MPs are now forced to publish their expenses – so why aren’t MEPs?
23 May 2008
Press release - updated on 12/06/08
MPs are now forced to publish their expenses – so why aren’t MEPs?
On the day that MPs in Westminster finally revealed how they spend their expenses Open Europe called for the same rules to apply to MEPs.
Ironically, yesterday the leaders of the political parties in the European Parliament decided in a behind-closed-doors meeting to abandon plans to introduce even basic rules on financial transparency into the Parliament.
Today Open Europe has published the results of its Transparency Initiative on MEPs’ staff allowances. For the past two months Open Europe has repeatedly asked UK MEPs to answer six simple - and completely uncontroversial - questions about how they spend their staff allowances, and whether they are properly accounted for.
Shockingly, only 25 out of 79 UK MEPs were prepared to provide full answers. 12 MEPs replied, but gave only partial answers, while 41 simply refused to answer the questions.
Our conversations with MEPs about why they were refusing to answer revealed that many have a strong sense of entitlement, but almost no sense of accountability for how they spend taxpayers’ money:
Veteran Conservative MEP Christopher Beazley said, “I would have to question the legality of these questions. What right do you have to ask these?” He argued that MEPs' taxpayer funded expense claims were not "a public matter", that it was "private". Ironically, he also insisted that, "everything I do is as transparent as possible”.
Lib Dem MEP Bill Newton-Dunn accused us of "muck-raking", and of being “biased".
Labour MEP Richard Corbett's office claimed that Open Europe was "not interested" in transparency and that we were just "nut cracking".
Conservative MEP Malcolm Harbour also accused us of "muck-raking" and threatened: “If you value your relationship with the Conservative Party I would recommend that you think very carefully about continuing with this... I regard the whole exercise as completely unnecessary.”
The full list of MEPs who refused to respond and those who did respond is below.
Open Europe Director Neil O’Brien said:
“MPs in Westminster now have to publish their expenses. But members of the European Parliament, where problems with corruption are far more severe, are allowed to run their expenses in an outrageous and completely untransparent way.
“MEPs should have to produce receipts for every single bit of their expenses. No one in a normal job can get away with claiming money for nothing. Secondly, they must not be allowed to sign off their own accounts. Everything they claim, what they spend it on, everyone they employ - should all be available on the internet for us to see. After all, despite what some MEPs seem to think, it is our money, not theirs.”
The Transparency Initiative - background
In recent months there have been a series of scandals about the abuse of expenses in the European Parliament.
EU auditors prepared a damning report on the mis-use of Parliament staffing allowances. But the report, which did not name any MEPs anyway, was not published and could only be viewed in a special secure room. On 5 March campaigning anti-corruption MEP Paul Van Buitenen broke the Parliament’s secrecy rules and published a short summary of the report on his website. The report notes that MEPs were paying the funds into their own companies, and in one case an MEP was claiming £130,000 for staff while employing no-one.
However, on 22 April MEPs voted against publishing the report. Chris Davies, a Liberal Democrat MEP, commented that “Far from cleaning up their act, a majority of MEPs seem intent on allowing greed and self-interest to triumph over the proper financial management of public money".
In March, Open Europe sent a survey to all UK MEPs, asking basic questions about whether their staffing allowance was being handled in an independent and reputable way.
The questionnaire, and the answers to the questions, can be found at
http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/eptransparency.xls
THE MEPS WHO HAVE NOT ANSWERED
Conservative:
Sir Robert Atkins, Christopher Beazely, John Bowis, Den Dover, James Elles, Malcolm Harbour, Caroline Jackson, Timothy Kirkhope, John Purvis, Struan Stevenson, Robert Sturdy
Labour
Michael Cashman, Richard Corbett, Neena Gill, Richard Howitt, Stephen Hughes, Glenys Kinnock, Linda MacAvan, Eluned Morgan, Brian Simpson, Peter Skinner, Catherine Stihler, Gary Titley, Glenis Willmot
Liberal Democrat
Elspeth Attwooll, Andrew Duff, Fiona Hall, Sarah Ludford, Liz Lynne, Bill Newton-Dunn, Emma Nicholson, Diana Wallis
Non attached and Nationalist parties
Robert Kilroy-Silk, Jill Evans, Bairbre de Brun, Ian Hudghton, Alan Smith, Jim Nicholson
UKIP
Roger Knapman, Mike Natrass
MEPS WHO ANSWERED IN FULL
Conservative:
Richard Ashworth, Martin Callanan, Nirj Deva, Jonathan Evans, Dan Hannan, Chris Heaton-Harris, Syed Kamall, Sajjad Karim, Neil Parish, Charles Tannock, Geoffrey van Orden
Green:
Jean Lambert, Caroline Lucas
Labour:
Robert Evans, Mary Honeyball, Claude Moraes
Liberal Democrat
Sharon Bowles, Chris Davies, Graham Watson
UKIP
Nigel Farage, Derek Clarke, Godfrey Bloom, Jeffrey Titford, John Whittaker
Non-attached
Jim Allister
Notes for Editors
1) For more information please contact Neil O’Brien on 07973 142775