Tom Richmond: Coalition may yet pay the price for expenses

I ask the question after a shattering week for the new coalition Government following the return, centre-stage, of expenses – the one issue that was supposed to have been laid to rest on polling day.

It saw the resignation of David Laws, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury – and then claims that his successor, Danny Alexander, had avoided paying capital gains tax on his property transaction.

And this was just days after Eric Illsley, Labour's veteran Barnsley MP, was charged with three counts of false accounting over expense claims totalling 20,000.

In the past decade, I've had little sympathy with those forced to resign from the Cabinet. Their fate was deserved and they could be easily replaced; their error was attempting to cling onto office when the game was clearly up.

Yet the Laws resignation, coincidentally on the day that his political acumen was highlighted by this columnist, was particularly disappointing.

Here was a man who offered a ray of hope – a man who appeared qualified to get to grips with the crippling budget deficit that was bequeathed to the country by Labour. He gave credibility to a coalition Government at a time of financial crisis.

A self-made man – he retired from the City as a millionaire at the age of 28 – one assumed, like so many, that Laws had not claimed significant expenses.

How wrong. Now it appears that he was not only claiming his second home allowance – but channelling that money to his partner, in breach of Commons rules, while trying to keep his relationship secret.

It does beg the question whether the expenses misdeeds of other Lib Dems have slipped under the radar because most of the scrutiny, last year, was on Labour and the Conservatives.

But it also prompts one to consider, unfortunately, how many other politicians are still on the make when a man as talented, and wealthy, as David Laws is prepared to risk their career for financial gain. The wealthier they are, the greater the greed appears to be.

And this scandal will also prompt taxpayers to ask – given David Cameron and Nick Clegg's own expense records – if they can really bring about "the new politics" they promised, and whether these three words will be the coalition's undoing.

For, in this regard, one more set of expenses revelations could cause fatal damage to their reform agenda – and relationship with the electorate.

They have been warned.

DAVID Ward – the new Lib Dem Bradford East MP – made an interesting point in his maiden Commons speech about the need for the Government's academy plans to raise standards for all sections of society, and not just the few.

"For many years, my wife has worked in a service providing support for travellers, gipsies, Roma, asylum seekers and refugees," he told the Commons,

"My personal test of new academies and free schools will be based not on their standing in a league table showing key stage 2 and 4 results, but on the extent to which they provide a helping hand for the clients my wife represents. We will wait and see."

He's right in this regard. It's not the structure of schools – but the quality of education that has to be the priority.

WITH so many people out of work, was it really sensible for Nick Palmer, a Labour MP from 1997 until last month, to sign on at his local job centre?

Palmer says he signed on to keep his National Insurance contributions continuous and to "explore for myself what it's like".

He spoke with an interviewer, agreed on what actions he was taking to find a job, and arranged a meeting with specialist CV consultant.

Yet this ex-Nottinghamshire MP has a PhD in maths – and a generous Commons pension. I would have thought the Jobcentre interviewer had better things to do, don't you?

DAVID Blunkett is so miffed that the new Government is abolishing ID cards – his pet project – that he's considering suing Ministers for the 30 that he spent acquiring his card.

It's enabled the former Home Secretary to travel around Europe without a passport, with the Sheffield Brightside MP safe in the knowledge that no one would correctly guess the one piece of personal information that was unique to him.

When applying for his card, Blunkett provided the name of his childhood budgerigar – Bimbo.

I DO not dispute John Prescott's desire – as an architect of the Kyoto climate change treaty – to campaign on environmental issues during his political retirement.

But I cannot see how it justifies the former Deputy Prime Minister and ex-Hull MP accepting a seat in the House of Lords, an unelected body that he has condemned over the years.

I also assume, if this is so, that he will not be claiming a penny in expenses after using his MP's allowance to lavishly renovate his Hull home.

ANOTHER political veteran joining John Prescott in the Lords will be the Reverend Ian Paisley, the former First Minister of Northern Ireland

and a long-term critic of the peace process.

Renowned for the unbending nature of his political and business views – "no surrender" was a phrase that he made his own at the height of the IRA troubles – I wonder if the ex-DUP leader will take the title Lord Paisley of Never, Never Never?

THE chaotic selection of England's World Cup team seems to have

favoured those players who were not picked for Fabio Capello's final warm-up games. It's not a strategy that inspires confidence.