Project – MP’s expenses, round 2

A topic which outraged much of the British public back in 2009 was the outrageous claims our MPs were making on expenses – duck houses, toilet seats and even porn! It seems that the battle over tax payers’ money has not yet ended and these two reports (taken from the dailymail online and bbc news online) reveal this. The stories discuss MPs’ expenses claims but also, mainly, MPs hiring family members as secretaries.

One would expect the daily mail, a tabloid newspaper, to be slightly more sensationalist over the matter and it does not disappoint. Even in introducing the story lexis such as ‘soared’ and ‘the relatives enjoy salaries as high as £50,000’ (my own highlighting). The bbc, in contrast, seems to present a more balanced argument, with slightly less bias: ‘Typical pay for an office manager ranges between £25,000 and £39,999 a year, although some MPs pay more than that’. It also lists the MP’s claiming the most on travel but shows the representatives from Northern Ireland and from the Orkneys and Shetlands (who would obviously spend the most on travel costs as they have the furthest to travel) which would subtly suggest to the reader that their claims are legitimate.

The daily mail takes a decidedly different approach in legitimising MP’s claims: ‘The public outcry over MPs employing family members began in 2008, when Tory MP Derek Conway was accused of paying his two sons for non-existent jobs’ which frames the story in a completely different light – it is claiming that this is something shocking and which deserves an outcry from the public. Whereas the bbc simply states the facts and slightly skirts around the subject and, rather than outright saying ‘MP’s employ family members’ it claims that ‘155 MPs employ someone with the same family name in their office’ – giving them room to manoeuvre.

Both of these articles, although maybe not as outright as the other, do suggest that MPs hiring their family as office staff is not right, which I do agree with. Saying that, however, I believe that perhaps some backstory is missing from both articles – were the family members interviewed by an independent party who did not know who they were? If they were right for the job then it would be unfair not to hire them I believe. Perhaps more context would have been helpful in creating a fuller conclusion – although I do not think that would change my mind as it has become clear that the tax payer cannot trust politicians completely with their money when it comes to bending the expenses rules.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2419462/Quarter-MPs-jobs-family-Taxpayers-politicians-employ-wives-children-soars-4m-year.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24063954

Jo Aitchison