Bill Barnett

Independent Candidate for the South West region in the European Parliamentary Elections 2009

Saturday 16 May 2009

Mark Thomas, I salute you...

Mark Thomas is a comedian, presenter, political activist, investigative reporter and the holder of a Guinness World Record.

On 14th May, lawyers acting on Mark's behalf served legal papers on Speaker Martin. As the chair for the House of Commons Commission, he should take urgent steps to commence a review of the department's actions in dealing with MPs' applications for expenses. These should include an independent audit of expenses and the forced repayment of wrongly claimed expenses; and in cases of fraudulent claims, the police should be called in. Speaker Martin has 14 days to respond. If he does not, Mark will instigate a judicial review of Speaker Martin's decision, on the legal grounds that public law should be consistent. MPs should not be allowed to be above the law and what is good enough for us is good enough for them.

On his website, Mark says “MPs are not above the law. If they have wrongly claimed expenses they should be made to repay. If they have acted fraudulently the police should be involved. This is what would happen to all of us as members of the public if we tried to fiddle public money.
Fraudulent benefit claimants are not allowed to form committees comprised of benefit claimants to investigate their misdemeanours. Nor can exposed tax cheats offer to pay back money because they are ‘concerned about how it looks to the outside world’ and then walk away with no repercussion.
If I need to go to court I will be making a public appeal to cover the legal costs of the case, which I’m sure will have overwhelming support!”


Further details can be found on Mark's page in the Guardian - it was also featured on the BBC Daily Politics show.

1 comment:

  1. Bill, TheEye was tagged for a meme by Daniel079 and for the first time has done one. You are tagged in turn.

    http://anallseeingeye.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-type-of-mp-would-theeye-be.html for mine.

    http://daniel1979blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-type-of-mp-would-you-be-another.html for the original.

    Go for it!

    ReplyDelete