Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil
Within the rules is why it is not fraud. Those who are outside the rules or who have submitted false expenses should be held accountable. The rules may not be right, that is the main issue I have with all this.
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It is fraud if an MP deliberately falsified claims for money that had not been spent. One of the MPs submitted a bank statement saying that one of the transactions was a mortgage payment to a building society, when in fact it was a payment into a savings account.
If the rules allowed for extravagant expenditure to be paid for from the public purse, it is not fraud as such, but it raises a question of whether the spending was essential for the carrying out of the MPs work, or whether it was a benefit in kind that the MP should have declared for income tax. They may have opened themselves up to a charge of tax evasion.
It is the arrogant way that each MP who has been found out squirms with his answers to the TV interviewer. Bill Cash was excruciating.
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