It has been a vintage year for sham apologies.
But what does one make of the latest case to emerge from the Commons’ Standards and Privileges Committee: a 74 page report on Tony McNulty? He was minister of state (one below cabinet rank) at the Dept for Work and Pensions until he resigned in June due to difficulties with his expenses.
He bought a house in his Harrow East constituency for his parents in 1998 for £135k (with a 95% mortgage). His own home was elsewhere in London, but he stayed in the Harrow house for around 60 nights a year. Between 2002 and 2008 he claimed about £75k in Additional Cost Allowance (ACA) for the Harrow house, mainly mortgage interest.
Following an article in the Mail on Sunday in March 2009, another MP complained to the Standards Commissioner, John Lyon. He concluded that McNulty was within the rules in claiming ACA for the Harrow house. However, the Green Book (specifically the 2006 Green Book, page 10, top left) also provided that the allowance had to be “wholly [and] exclusively … incurred … for the purpose of performing Parliamentary duties. This excludes expenses that have been incurred for purely personal … purposes.” The Green Book (later on the same page) also provided that: “You must avoid any arrangement which may give rise to an accusation that you are, or someone close to you is, obtaining an immediate benefit or subsidy from public funds”.
Lyon concluded that McNulty was in breach of these provisions. The difficulty was that he had discussed the situation with the Fees Office who had approved the arrangement. But Lyon concluded that the Fees Office had been wrong and that “As a result, in my judgement, Mr McNulty and his parents obtained a benefit from parliamentary funds to which he was not entitled, and he left himself open to this complaint being made. In that respect, I uphold this complaint.” He made no finding of the size of the improper benefit.
The Standards Committee required McNulty to pay back £13,800 and apologize to the Commons. This he duly did:
I accept the report’s conclusions in full, including the requirement to repay, with no complaint and apologize without reservation to the House. I should have been much clearer about my arrangements and taken steps to ensure that I was not open to any charge of benefit, and should have had much more concern for how these rules were perceived by the public, rather than just following them … It is, however, time to move on.
Notice that he keeps well away from the concept that he had claimed amounts which were not “wholly and exclusively for performing Parliamentary duties” and instead talks about “how the rules were perceived by the public”. So already there is a clear hint of ‘I did nothing wrong, but I should have avoided giving the (false) impression that I did’. This was substantially strengthened when he was interviewed by Martha Kearney on the World At One (on BBC Radio 4) just after 1pm yesterday.
TM: It’s a bit more complicated than that … the Commissioner says that within the advice and rules that pertained at the time, I was within the rules. What he has done … is retrospectively change part of that advice which goes to … mortgage interest …
MK: The Rules say that you must avoid any arrangement which may give rise to an accusation that you or someone close to you is obtaining an immediate benefit or subsidy from public funds, and that is what happened isn’t it? Your parents received that benefit.
TM: That is what happened, if you accept as I do the retrospective nature of what the Commissioner has done. I think that is a bit unfair.
MK: No, that is a Green Book rule from the time. You’re an MP, you signed up to those rules. That was the rule at the time.
TM: Yes, but the advice from the Fees Office … was that mortgage interest was a fixed element regardless of who occupied. And in that context the Commissioner says himself I abated all other costs to reflect any appearance of benefit and was perfectly in order … I did seek advice from the Fees Office very very clearly in 1988-9 at the start of all this process … and he accepts and the Committee accepts that I did seek that advice and, more than that, he accepts and the Committee accepts that if I went back for further advice it would have been the same advice that I was given in the first place… They were very clear that the advice that I followed was accurate advice. All he’s done … is say that he thought that advice was too narrow. “
I enjoyed the refrain of “he and the Committee accepts” repeated in a rising crescendo. Slightly spoilt by the fact that the advice he chose to follow was far from accurate.
Although he has a gruff manner, McNulty is far from stupid – unlike Bob Ainsworth, who tends to get away with things because people feel he is doing his (inadequate) best. So it is hard not to believe that he was well aware at the time that the claims were improper, and well aware now that he is not the innocent victim of a retrospective change in the rules.
Indeed, I rather liked Simon Hoggart’s comment in the Guardian today:
I wonder how it would work in the world the rest of us inhabit. “When I took your wallet out of your jacket, and removed £40 while you were in the toilet, I was making an informal arrangement for a loan which I had every intention of repaying. The fact that I did not inform you at the time was careless, and I make a full apology for this slip …”
The analogy is somewhat loose, but I think the basic idea is correct. It will be interesting to see if any of the more egregious cases end up in criminal convictions.
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