Not all parties are the same

Liberal Democrat Voice has started a web page, which is being updated on the fly, devoted to the response of each Liberal Democrat MP to the Legg letters. So far, the total is less than that which just one Conservative MP, Ken Clarke, is adjudged to have been overpaid.

Speaking on Channel 4 news Nick Clegg called for a ban on MPs using public money in the property market. In an interview with Jon Snow, he said: “I have been saying for months, well before the expenses scandal even hit the front pages of the Daily Telegraph that one of the only ways to really fix this is to get MPs out of the property game altogether make sure they cannot use a penny of taxpayers money to buy or sell properties.”

“The most serious abuses in the system are those MPs that turn themselves from servants of their constituents into sort of spivvy property speculators where they are flipping from one property to the next for very, very large personal profits sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds of profit and also the systematic evasion of capital gains tax.”

Update 2009-10-20: Ken Clarke was the victim of an arithmetical error in Sir Thomas Legg's office, and his true indebtedness is just over £1000 rather than £4000. It's still substantially larger than any amount a LibDem MP is accused of overclaiming.