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Brown seeks more transparency in MPs' expenses
Gordon Brown wants greater transparency over MPs' expenses, his spokesman said on Thursday, a move now seen as inevitable after a Conservative MP was found to have paid his son taxpayers' money for work he never did.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:52 February 1, 2008
London: Gordon Brown wants greater transparency over MPs' expenses, his spokesman said on Thursday, a move now seen as inevitable after a Conservative MP was found to have paid his son taxpayers' money for work he never did.
Derek Conway, 54, was later yesterday set to face a Commons vote that almost certainly would suspend him for 10 days.
He could also face a police investigation after it was disclosed he paid his son almost £50,000 (Dh370,000) of public money to work as a research assistant while he was a full-time student away at university.
"The prime minister agrees ... there should be greater transparency on MPs' expenses," Brown's spokesman told reporters. "How this is achieved is up to the House [of Commons] and other relevant authorities to decide."
MPs are allowed to employ relatives and some pay their wives or husbands to work as secretaries, saying it can help marriages to survive long hours or living apart.
But they now fear they will be stopped from employing family members after Conway so blatantly abused the system.
Frederick Conway, 22, a Newcastle University geography student, was paid almost £12,000 (Dh88,800) a year, plus bonuses, for almost three years from Conway's publicly funded allowance. The Commons standards committee found the son had done little or no work and recommended the MP be suspended from parliament for 10 days and repay more than £13,000.
MPs will vote on that recommendation and are widely expected to approve it. Leaked documents also show Conway's elder son, Henry, 25, had been paid more than 32,000 pounds in parliamentary allowances and bonuses between 2001 and 2004 when he too was an undergraduate.
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