After ‘The Telegraph’ revealed that details of payments to those connected to MPs were briefly leaked on Thursday, we join calls for the way politicians and their leech-like families are renumerated to be changed
In 2009, The Telegraph did a sterling job in exposing the greed of MPs and this morning, the paper’s deputy political editor Steven Swinford highlighted that the nepotism of those elected to Westminster continues. In revelations published Saturday, details of payments to members’ family were supposedly leaked for four hours on Thursday night on the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority’s website and remained there until a Conservative MP named Karl McCartney complained about the breach.
On Saturday, The Telegraph reported: “MPs who saw the data on Thursday night [suggested] that the data had the potential to be ‘hugely embarrassing’ for MPs who employ their wives, children and other ‘connected parties’” and added: “There are concerns that the data could have easily been downloaded and could eventually be made public”.
Though IPSA removed the information relatively quickly, the mere fact that it was deemed worthy of mention in a national newspaper proves once again that Westminster is still a murky hotbed of dodginess. The way in which self-serving politicians are allowed to claim expenses must change and though MPs will be rightly banned from hiring their children and spouses after the next election, that is not enough. It is time to “drain the swamp of Westminster” and it is time to root out corruption in British politics.