Entries Tagged 'Chris Mole Expenses investigation' ↓

The website of Chris Mole was paid (at double the going rate) for by you and me, as taxpayers.

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0506_IEP.pdf

If you’re a Labour loyalist then this is a good deal, if you’re not then you’ve been robbed.

When one of the most prominent links on their website is to a scaremongering Labour website you can almost hear the refund cheque being written.  The office expenses are not for party political activity after all.

You then get some of the frankly bizarre poll questions that make you wonder if the author hasn’t been hired from the Chinese Communist Party Department of Very Fair One Sided Poll Questions.  Take this example:

“Do you agree that getting a university campus in Ipswich is a major triumph for the Labour Party in Ipswich”

How do you parody that question?  Remeber that you, not the Labour Party paid for that.

From beyond parody to the screaming subtext, how about this poll question:

“Do you think that local Tories and Liberals were vindictive to sack Labour councillor Phil Smart from the chair of Ipswich Buses for revealing cuts plans”

Now what would the publicly funded Chris Mole website, Ipswich Buses and Councillor Phil Smart all have in common?

I don’t know Ipswich Labour Party leader David Ellesmere, although he represents the next door Gipping ward.  He does have the reputation of being highly partisan, and so it’s good to see some sense coming through.

Councillor Ellesmere has attacked Ipswich council for an “unnecesary” meeting that cost £400.  And he’s got a point.  £400 to confirm a couple of appointments does seem a bit much.  And it’s good to see a Labour councillor, who supports a Labour government who believe in public waste as an economic policy to support some Tory type “cuts”. 

So in this bipartisanship, will we see him condemning Chris Mole for spending £5,227.95 on re-election propaganda?  Or how about funnelling £500 a month to the Labour Party?  Or would he be upset with spending £2,400 on a partisan Labour website?  Call me cynical but I think that Councillor Ellesmere’s only problem is that the taxpayer is not wasting enough money on the Ipswich Labour Party.

I’m all for politicans condemning public waste and as a good Catholic boy I know all about prodical sons so Labour politicians are particularly welcome on this crusade.  However let’s hold back on the praise until he holds his own side to account.

Chris Mole has a website, which is all very nice, and it’s a very good party political website.  However, and you’ve probably guessed it, who pays for it.  Well, I’ve got an expenses claim:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0506_IEP.pdf

That’s £2408.75 for a website.  That is as much as it looks.  For example, Public Impact, the rule breaking Labour campaigning group, will do a website for £1200.

So who is this “SS Double Design”?  I don’t want to make any second world war jokes, but, really.

An anonymous commenter (and they want to remain that way as they went to the trouble of using an anonymizer to make this web posting) has taken me to task for pointing out that Chris Mole was using Public Impact to send out party political propaganda using his taxpayer funded office expense account, against parliamentary rules.

I said at the end of the original post “He should pay back every penny that we the taxpayers paid to Public Impact.”

He did not break the rules on using the communicaton allowance, which is designed with the purpose of funding Labour MPs re-election campaigns.

So one year in four he’s kept to both the letter and spirit of bad rules.

However for three of the four years he’s systematically abused his allowances and should pay back every penny paid to Public Interest from his office allowances.

We now know that Chris Mole channels £500 a month to the Ipswich Labour Party for a service which the council ould do for free, but there is a smaller but still odd anomalies.

If we go back to the money we pay to the Ipswich Labour Party:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0708_IEP.pdf#page=[115]

…we see a line (you may have to go to page 115 manually, depending on your browser) :

Newspapers EADT/Evening Star Online editions       £195

Was the online access to the Evening Star used by any of the Labour staff in the building?  For example, Councillor John Cook the Labour Party agent (who us taxpayers don’t pay for, officially) is very, very fond of commenting on stories some political, some not.

If true it’s a tiny problem, but there really does not seem to be enough care for the seperation of the public and the party political from Mr Mole.

Public Impact, for who we the taxpayer pay more than £4,000 a year, are not a simple print shop.  They are a Labour Party operation, although they do not seem to have any above the counter links.  However they are clear on their (Labour facing) page as to what they are about:

We do not work for the other parties nor their MPs. We are staffed by Labour Party members and supporters.

In short, they are highly partisan and any public money going towards them will be expected to be going towards electing or re-electing Labour candidates.

So bad enough in a “communications” budget, but surely our MP would not misuse his expenses to get their services in an office budget?

Well not the last year, but the year before that?

Sure he did:

£1110.48 for 30,000 leaflets in 2006/07:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0607_IEP.pdf#=page[58]

£2,546.41 for 70,000 leaflets and 500 posters in 2005/06 (election year):

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0506_IEP.pdf#=page[39]

£1,571.06 for 35,000 leaflets in 2004/5:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0405_IEP.pdf

£5,227.95 on literature over three years.  That makes up for a lot of lost Labour Party members and union subscriptions.

And here are the rules from the Green Book that is supposed to that claims to govern the Parliamentary allowances:

The AOE is an allowance designed to provide for facilities, equipment, supplies and services for Members and their staff.

It may only be used to meet the following costs:

• Accommodation for office or surgery use or for occasional meetings
• Equipment and supplies for the office or surgery
• Work commissioned and other services
• Certain travel costs not met out of travel expenditure

…….

The only area that the Public Impact propaganda could potentially claim to be calling under is for “Work commissioned and other services”, however even this is not open to interpretation:

• Maintenance services for hardware, software and equipment
• Interpreting and translation services
• Training for Members or staff
• Recruitment services
• Work that you would reasonably expect a member of your staff to undertake, for example, a piece of research

It is cut and dried, Chris Mole has used the taxpayer to pay for propaganda, against both the spirit and the letter of the rules.  He should pay back every penny that we the taxpayers paid to Public Impact.

One of the biggest cons introduced in recent years has been the MP’s “communication allowance”.  It;s not really meant for us to communicate with them, but for them to communicate with us.

Only one has been published so far and I’ve put it into a spreadsheet that details Chris Mole’s communications allowance.  It’s not pretty reading.  Well it is £5,344.77 of our money.

There are three suppliers. The cheapest were Calver Press, a print shop around the corner from the Silent Street Labour office, who printed compliment slips and business cards, 2800 of them in total.  So far so good.

The next most expensive “supplier” is the Suffolk Labour Party.  Yes, this is as odd as it sounds.  Why should a “communication allowance” be going to the local Labour Party?  Well, you’ve guessed it.  The monthly reports are essentially re-election material.  There are 31,000 pieces of literature charged at £870.

The last piece of expenditure, a hefty £4,209.12 goes to an outfit called Public Impact Communications.  Their website is a bit nondescript, although it is in Reading and no where near Ipswich and the fact that it does a lot of work for UNISON is a small clue to where they are coming from.

It is their operation Labourprint.co.uk, where their main business comes through.  As they say on their local election page “We have been actively involved in supporting and helping Labour candidates get elected for many years.”

And we pay them more than £4,000 a year to produce 80,000 leaflets at just less than twice the cost per item that the Suffolk Labour Party charges.  Does the Ipswich Labour Party also pay Public Impact and do they pay the same inflated rates that we the taxpayer do?

There’s more on Public Impact later.

It’s not only the £500 a month Chris Mole gives to the Ipswich Labour Partythat rankles it’s the small little indignities.

Looking at one example of the thousands we pay to the Ipswich Labour Party:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0708_IEP.pdf#page=[115]

…we see another line (you may have to go to page 115 manually, depending on your browser) :

Insurance: 1/3 of CIS bill – fire, theft etc     £128.33

(CIS is now Co-Operative Insurance , tied to the Labour allies, the Co-Operative party)

Now the strange thing about this is that his office in Silent Street does not just contain the presumably larger offices of the Ipswich Labour Party (they quite reasonably don’t release their floor plans) but it also contains the premises of the Ipswich Labour club.

Are we the taxpayers really paying a third of the insurance costs of a premises that contains a private club selling alcohol?  Not only does this take a massive part of the Labour complex in Silent Street but it also is a far riskier proposition than a first floor office that is rarely open at night.  As the invoice merely says it’s a third share, and does not contain anything from the insurance company, it’s not clear.  If it is covering the Labour club then this is a clear example of cross subsidy.

Of course this expense would not exist at all if Chris Mole were to run his council office from Ipswich Borough Council.

I said that there where some interesting items on Chris Mole’s expenses.  One of the themes (possibly the theme) of Chris Mole’s expense claims has been the way in which he cross subsidises the Labour Party at a number of different levels.  In effect it means we have state funding of political parties, or more accurately of the Labour Party, in Ipswich.

The most blatant way in which this was done was the payments to the Ipswich Labour Party of £500 per month for use of a room in the Labour Party offices.*  This is going to be the equivalent of the third of the salary of a full time election agent (who also happens to have a council seat and so a nice swag of expenses).  This gives Labour a massive advantage in a marginal seat where none of the other parties can afford this.

So why can’t Chris Mole borrow an office in the Ipswich council building, like David Blunkett does in Sheffield?  As well as being cheaper for the taxpayer he will be in far closer contact with council officials, maintain a non partisan presence and be able to use the receptionist and switchboard services that the council has.  Of course you won’t be able to subsidise your party political machine, but that’s hardly the point of taxes, is it Mr Mole?

*  To see one example of this go to the 2008 incidental expenses entry:

http://mpsallowances.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/hocallowances/allowances-by-mp/chris-mole/Chris_Mole_0708_IEP.pdf#page=[115]

You may have to go to page 115 manually, depending on your browser. 

There you will see £3000 rent.  This is for six months, so you can divide this by six to get £500 per month. 

if you are interested then here are the published expenses for Chris Mole (here are the ones on his site).  I’m going through the expenses now and although Chris Mole has been claiming that he is “underspending” there are some very interesting claims in there.

I will be going through these over the next few days.  The Evening Star and the East Anglian Daily Times have done some work and focussed on the cost of his home and some of the expensive tastes (such as £70 headphones and £1000 TVs), but there seem to be a couple of very interesting stories hidden in this which don’t seem to have been touched.  More to follow…