the proportionate response that is needed from this House is the restoration of its reputation and that is what the MEC report provides. That is why I believe that it is important that when hon. Members vote today they should recognise the need to think not just about our individual situations but about the damage that has been done to this House by our failure to adopt best practice in those areas before now. We need to show taxpayers that we have understood the depth of people’s concerns and have been willing to respond, to get a grip on the problem and to sort it out. As the report says in its conclusions and recommendations:
 
“Our over-riding conclusion is that we must introduce a robust system of scrutiny for parliamentary allowances as a matter of urgency in order to build public confidence.”
 
...This House has a very important decision to take today. We have the opportunity to start the process of restoring confidence in Members and the processes of the House. We can put our heads above the parapet and say, “We understand the degree of concern that exists outside this House, and we are willing to take the necessary action.” I hope that the House will therefore support the motion in the name of the MEC.
 
*And in the debate on Wednesday 16 July 2008 I moved the motion:-*
 
That this House recognises growing public concern on expenses and allowances for hon. Members and Members of the European Parliament (MEPs); believes that the minimum requirements for tackling the problem include regular reporting and appropriate auditing of the use of expenses and allowances, the publication of claims made, broken down by type, in relation to each allowance and claimable expense, the publication of the names and salary bands of all relatives employed by hon. Members and the abolition of the so-called John Lewis list; further believes that UK MEPs should abide by the same rules and practices as hon. Members, with particular regard to the repayment of surpluses, published annual statements verified by independent accountants and overseen by a compliance officer, the publication of the names and salary bands of any relative employed and regular reporting of expenses and allowances; and resolves that, notwithstanding its decision of 3rd July, hon. Members should no longer be able to claim reimbursement for furniture and household goods with effect from 1st April 2009.
*In the debate I said… *
"Some hon. Members may wonder why, two weeks after a debate on MPs’ expenses and allowances, we have brought forward another motion on the subject. Two weeks ago, the Commons had the opportunity to put its house in order, to clear its name and to go some way to restoring public confidence in Parliament as a body and hon. Members as individuals. It failed to do so. Members voted to keep the John Lewis list and rejected a system of external auditing. The newspapers, which had welcomed the report from the Members Estimate Committee, were accordingly negative about the vote taken by this House. ….. We should not be driven by the media, but we should listen to the views of our constituents. It is incumbent on every Member to understand the depth of feeling on the issue outside the House. The result of the vote on the MEC report has compounded a general lack of respect for politicians.
We believe that the matter is so important that we should not let it rest after the vote on 3 July. I hope that the House will show that, having reflected on its decision on that day, it is now willing to move forward and make the changes needed to restore public confidence. In short, we need to show not only that we recognise the depths to which we have sunk in the public mind, but that we accept our responsibility to do something about it.
…..We are honourable Members, but our failure to recognise the concern outside the House about our processes and that people expect us to adopt the best practice shown in the private and public sectors, has led to cynicism and, I believe, damage to the reputation of the House, and we need to address that. That is why we have chosen today to show leadership on this issue, to debate the motion to show that Members of Parliament take this seriously and that we are willing to clean up our acts and be deserving of the office that we are privileged enough to hold.
…..We have an opportunity today to make good some of the damage done by the vote of 3 July and to show the public that we are deserving of our office and their votes, and that we did not enter the House to take advantage of the taxpayer. We understand the privileges and responsibilities of being a Member of Parliament. We are willing to place on ourselves the same sort of requirements for transparency and the checking of our expenses and allowances that we expect other people to place upon themselves. We should not consider that we are different simply because we are Members of Parliament. We should be willing to adopt the same sort of practices that are best practice in the public and private sector elsewhere."

I hope that in any future reference to this issue you correctly reflect the facts.

Theresa May

We posted a detailed refutation of her case on our website, and replied to her (also copying the editor of the Advertiser) on 10 April with a potted version as follows:

Dear Theresa,

You spoke about the M.Ps expenses issue on 3rd July 2008 in the House, but you spoke after the expenses row had broken because of the Information Tribunal's decision in February 2008 . By July that year, all M.Ps were scrambling to cover their tracks. No wonder you were trying to cover your tracks because you were on the committees which administered M.P's expenses as a member of the Members Estimate Committee and Chair of the Members Estimate Audit Committee in the years leading up to the scandal.

To avoid the damage to the reputation of parliament, the rules needed to be tightened properly before the scandal broke, rather than waiting until after it broke and then joining the chorus of self-flagellation. But, if the committees discussed this issue, they made little mention of it in the minutes and annual reports before 2008, which are spectacularly anodyne. And whatever was said and not recorded behind closed doors, there is little evidence of these committees publicly proposing and promoting the fundamental change of which they all rapidly became advocates from Spring 2008.

There is a paper dated December 2007, which was attached to the 3rd Annual Report of the MEC, released in June 2008. (http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmmemest/578/57815.htm) You may well have been privately discussing more radical action in Dec 2007 after it became inevitable that something would emerge after the Information Commissioner's decision in June 2007, but neither your concerns, nor the committee's concerns were revealed to the public until after the scandal had broken in 2008. Then it was too late to minimise the reputational damage, which has brought Parliament into contempt by the public.

Clearly the committees should have effected a change in the rules in 2006 and 2007 or brought the public's attention to the potential for abuse by M.Ps of their position of trust which the public gave them when they elected them. If the committees and M.Ps would not be honest about the position, you should have resigned from the committees and in my view drawn the public's attention to the abuse that M.Ps could make of the expenses system, if necessary by resigning your seat and standing in a by election, as your honourable colleague Mr Davis did, over a point of principle.

We have made no suggestion that you knew about how individual members were manipulating the system. However you were responsible for monitoring and auditing the system, and should have been aware of the systemic weaknesses, and spoken out against them before 2008. For instance, someone with more courage would have made the argument that too much reliance was being placed on expenses as a substitute for adequate pay increases for MPs.

The expenses issue is an example of why you should not represent this, or any, seat and helps explain one of the reasons why I am standing against you. We need people in Parliament, strong and honest enough to challenge the accepted establishment way that we conduct the government of this country. We need people who accept the responsibility to stand against abuse of systems, however uncomfortable it is for them to do so. Your role in the M.Ps expenses abuse scandal, where you were in a position of authority and responsibility in advance of the abuse, exactly demonstrates that you are not prepared,  for instance, to stand against abuse of the system even by M.Ps, or to think ahead to the consequences of the abuse being revealed. In my view, your performance in this affair has been defective and demonstrates that you put your own political career in the Conservative Party ahead of your proper conduct as an M.P. You have contributed to the weakening of the effectiveness of those Committees in maintaining high standards of governance in this country. Your role in the M.Ps expenses affair demonstrates that you are not a suitable person to be elected by this constituency to help take the Parliament of this country out of the discredited mire that compliance with establishment routine has reduced it, and on to an honest plane where plain talking and standing by principles, is paramount.

Nevertheless, without further reply to us, the following letter appeared in the 15 April Advertiser:

In the April 1 edition of the Advertiser the Freedom and Responsibility party placed an advert, the implication of which was that as a member of the Members Estimates Committee of the House of Commons I had failed to say anything when the rules on MPs' expenses needed to be tightened.

This is factually wrong. Not only did I make a number of public statements on the media about the need to change expenses system but I also spoke on the need for change in the House of Commons.

On July 3, 2008 - a year before the Daily Telegraph's revelations about MPs' expenses - I spoke in favour of the Members' Estimates Committee report which proposed significant change to the expenses system. The report said 'we must introduce a robust system of scrutiny for parliamentary allowances as a matter of urgency in order to build public confidence'.

In the debate I said '...we have been seriously out of touch and careless of our duty to taxpayers... We need to show taxpayers that we have understood the depth of people’s concerns and have been willing to respond, to get a grip on the problem and to sort it out'. Sadly at that time the House of Commons rejected change.

On July 16, 2008 I moved a motion in the name of the Opposition, which among other things would have lef to the publication of claims made broken down by type, the abolition of the right of MPs to claim for furniture and household goods and the introduction of appropriate auditing of the use of expenses and allowances.

In that debate I said 'It is incumbent on every Member to understand the depth of feeling on the issue outside the House... we need to show not only that we recognise the depths to which we have sunk in the public mind, but that we accept our responsibility to do something about it... We have an opportunity... to show the public that we are deserving of our office and their votes, and that we did not enter the House to take advantage of the taxpayer... we are willing to place on ourselves the same sort of requirements for transparency and the checking of our expenses and allowances that we expect other people to place upon themselves. We should not consider that we are different simply because we are Members of Parliament'.

Again sadly the House of Commons rejected change at that time.

I welcome the recent introduction of a new independent system of dealing with MPs' expenses and the tightening up of the rules, but I am also clear that the House should have been willing to act earlier.

The Advertiser, to whose editor we had copied our reply to her of 10 April, chose to publish her letter in full, and not to indicate that we had pointed out the fundamental flaw in her argument. We can reply in the next edition, but (by unsurprising coincidence) we were also attacked on a totally disreputable basis by a Conservative councillor on another issue, and will have to give priority to any space allotted to us in the Advertiser to our reply to that issue. As our reply on this issue has already been with her, with the Advertiser, and available publicly for over a week, we will limit ourselves to what we hope will be a sufficiently short reply that the Advertiser may publish it along with the reply to the other issue:

Mrs May is factually wrong, not us. She seems to think that the time to tighten the rules on expenses was 2008, after the scandal had broken [see Guardian timeline and our earlier reply]. We think it was 2006 and 2007, before the reputation of parliament had been wrecked. We provided full details to Mrs May on 10th April, long before your publication deadline. As usual with modern politicians and difficult problems, she chose to ignore them and (at the time of writing) has still failed to address these points.

If people would like to know the detail, they can find it at freeresp.org.uk/expenses, or write to us and we will be happy to send the information.