1230 Hrs GMT London Sunday 22 March 2009.
KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! As we note evidence of “Crossrail scam” preparation-stage Transport Minister [2004-2005] Tony McNulty in the ‘expenses’ news! Now “Crossrail hole/s attacks on the East End of London”-inviter Tower Hamlets Council’s ‘Chief Executive’ [until 2006] Christine Gilbert is featured in the Tony McNulty expenses claims news..
.[To be continued]
From the MAIL ON SUNDAY web site:
Minister's £60,000 expenses for parents' home: 'Rumbled' Tony McNulty drops claim... then calls for it to be curtailed
By SIMON WALTERS and GLEN OWEN
Last updated at 12:33 PM on 22nd March 2009
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Sudden U-turn: Tony McNulty has stopped claiming the second-home allowance
Another Labour Minister has been caught out in an expenses scandal after effectively admitting he had been wrong to claim £60,000 of taxpayers' money for a property which is his parents' main home - not his.
Employment Minister Tony McNulty performed a dramatic U-turn and announced he had stopped claiming the controversial MPs' second-home allowance after being challenged by The Mail on Sunday.
Even more astonishingly, he said that 133 MPs who, like him, live within 60 miles of Westminster should be banned from getting the £24,000-a-year handout.
Mr McNulty and his wife, chief schools inspector Christine Gilbert, have a combined annual income of a third of a million pounds and between them own two London homes worth £1.2million.
They live together in a house she owns just three miles from Westminster. Yet he has been claiming up to £14,000 a year in parliamentary expenses to help pay for the second house in Harrow where his parents live, 11 miles from the Commons.
The MP has been able to obtain the money because the house he owns is in his Harrow constituency and so qualifies him for the secondhome allowance. Initially, when Mr McNulty was approached by this newspaper on Friday he pointed out: 'It is all within the rules.'
But later, he changed his tune. When it was put to him, 'Do you accept it all looks very odd?', he replied: 'I do.'
He then compared his own unconvincing defence with that made by Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials, who said they were 'only obeying orders'.
Harrow: Mr McNulty has claimed at least £60,000 on this suburban home in which his parents James and Eileen live
Hammersmith: McNulty's wife Christine owns this home, where they both live
'It's not against the rules - though I suppose you might say that is the Nuremberg defence,' he observed.
He then suddenly announced that he had decided to stop claiming the allowance, which he has benefited from ever since becoming an MP in 1997. He said he had 'reflected' on the issue and stopped claiming the grant, officially called the Additional Costs Allowance (ACA), in January.
Asked if he had informed anyone in authority of his decision, either at the Commons or in the Labour Party, he replied: 'No, no one.'
The only person he had told was his wife, he said. He was adamant that it was not a spur-of-the-moment decision forced on him by this newspaper's investigation.
As if to emphasise how much he regretted his actions, Mr McNulty, who is also Minister for London and tipped to run against Boris Johnson for London Mayor in 2012, made an impromptu call for a major purge of MPs' expenses.
He said those who live within 60 miles of the capital should be forced to commute every day like any other worker, and lose their second-home allowance. Currently 159 MPs live within that radius. Twenty-six Inner London MPs already cannot claim the ACA - worth up to £24,000 a year - and of the remaining 133, 107 do claim. Mr McNulty's proposal could save taxpayers about £2million a year.
Mr McNulty said: 'There are senior Shadow frontbench figures who live five miles further away from Westminster than me who claim the lot . . .' before quickly adding: '. . . and that is entirely appropriate.'
Combined wealth: Christine Gilbert owns two London homes worth £1.2m with husband McNulty
His plan received a mixed response from Labour MPs who would be affected. Crawley MP Laura Moffatt said: 'It doesn't affect me because I don't have a second home.' Asked how she squared that with her claim of £61,457 between 2002 / 03 and 2006/07, she hung up.
Dagenham Labour MP Jon Cruddas was more positive. 'This idea should be kicked around, it's a discussion which should be had.'
Asked if he would be happy to sacrifice the £103,117 he claimed between 2002 and 2007, he said: 'If that is the agreed view of Parliament.'
But one MP who asked not to be named, said: 'Just because Tony McNulty has been rumbled does not give him the right to lecture those of us who need the money.'
It is the latest in a series of rows over MPs' expenses. Earlier this year, The Mail on Sunday revealed how Home Secretary Jacqui Smith claims £20,000-a-year expenses by arguing her London 'digs' at a house owned by her sister is her main home, not the substantial house in her Midlands constituency where she lives with her husband and young children.
Until October, Mr McNulty was Ms Smith's deputy at the Home Office. He denied his change of heart had anything to do with widespread condemnation of her conduct.
This is how Mr McNulty has cashed in on the ACA. Shortly after becoming Harrow East MP in 1997, he bought a house in Harrow, which is now worth an estimated £300,000.
He divorced his first wife, fellow Labour activist Gillian Travers and moved into the house with his parents, James and Eileen. By 2001, he had moved to Hammersmith to live with former headteacher Christine Gilbert. Ms Gilbert, also a divorcee, had bought thehouse - now worth about £900,000 --in 1994.
The couple married in September 2002. On their wedding certificate, both gave their address as the Hammersmith house, although in a Commons debate on data protection in 2005, Mr McNulty appeared to suggest his main home was in Harrow.
'I have no copyright on "Tony McNulty".' he said. 'I have no copyright on November 3, 1958 [his birthday]. I have no copyright on . . . [he then gave the Harrow address].'
In addition, he is on the electoral register in Harrow, not Hammersmith, where his wife is registered.
MPs can claim ACA on the mortgage interest payments on a second home - which means those members who have paid off their mortgage can receive nothing.
According to Land Registry documents, Ms Gilbert did not have a mortgage on the property when they moved in together, but Mr McNulty disputed this and insisted Ms Gilbert did have a mortgage at the time.
However, after they set up home together, both took out mortgages on their respective homes. Land Registry records show Ms Gilbert took out a loan on the Hammersmith property with the Bank of Scotland later in 2001, while Mr McNulty took out a fresh loan on his Harrow house with the same bank in 2003.
Mr McNulty said he used the loan to 'pay off some debts'. His wife had used hers to buy a maisonette beneath the Hammersmith home to make it bigger. Around the same time, Mr McNulty's second-home expenses nearly doubled - from £7,400 in 2001 to £14,000 in 2002.
Mr McNulty confirmed his wife is still the sole owner of the home, but he pays half the cost of her mortgage.
The weakness of Mr McNulty's second-home allowance is laid bare by a 'golden triangle of expenses' map which shows how close they are to each other - nine miles - and to the Commons. The Hammersmith home is nine London Underground stops fromWestminster, the Harrow house just eight stops from the Commons.
Enlarge
Scandal after scandal: How The Mail On Sunday has relentlessly exposed how MPs cash in on their expenses
Since 2001/02, the first year for which figures are available, Mr McNulty has claimed a total of £59,998 in second-home allowances. In the past five years he has claimed £52,598.
Assuming he claimed a similar amount from 1997 to 2001 and in the current financial year, he is likely to have claimed up to £100,000 in second-home allowances in total.
Asked if he had told the Commons Fees Office, which pays MPs' expenses, of his decision to stop claiming the ACA, Mr McNulty said: 'I haven't
. . . I have been too busy. I was planningto do so at the end of the financial-year.' Had he told Labour Whips or Party officials? 'I'm not sure it's a matter for party officials.'
Asked what had brought about his change of heart, he said: 'I have always felt some discomfort in claiming the money, to be frank. I decided that it's simply time that I stopped --partly because mortgage interest rates have gone down and partly because I can do without it.'
Asked if he planned to pay back the money, he indicated he would not. 'It's not that I shouldn't be claiming. I just feel a lot happier in myself in trying to make sure that I am as sensible as I can be with taxpayers' money, and that is what I have done.'
He pointed out he had never claimed the maximum £24,000 a year ACA. When he became a Minister and acquired the use of a chauffeur-driven limousine, he stopped claiming for travel to and from his constituency. Nor did he claim goods for his Harrow home using the notorious 'John Lewis list', nor for the council tax there.
Mr McNulty said the Commons should consider following the lead set by Members of the Scottish Parliament. Those who live within 90 minutes of the Edinburgh Parliament, roughly 60 miles, cannot claim for a second home. But MPs have been resistant to such reforms. Last July, they threw out an independent review body's proposal to cut £10,000 from the secondhome allowance for Outer London MPs such as Mr McNulty.
The Commons 'Green Book' which sets out the rules on expenses makes it clear that ACA claims must be 'above reproach' and that MPs 'must avoid any arrangement which may give rise to an accusation that you are, or someone close to you' is benefiting from public funds.
MPs are also 'strongly advised' to avoid subletting or renting out any property on which they claim ACA.
Mr McNulty and Ms Gilbert met when he was a college lecturer and Harrow councillor and she was the council's director of education.
She became chief executive of Tower Hamlets council and was Ofsted's chief inspector three years ago, for which she earns £225,000 a year. Mr McNulty earns £104,050, and both have gold-plated pensions.
Since being elected MP for Harrow East in 1997, Mr McNulty has earned a reputation as an outspoken and popular MP. His robust defence of Labour's record has led to him being used increasingly as a Government spokesman - and yesterday on BBC Radio 4, Jonathan Dimbleby dubbed him 'the Government's flak jacket'.
Last month he admitted he could not survive on the £60.50-a-week Jobseeker's Allowance. The McNulty-Gilberts earn that much in an hour and a half.
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