Timble2 said:I make it nine Labour and about 24 others, not at all impressive.
Three former Labour MPs facing criminal charges over their expenses have won the right to have their legal fees paid for by the taxpayer.
An HM Courts Service spokesman confirmed David Chaytor, Elliot Morley and Jim Devine will receive legal aid.
Conservative peer Lord Hanningfield, who is also facing charges, has not made an application for legal aid, the court official added.
All four deny the allegations and say they will defend themselves "robustly".
Conservative leader David Cameron said granting legal aid to the MPs was a "complete outrage" and promised to review the system.
Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove said the news was a "slap in the face for every decent taxpayer in this country".
It's offensive not because they aren;t entitled to it, but because they've screwed the taxpayers and now anything we do with them will either let them off the hook or screw the taxpayers some more.
People accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty, even if they are MPs who have been allegedly expenses fiddling.
If you wish to argue that those accused of crimes should not be entitled to taxpayers' money towards their defence that's one thing. I don't agree with it, but it's a coherent argument to make.
What is ludicrous is to suggest that accused murderers, rapists and terrorists should receive legal aid but MPs, uniquely, should not.
I was lead to believe that Legal Aid was for those on low wages involved in the prosecution or defence of a civil case.
wtf i never said or suggested any of those things.
i agreed with you that they're entitled to it.
my point was simply that it's a pisser that whatever we do with them that isn;t nothing, we end up paying for one way or another.
David Laws suspended for 'serious and substantial' breaches of expenses rules
Laws suspended from the house for seven days and forced to apologise to MPs after standards watchdog rules former minister deceived Commons for seven years
David Laws, once the rising star of the coalition government, is to face one of the toughest sanctions of the expenses scandal after a year-long inquiry ruled that he seriously and extensively broke the rules to claim rent which was paid to his partner.
Laws will be suspended from the house for seven days after the standards commissioner, John Lyon, ruled that over seven years he deceived the Commons authorities by submitting claims to pay a landlord with whom he was in a relationship and sharing a home.
The deception was "serious" and the sums involved "substantial". Laws has already paid back nearly £60,000 and will now also be forced to apologise to the Commons.
Lyon accepted what Laws has always claimed: that he broke the rules to protect his privacy and prevent people finding out that he was in a gay relationship, rather than to profit and that the way he claimed reduced the cost to the taxpayer.
But he also suggests that the amount claimed in rent as a "lodger" in the property may have been above market value while he also claimed for other costs, such as maintenance work, that was justified as a cohabitee but were in conflict with the rules if he was simply a lodger in the property. Inadvertently or not, his partner, the lobbyist James Lundie, "benefited" under the arrangements.
He said that he had "great sympathy" with the MP's predicament, that to be honest about his relationship would have forced him to be open about his sexuality describing it as a "conflict between his private interest in secrecy and public interest in him being open and honest in relation to his expenses claims".
But whatever the MP's motivation the deception was serious. He should have either been open with the Commons about the true nature of relationship, or not claimed expenses at all, the report says.
Lyon's report says: "I consider that Mr Laws's breaches of the rules in respect of his second home claims were serious. I have no evidence that Mr Laws made his claims with the intention of benefiting himself or his partner in conscious breach of the rules. But the sums of money involved were substantial. He made a series of breaches. Some of them continued over a number of years."
In the accompanying report by the Commons standards and privileges committee, MPs accepted Lyon's judgment and recommended the seven-day suspension. It is likely to dash any immediate hopes of a return to government for Laws though its understood it is very unlikely that he will resign his Yeovil seat. He will appear in the Commons this afternoon to make his apology.
Laws said in statement following the publication of the report: "I accept the conclusions of the inquiry and take full responsibility for the mistakes which I have made. I apologise to my constituents and to parliament. Each of us should be our own sternest critic, and I recognise that my attempts to keep my personal life private were in conflict with my duty as an MP to ensure that my claims were in every sense above reproach. I should have resolved this dilemma in the public interest and not in the interests of my privacy.
"However, from the moment these matters became public, I have made clear that my motivation was to protect my privacy, rather than to benefit from the system of parliamentary expenses, and I am pleased that the commissioner has upheld that view.
"I have also, from the very beginning, made clear that I believed that my secrecy about my private life led me to make lower overall claims than would otherwise be the case, and this has been confirmed by the parliamentary commissioner and by the committee. The taxpayer gained, rather than lost out, from my desire for secrecy, though I fully accept that this is not an adequate reason for breaking the rules.
"This last year has been a difficult one, and I am grateful to family, friends, constituents and colleagues for their support and understanding."
I have some sympathy; cupidity seems not to have been the motive in this case, as in so many others. Nonetheless, the serious error of judgement was made.
Quake42 said:...I think he has got off extraordinarily lightly and it does seem in stark contrast to the MPS jailed earlier this year.
Quake42 said:Is it just me, or does this sound like plain fraud? Certainly worthy of rather heavier sanctions than a one week suspension:
Spookdaddy said:Quake42 said:...I think he has got off extraordinarily lightly and it does seem in stark contrast to the MPS jailed earlier this year.
I'd agree - and I'm still slightly flabbergasted by the sanguine reaction to this by so many who were so outraged not terribly long ago, often over the actions of people who weren't actually even breaking the rules in the first place.