MSPs' expenses soar by twice rate of inflation to £9.8m...

azzuri · MSPs' expenses soar by twice rate of inflation to £9.8m...

MSPs' expenses soar by twice rate of inflation to £9.8m

see - http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=277222007

HAMISH MACDONELL (hmacdonell@scotsman.com)

* MSP expenses £9.388 million, a £695,404 increase from last year
* Statistics run counter to Executive call for restraint in the public sector
* MSPs representing outlying constituencies have reasonable claim for travel

Key quote

Greater openness has highlighted abuses of the system, but it has also made clear the sheer scale of the bills we now have to pick up for big government. - BLAIR GIBBS, TAXPAYER'S ALLIANCE

Story in full

SCOTLAND'S MSPs continued to make inflation-busting expense claims last year - despite a torrent of bad publicity about their spending habits and ministerial demands for savings across the public sector.

The latest expense claims from the Scottish Parliament, which were published yesterday, showed MSPs claimed £9.388 million in allowances in 2005-6 - which is £695,404 more than the previous year.

This represents a rise of 8 per cent on 2003-4, well ahead of inflation of about 2.7 per cent a year.

MSPs continued to increase their claims despite the furore over Keith Raffan, the disgraced Liberal Democrat MSP who quit after running up travel expenses of more than £40,000, and David McLetchie, who resigned as Conservative leader after irregularities in his taxi claims.

The rising expense claims also run counter to all the messages being broadcast by the Scottish Executive on the need for restraint in the public sector. Jack McConnell, the First Minister, has demanded efficiency savings and warned local authorities not to push through council-tax rises well above inflation.

Tom McCabe, the finance minister, declared last July: "We do not want to consume any more precious resources or employ any more staff than necessary. We will be looking at cutting duplication and bureaucracy to ensure we have more efficient and effective public services."

Yet despite this clear direction from ministers, MSPs have continued to spend more and more on expenses.

Top of the list was Rosemary Byrne, the former SSP MSP and now a Solidarity MSP. She charged £63,338.56 to the taxpayer in the 2005-6 financial year, more than any other MSP.

She insisted last night that much of this - £39,818.33 - was to cover staff costs, which, for the SSP and Solidarity, come directly out of expense. But that still left her with a claim of £23,520.23 for other costs over the year.

Ms Byrne said she represented a large region, the South of Scotland, so had a lot of land to cover and had to spend two nights in Edinburgh because "I work so hard". She said: "I am average in spending if you take staff costs out."

Ms Byrne was one of many MSPs who appeared eager to charge everything possible to the public purse.

She claimed the cost of one 15p phone call - probably the smallest individual claim submitted by an MSP. But she was not alone: Nicol Stephen, the deputy first minister, claimed £4.79 for a map - of his own constituency - and Jamie Stone claimed 42p for a pint of milk.

However, not everyone was as expensive to maintain. Margo MacDonald claimed only £3,199 - less than any other MSP and a sixth of the expenses submitted by Ms Byrne.

Ms MacDonald said she produced just one end-of-term report for constituents and other MSPs might follow her lead. "Obviously, I don't know the basis for everyone's claims, but one of the areas where we might seek to save money is on these leaflets that go out like confetti," she said.

She added: "I only hope the expenses don't cause people to imagine that we are all guilty of profligacy with public money."

The SNP's Kenny MacAskill, who was elected on the Lothians list with Ms MacDonald in 2003, claimed £20,588.74 - he said it was for "the running of my office and personal staff".

He said he did send out letters and newsletters to constituents telling them what was being achieved, and said that would continue. "I think that is part of the responsibility of elected representatives," he said.

Blair Gibbs, campaign director for the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "The last few months of revelations like these about MSPs' expenses tell us one thing - our politicians are costing taxpayers too much money. Greater openness has highlighted abuses of the system, but it has also made clear the sheer scale of the bills we now have to pick up for big government.

"Taxpayers deserve to see these costs actually come down - ordinary families have to budget; so should politicians."

Some MSPs, such as Labour's Alasdair Morrison from the Western Isles, were near the top of the list because they represent outlying constituencies. Indeed, all the other MSPs from main parties to figure in the top ten represent constituencies in the Highlands or the islands.

The SSP and Solidarity MSPs were clearly ahead of the rest in the expenses table. They racked up bills of more than £1,000 a week for their expenses, office costs and allowances.

A spokesman for the SSP insisted Ms Byrne was right and this was simply because the SSP paid its staff costs from the allowance claims of its MSPs, costs that were not included in the expenses of MSPs from the main parties.

This is also the system used by the Greens, and MSPs from these parties do come out higher than the rest for that reason. Shiona Baird, MSP, the Greens' co-leader, said: "These figures include the bulk of our staff salary expenses, whereas the figures for most other MSPs exclude the bulk of staff costs - therefore, a like-for-like comparison cannot be made.

"When our expenses are calculated in the same way as other parties', we are average or below average in our expenditure."

The main parties use the same allowance, the members' support allowance, to pay their researchers but they pay for them individually. Because of that, the parliament refuses to publish the individual costs of each researcher - they feel it would be unfair to publicise how much staff earn.

A spokesman for the parliament said Holyrood officials had uprated all allowances by 4.2 per cent, and this explained much of the 8 per cent rise in total.

This uprating means the ceilings on all the allowances and mileage rates were increased by 4.2 per cent across the board. Officials used two indices to set the new rates, one based on rising prices and the other on rising salaries in Scotland.

Another 1.8 per cent of the increase was the result of backdated pensions' contributions for Holyrood staff.
MARGO MACDONALD

SOME MSPs seem to claim for everything they can. Margo MacDonald, the independent MSP for the Lothians, claims for almost nothing.

Of the £3,199.57 she charged the taxpayer last year, the vast majority - £2,120.63 - was for taxis to get her round Edinburgh.

Of the rest, £357.71 was spent on public meetings and £588 on office supplies. Her expenses have actually also gone down, by £267.38 on the year before, showing other MSPs what can be done.

The £588 on office supplies was used to send out just one end-of-term report to her constituents - despite fellow MSPs sending out several newsletters a year. She claimed nothing on newspapers, nor on refreshments or meals.
TED BROCKLEBANK

TED Brocklebank, one of the Conservative MSPs for Mid Scotland and Fife, is an example of an MSP who has put in an inflation-busting claim, charging the taxpayer £5,000 more in 2005-6 than he did the year before.

In 2003-4, Mr Brocklebank claimed £30,066.27. By 2005-6, this had gone up to £35,313.16 - a rise of £5,246.89, or 17.5 per cent.

Mr Brocklebank spent £4,730.86 travelling round the large Mid Scotland and Fife region and £6,708.35 on accommodation in Edinburgh during the parliamentary sessions. He is an avid reader of local newspapers, claiming £255.09 over the course of the year, but he also claimed for the occasional odd item, such as the £4.99 he charged for a VHS videotape.
CATHY PEATTIE

LABOUR'S Cathy Peattie claimed £27,412 for the 2005-6 financial year, a bit less than the average for an MSP.

But the Falkirk East MSP did seem to spend an awful lot more than most on keeping her Grangemouth office clean.

Some MSPs spent only a couple of hundred pounds throughout a whole year on their constituency office, but not Ms Peattie. She spent £2,505.10 on office and window cleaning last year, in 11 monthly instalments, ranging from £112.80 to £284.35.

Ms Peattie's expense claim has gone up £4,034.68 compared with last year, an above-inflation rise of 17 per cent.
ROSEANNA CUNNINGHAM

THE expenses claims by Roseanna Cunningham, the SNP member for Perth, showed one of the biggest rises of any MSP.

Ms Cunningham claimed £28,056.78 in 2003-4 and £37,284.68 last year - an increase of £9,227.90, or 33 per cent.

This is the first year the Scottish Parliament has published the expenses of each MSP in such detail, so it is impossible to tell where the increases have come from.

But Ms Cunningham did have £5,553.32 spent on new office equipment as part of a roll-out of new computers in the parliament and she spent a further £1,676.91 on stationery, postage and office supplies.
ROSEMARY BYRNE

ROSEMARY Byrne, the Solidarity and former Scottish Socialist Party MSP, was the most expensive MSP last year, charging £63,338.56 for all her expenses and allowances.

The bulk of this was made up of staff costs. Ms Byrne contributed £39,818.33 to the SSP pool for staff costs, leaving £23,520.23 of other expenses.

Of this, she spent £2,860.60 on accommodation in Edinburgh for the two nights a week she stays in the capital.

She also spent £5,929.37 on travel, mostly on mileage getting her round the huge South of Scotland region she represents. Ms Byrne's expense claim went up by £31,873.81 from the year before, but this is almost entirely due to the inclusion of staff costs.

Good on Margo....

Rinty · g

It is ridiculous to piant Rosemary Byrne as the highest when her party and the greens have the staff costs dded and the mainstream parties dont.

The published figures should either exclude all staff costs or include all costs.

Public monies paying wages should be public knowledge, the main reason that Labour and others dont want to publish staff costs is that some of their staff are paid s**t wages and others are paid better.

Rosemary Byrnes expenses, if treated as the rest are without staff, are £23k, Tommy Sheridans £15k.

SLG

I thought the same Rinty. The publish the full figures in the table comparing them with all the rest. Although they have a note, the figures they present aren't comparing like with like.