Dorries cleared of expenses abuse

Member News

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has been cleared of abusing her parliamentary expenses, following a complaint from a prominent member of the BNP.

Michael Barnbrook, who at the time was a law and order spokesman for the British National Party, told the parliamentary standards commissioner, John Lyon, that in he believed MP for Mid Bedfordshire had breached the rules of the additional cost allowance by claiming second home expenses for her constituency home when it was in fact her main home.

He complained that comments she had made in the press showed that her constituency home was the one where she spent most of her time and was therefore her main home.

But a report published today the Commons standards and privileges committee agreed with the commissioner's findings that Dorries in fact spent the majority of her nights in her main home in the Cotswolds.

Dorries told the Commissioner that the Cotswolds was the place that she and her family regarded as home. The area had always been the "centre of their family life".

She told the commissioner that the constituency home was used as a "means of maintaining a base in my constituency in order to assist with my duties as an MP", a claim John Lyon accepted was correct.

He said the picture of Dorries’ pattern of use of her two homes was "broadly confirmed" by the evidence of four neighbours of her constituency house.

One constituency neighbour told the Commissioner that she "only occasionally" saw the Conservative MP or her car at the house.

While Dorries was cleared of wrongdoing, the committee did criticise her for the amount of time it took her to provide Lyon with the answers he sought.

The report said: "We agree with the commissioner that fourteen weeks was too long to provide initial estimates of the number of nights Ms Dorries spent at each home. We also note that it took Ms Dorries some time to resolve conflicts and lack of clarity in the answers she provided."

The committee also criticised her for comments made on her blog that implied she spent the majority of weekends in her constituency, when she had told the Commissioner that nearly all weekends were spent in her main home.

Dorries told the commissioner that her website contained fiction and "poetic licence" as well as fact, and that she used it to reassure her constituents of her absolute commitment to the constituency.

She commented on her website: "My blog is 70 per cent fiction and 30 per cent fact. It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to Mid Bedfordshire.

"I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another."

The decision comes on the same day that the House of Lords suspended three peers for abusing their second home allowances during the last Parliament.

Article Comments

Have your say...

Please enter your comments below.

Name

Your e-mail address

Listen to audio version

Please type in the letters or numbers shown above (case sensitive)