Harrowing times

With wonderful, though presumably unintentional, timing Harrow council has decided to prosecute a woman who used her mother’s address to apply for a better school for her son. MPs should watch this case with interest.

According to Harrow council, it constitutes fraud to pretend that somewhere is your home when it isn’t. What would Harrow make of the revelations that MPs pretend that they live where they don’t?

Since the police show an understandable reluctance to investigate, knowing as we all do that there is one law for us and another for MPs, could Harrow council please be put in charge of the case? If it thinks that doing your best for your child is a crime, what would it make of those MPs who have lined their pockets?

Let us be clear about this. Some MPs have undoubtedly committed fraud. There are three layers to all this.

At the top there are MPs who have behaved perfectly honourably and made reasonable claims. After all, some MPs travel considerable distances to attend a parliament that is sited in one corner of the UK and it is right and proper that they should not bear the extra costs.

In the middle are those MPs who milked the system but stayed within the now discredited rules. One may feel that they behaved to lower standards than we would like but we all fall from grace at times.

However, to take money you are not entitled to by claiming that you live at one address when you really live elsewhere is fraud. Those MPs who subsequently sold their ‘second home’ and told the taxman that it was their primary residence to avoid capital gains tax have lied to one authority or the other.

The rules state that expenses must be incurred in the carrying out of an MP’s duties. A great many claims come nowhere near to meeting this criterion. These, too, are fraudulent. What is worrying is that the people who have committed these frauds sit in parliament voting on the laws of the land.

There is a Fees Office which is supposed to scrutinise these claims. What is truly amazing is the revelation that some claims have actually been refused. If it allows horse manure and moat cleaning as an expense, one shudders to think what got turned down.

Was the Fees Office too scared of MPs to resist all but the most extreme claims? There are calls for a truly independent body to scrutinise claims but who will appoint its members? The Fees Office is supposed to be independent but who on its staff would put their careers on the line when bullying MPs can control their futures in the Civil Service?

On BBC’s Question Time last night Margaret Beckett raised the issue of whether the Daily Telegraph had paid for records that had been stolen. She is a minister in a government that paid for records stolen from a tax haven. If it is right to buy stolen records to track down tax evaders, then it is all right to steal records showing who has been committing fraud.

High on the Hogg

I doubt very much if Douglas Hogg will feel any embarrassment over the moat in his eye but I relate the following story in case any readers bump into him. Please spread it around.

In his younger days Hogg did stints as night lawyer at The Times, where I was a subeditor. This was in the 1970s and The Times, in common with several other national newspapers, paid a legal eagle to sit in the office all evening reading through the following day’s stories to spot potential libels.

All the lawyers on the rota, with one exception, were regarded with respect. One, called Angus, was even treated with some affection. The one who was held in ridicule was Hogg. He would come leaping out of his office and attempt to make editorial decisions that were not in his remit.

Some ten years later Hogg was a junior minister in the Thatcher Government and was seen, erroneously, as a rising star. I happened to bump into him at a party and, finding myself next to him at the buffet table, remarked that I had known him in his previous existence. He immediately shot across the room and soon departed the gathering.

I can only guess why he was so anxious to avoid reminders of his nights at The Times but if you see him, do ask him.

Back to business

Stock markets took a nasty wobble this week when retail sales data cast serious doubts about the US recovery but once again investors are managing to shake off the bad news. Here in the UK the signs are, amazingly, that we are past the worst.

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Britain has progressed from a strong slowdown to a possible trough. While we should note the word possible, we should also remember that the OECD has been more pessimistic about the UK’s downturn than Alistair Darling (as indeed most people have) so we can put some store by its assessment. Also the prognosis refers to March, so we have probably made further progress in the past month.

If the OECD is right, then the stock market has also passed the bottom, which has been my view for a few weeks now. The FTSE 100 clearly has some problem getting above 4,400 points and I can’t see it bursting ahead before autumn at the earliest. Nonetheless, this will not be a year to sell in May and go away.