Some years ago, when we were living in Nottingham, A got a job in Hastings. The money wasn't to be sniffed at and the bungalow we found to rent was none too shabby either. He asked the tax office if he could claim the rent back as a legitimate business expense and was told that it would be ok. So we did. We all lived there as a family (not that it would make any difference).
Several months later the tax office decided that claiming back this rent was NOT OK and they'd like us to pay the tax on what we'd claimed back from our business and they wanted it NOW. I don't know about you but suddenly laying our hands on about £2K just like that was impossible. The tax office begrudgingly gave us 3 months to pay it. We were understandably upset but managed to do so.
We had to rent somewhere so that A could carry out his work. He was then, and still is, an IT contractor so, to all intents and purposes, employed himself. So we ended up paying a mortgage on our property back home - we didn't want to rent it out as it gave us somewhere to stay on our regular trips back to visit family and friends - and rent on this other property, AND two sets of bills - all out of our personal money. None of it was claimable.
So tell me, why should our MPs be able to get all expenses paid for their second homes? We had to have a base for work-purposes 200 miles from our current house, yet WE had to fund it ourselves. MPs don't need some flash pad in a posh area of London. Westminster should build their own hotel with 600+ identical flats in there. That should keep things down a bit.
And, yes, I think those 4 MPs/Lords members should be prosecuted. If something feels morally wrong then, despite someone saying it's OK, you really shouldn't do it. Their defence, that the Expenses Office approved them, is really no defence. After all, we didn't let all those SS guards from the concentration camps use that sort of thing as a defence in their trials, did we.
