UKIPSW

Someone please tell me that I've got it horribly wrong and UKIP MP Bob Spink didn't vote with Labour MP's to keep the 'John Lewis' List.

politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Will the 172 “John Lewis” listers pay an electoral price?

Hansard - Commons | Houses of Parliament

Anthony Butcher

It appears that you are correct. Perhaps he felt that the problem isn't the expense system, it is the people who abuse it?

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gimlet

This appears to be another strange/damaging vote by UKIPs MP. How would he vote, if a vote to repeal the EEC act was put forward? - I am not confident based on his passed UKIP voting record that he would vote to withdraw.

LONDON (Reuters) - Members of Parliament threw out proposals to reform their expenses on Thursday and voted to retain the so-called "John Lewis list" of housing allowances.

They also rejected plans for independent spot checks on the amounts of expenses they claimed.

The surprise move undermines attempts to modernise expenses practices in the House of Commons.

The rejected proposals were among recommendations by a special Commons committee which had sought to draw a line under recent controversy over allowances.

The vote means that MPs will be able to continue charging up to 24,000 pounds a year for the "additional costs" of running a second home away from their constituency so that they can attend Parliament.

more at: MPs vote to keep John Lewis list expenses | UK | Reuters

gimlet

To confuse the issue, I see that Hansard has Spink Bob, listed in both the Ayes and Noes!

Millennium3

I enjoyed this from the Telegraph:

Sketch: The parliamentary sweat shop
By Andrew Gimson
Last Updated: 12:38AM BST 04/07/2008

It is always rather horrifying to stumble upon an inner-city sweat shop, but this was the grim sight which met our eyes on entering the Chamber for the debate on MPs' pay.

Here we found grown men and women toiling for 70 or 80 hours a week, yet earning a paltry £60,277 a year.

As Sir Patrick Cormack (C, South Staffordshire) pointed out: "There are people in the catering department who earn more."

David Maclean (C, Penrith and the Border) described some of the barbarities to which he has been exposed during his 25 years in the Commons – "I have taken pay freezes, pay deferrals, pay cuts" – and said it was time to end this injustice once and for all. It would not take very much to alleviate Mr Maclean's financial position: "A basic salary of about £75,000 is about right."

But what does Gordon Brown propose to do about this pocket of inner-city deprivation, so shaming to a civilised society? Mr Brown was not in the Chamber, so it fell to Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House, to convey the Prime Minister's ruthless decision that MPs should get a mere 1.9 per cent more, in order to remain "consistent with the Government's pay policy".

Miss Harman tried to deflect blame from Mr Brown by attaching it instead to the media, which she accused of "misleading and often malicious" reporting on MPs' pay: "You don't hear about it in the media, but over the last five years our pay has fallen behind."

For a moment we bridled under Miss Harman's onslaught, but on reflection we can see it is too easy to place the whole blame for MPs' poverty on Mr Brown. The uncomfortable truth is that we have from time to time urged that MPs should regard the privilege of making our laws as a reward in itself, and should take no pay at all.

The nearest anyone got to expressing this view in the Chamber was when Don Touhig (Lab, Islwyn) remarked that MPs' constituents "wouldn't give us a penny if they had their way".

But Mr Touhig said this with a laugh, in order to show that he knew such a democratic course of action was quite out of the question, and he himself led the campaign for a far more substantial rise, albeit with the main increase coming only in April 2009.

Mr Touhig had the cheek to warn Mr Brown and Miss Harman about their choice of clothes: "However impressive it may look to put on hair shirts now … in the long run it's simply stirring up trouble."

Mr Brown appeared in an ordinary white shirt for a two-and-a-half-hour session before the Liaison Committee of MPs. If anything could persuade us that MPs deserve higher pay, it is the reflection that they have to sit through this kind of thing.

The Prime Minister ground his way through the session, as hard and unyielding as a millstone, disclosing nothing but his mastery of evasive and intransigent formulae.

His refusal to take the nation into his confidence has turned him into a crashing bore, and even Labour MPs no longer treat him with the respect or fear they once accorded him. To them he must seem more and more like a millstone tied round their necks.

And yet Mr Brown got his way on MPs' pay, for our legislators are frightened of pushing their luck.

Peter Bottomley (C, Worthing West) challenged the idea that MPs are "too weak and feeble to sort out our own pay", and said they should take no pay rises between elections and made the ingenious suggestion that parliamentary candidates should put on the ballot paper what rate of pay they would accept if elected.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...weat-shop.html

Rosie

The problem is that UKIP, or 'the leadership', are so desperate for somebody with a profile they do not care whether they have principles or not, look at Kilroy Silk. It should be no surprise that Bob Spink has now voted twice against things surely fundamental to UKIP.

Bob FM

I do think Ann Widdecombe had a point they were dammed either way. So we still don't actually know how Spink voted, if Hansard doesn't.

gremlin in the works

i smell a mole my self i dont trust him

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michaelwilcox

I remember looking back at Spink's voting patterns on the TheyWorkForYou website when he first came over to the party. Voting on both sides is something that he has done on numerous occasions in the past, and I believe that it has something to do with either an attempt to visibly abstain or to correct a misplaced vote.

See this page for reference Voted both aye and no — The Public Whip

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Jim Smith

Bob Spink was unable to follow the party line, so he voted both ways.

Another MP with his snout in the trough.