Following in the great British tradition of Tory sleaze, co-chairman of the Tory Party, Baroness Warsi has been caught trying to dodge declaring how much she gets from rent on a posh north London flat.
She joins a growing list of more than 30 Tory MPs exposed as expenses cheats, including previous chairman Caroline Spelman, government ministers Gove (Schools), Lansley (Health) and Willets (Univesities).
Baroness Warsi used to sit in the unelected House of Lords. Members of the Lords are required to sign the register of interests when rent on their properties exceeds £500.
Now the dodge is exposed and her cover blown, she is desperately trying to claim the whole situation was an ‘oversight’. No doubt she’s very busy, and rich enough that a few grand here and there seems like no big deal. But after all, that’s why they get tens of thousands of pounds expenses to employ staff to do their paperwork.
She brought the flat back in 2007; however it was not ready to be lived in for another year. During this time she stayed at hotels and in an Acton property occupied by Tory advisor Naweed Khan.
While staying at theActonproperty she put in claims for the Lord’s subsistence allowance of £165.50 a night for the various occasions she stayed there.
Mr Khan released a statement saying she paid him for each time she stayed there – to compensate for the inconvenience, apparently.
Yet, in a further twist it turns out that Mr Khan was himself living at the property rent-free. The Acton flat was owned by Tory party donor Dr Wakif Moustafa; he denies having ever received any money from Khan or Warsi.
Dr Moustafa, chairman of the Conversative Arab Nework, said that Warsi had her own front door key and never offered to pay rent or bills. He admits he didn’t ask her for money as he was hoping to further his political career.
Labour MP, John Mann has called for the Lords commissioner for standards to look into the matter, he rightly said, “You cannot be claiming an allowance while living in a property rent free.”
Laughably, Mr Cameron and Baroness Warsi have both spoken about the importance of a ‘transparent’ government and Cameron aims for his to be the ‘one of the most transparent governments in the world.’
It is a joke that our country is run by politicians who own flats in high priced areas of London, don’t declare how much they earn from it and at the same time claim they are paying money to stay in a flat, which they aren’t.
The expenses scandal has not gone away, politicians are still sponging off taxpayers while demanding ever greater sacrifices from ordinary families.
At the same time that the government is closing hospital wards and selling off schools, they are spending £1million on a boat to ferry the Queen down the Thames for her Jubilee.
We are told that Britain is back in recession and Europe faces a second economic crisis, yet our government of millionaire Eton schoolboys is enjoying the good life like never before.
Our political rulers are corrupt and incompetent. They’ve got their noses so far in the trough they can’t even cover their tracks properly.
We want to put power in the hands of ordinary people. By building collective, democratic councils and bringing the big banks and industries under the control of workers’ and consumers we can start to challenge the parasitic grip of the 1% over our wallets and lives.
