Much To Be Modest About

I enjoyed an article in the latest edition of Private Eye - which poked fun at the shameless behaviour of Westminster MPS on the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Now I'm all in favour of giving the great and good a hard time - where appropriate - because people in the public eye should be held to account for their actions.

But the sight of MPs trying to speak from the moral high ground is enough to make you laugh out loud - especially where people like Keith Vaz are concerned.  

So here's what the Eye had to say.

Han-z-z-zard

Select Committee for Media, Publicity and Self-Promotion

Keith Vaz (Hinduja West, Lab) 
We have the huge pleasure today of welcoming to our committee Mr Nick Buckles, the chief executive of G4S, so that we can demonstrate just how clever we are and, incidentally, guarantee extensive coverage of ourselves on tinight's TV news.

All: Hear, hear.

Enter bespectacled man in suit with silly haircut, looking rather worried.

Vaz: I will ask my honoured colleague, David winnick, to begin the humiliation of our witness.

David Winnick: (Bordering-on-Insufferable, Lab) 
Mr Buckles, would you describe your company's performance as the most shambolic, inept, outrageous, shocking, useless example  of incompetence ever seen in the history of the world?

Mr Buckles: That's probably a fair description of it. I'm very sorry.

Winnick: Answer yes or no, Mr Buckles.

Vaz: The witness wil answer the question. Are you a totally incompetent idiot or not?

All: Answer, answer.

Buckles: Yes, if you say so.
Ms Lorraine Fullbrook (Total, Con):

That's simply not good enough. Are you guilty or not gulity? That's what the entire nation wnats to know.

Buckles: Guilty.

Vaz: How dare you come here and admit that you got it all wrong - thus deliberately depriving this Committeee of the chance to set new Olympic records for self-righteousness.

Buckles: I can only apologise for my previous apology.

Vaz: Well now we're forced that humiliating apology out of you, Mr Buckles, I think we've done enough to get star billing on Mr Jon Snow's admirable Chanell 4 News at the very least. So, sadly, there won't be any time for our Committee to interview any further witnesses in an effort to find out which of our fellow politicians were responsible for this ludicrous contract to your firm, and why they only noticed yesterday that your form had been cocking the whole thing up for the last five years.

Much to be Modest About (13 July 2011)

I watched most of the yesterday's TV coverage from Westminster - where a House of Commons Committee questioned a variety of police officers over the phone hacking scandal.

Inquisitor-in-chief was the committee chairmperson - Keith Vaz - a former Labour minister and long-serving MP for Leicester East.

Now it seemed to me that Mr Vaz took great pleasure in being rude to some of the witnesses - even if one one of them (Andy Hayman) was his own worst enemy.

In any event, I was struck by the arrogance of the Leicester MP - a man who has much to be modest about, as they say.

So I looked up what the Telegraph had to say about his record on MPs' expenses - and here's the newspaper's report from 9 May 2009.

"Keith Vaz: £75,000 for a flat 12 miles from home"

"Keith Vaz, the senior Labour backbencher, claimed more than £75,500 in expenses for a flat in Westminster despite his family home being a £1.15 million house just 12 miles from parliament.

Mr Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, also switched his designated second home from the £545,000 flat to a house in his Leicester East constituency and back again in the space of a year.

Keith Vaz Mr Vaz's main home is a house in Stanmore, north-west London, that he bought with his wife Maria for £1.15 million in November 2005. They live there with their two children.

The house is less than a mile from Stanmore underground station, which takes passengers directly to Westminster on the Jubilee Line. According to Transport for London, the 14-stop journey should take about 37 minutes.

His living arrangements will leave him open to the same questions asked of Tony McNulty, the employment minister, who claimed for a house about the same distance away lived in by his parents.

Documents filed with Commons officials showed that between 2004 and April 2007, Mr Vaz claimed more than £69,000 for expenses at the flat in Westminster, which he bought in 2003. He moved in shortly after selling another for £312,000.

His claims included monthly mortgage interest payments of between £1,500 and £1,750, £200 in monthly grocery bills and £50 per month for a cleaner.

On May 1, 2007, shortly after claiming for the flat's £2,073 service charge and £1,022 council tax bill, he began renting it out and designated the Leicester property as his second home. He had no mortgage on it and so used his allowances to fit it with furniture.

In all, Mr Vaz made claims of about £16,000 relating to the house, including more than £480 on 22 cushions, most of them silk, from John Lewis.

He claimed £2,614 for a pair of John Lewis leather armchairs and an accompanying foot stool; £1,000 on a dining table and leather chairs; £750 on carpets; and £150 on a lamp and lampshade.

Commons guidelines said MPs should "avoid purchases which could be seen as extravagant or luxurious".

Throughout the year, Mr Vaz also regularly made monthly claims of exactly £200 for repairs, £200 for service or maintenance and £200 per month for a cleaner. At the time, MPs did not need to submit receipts for claims totalling less than £250.

Mr Vaz also claimed twice for his food, utilities and cleaning bills in June 2007. He later repaid the money after the fees office pointed out his error.

In May 2008, Mr Vaz ceased renting out the London flat, reverted to designating it as his second home and resumed claiming the interest on its mortgage. In the first two months of the last financial year, he claimed a further £6,567 on the flat.

Mr Vaz's claims highlighted the ability of MPs to switch the property they designated as their second home for expenses purposes whenever they liked, simply by notifying the Commons fees office.

A spokesman for Mr Vaz said: "Stanmore is not central London. Like many MPs, he has a flat in central London that is close to the House of Commons."

She added that Mr Vaz had changed the designation of his second home "for personal reasons", and that his London flat "was not available for his use between May 2007 and May 2008". "Mr Vaz's claims have always been in accordance with the spirit and rules of the Green Book," she said. "If they were not within the rules the claims would not have been paid."

Job: Chairman, Home Affairs Select Committee

Salary: £78,805

Total second home claims
2004-05: £20,795
2005-06: £21,271
2006-07: £22,110
2007-08: £20,787"Even More to be Modest About (15 July 2011)



I found another interesting report about Keith Vaz - Labour MP for Leicester East - and the current Chairperson of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee.

Now I'm all in favour of tough questioning - but sometimes it's important to know where the people firing all the bullets - are coming from.

The report dated 8 February 2002 is from the BBC's web site - and as I recall MPs went on to force the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner (Elizabeth Filkin) out of her job - because she was widely regarded as giving them too tough a time.

Just a pity she didn't hang around - in my view - because with Elizabeth Filkin in post we might have avoided the worst of the MPs' expenses scandal.

"Keith Vaz was elected MP for Leicester East in 1987, and became the first Asian minister in the Commons in 1999. But his recent career has been dogged by accusations of financial wrongdoing.

February 2000: Parliamentary standards watchdog Elizabeth Filkin is asked to investigate allegations of undisclosed payments to Mr Vaz from businessmen in his constituency.

25 January 2001: Opposition MPs begin to question the role the minister for Europe may have played in helping the billionaire Indian Hinduja brothers - linked with a corruption probe in India - to secure UK passports.

26 January 2001: Prime Minister Tony Blair backs Mr Vaz on the Hinduja affair, saying he does not believe he has done anything wrong.

4 February 2001: Allegations in Sunday newspapers of financial irregularities in the funds of Mr Vaz's local Leicestershire East Labour Party.

Opposition MPs call for him to resign, but he is supported by several government ministers.

12 March 2001: The Filkin report clears him of nine of 18 allegations of various financial wrongdoings.

But he is criticised for blocking her investigation into eight of the allegations. And he is censured for one allegation - failing to register two payments worth £450 in total from Sarosh Zaiwalla, a solicitor whom he recommended for an honour several years later.

14 March 2001: William Hague, the then Conservative leader, calls on Mr Blair to sack Mr Vaz.

21 March 2001: Mrs Filkin announces a new inquiry, focusing on whether or not a company connected to Mr Vaz received a donation from a charitable foundation run by the Hinduja brothers.

29 March 2001: Mr Vaz collapses while filming a television interview, and goes on extended sick leave.

5 June 2001: A BBC investigation suggests Mr Vaz did not disclose all his property interests to Mrs Filkin's previous inquiry.

11 June 2001: Mrs Filkin says she is widening her Vaz-Hinduja inquiry to cover the disclosure of property interests.

12 June 2001: Mr Vaz resigns and is replaced as Minister for Europe in the post-General Election reshuffle.

8 February 2002: The second Filkin inquiry rules Mr Vaz should be suspended for one month for "serious breaches" of the MPs' code of conduct, and a contempt of the House of Commons."