Results tagged “Conservatives” from Birmingham Post - News Blog

I've just been writng about Tory plans for their party conference, in Birmingham next month.

Instead of sticking to the conference venue as usual, they're planning to get out and about with public debates which anyone can take part in. Members of the Shadow Cabinet will also get stuck into a bit of DIY, rennovating community facilities in Edgbaston.

Now word reaches me of plans to raise some extra cash for the project - called We Love Welsh House Farm - with a sponsored relay bicycle ride from London.

The relay part means shadow ministers will take it in turns to do a leg each, but they can hardly be faulted for that. Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is the man behind the bike idea.

Meriden MP Caroline Spelman, the Conservative Party Chair, is to face an inquiry into her use of MPs' expenses to hire a nanny, it has emerged.

The statement issued this afternoon by John Lyon, the official Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, comes as a surprise because just last week he seemed to be saying that no investigation was needed.
But Mr Lyon, the official Commons watchdog, has consulted a committee of MPs - chaired by Tory backbencher Sir George Young - which agreed an inquiry was needed.

The controversy surrounds Mrs Spelman's use of Commons expenses to employ a nanny, after she became an MP in 1997.

Mrs Spelman has said that the nanny, Tina Haynes, was paid to look after her children and do secretarial work for a "short term period" after her election to Parliament, between 1997 and 1998.

As MPs are allowed to claim expenses to pay their secretaries, this was not against Commons rules.
But it was claimed over the weekend that Ms Haynes in fact remained on the public payroll for almost two years, from April 1997 to March 1999, and that for at least some of this period she lived at the Spelman family home in Kent, more than 140 miles from Meriden.

We are waiting to see whether Mrs Spelman or Conservative Central Office will issue a formal statement in response to the news that the inquiry is going ahead.

But privately, Conservatives are drawing attention to the fact that Mrs Spelman herself asked for the investigation - and that there have been no official complaints about her.

Still, even the hint of sleaze at the top level of the party is a blow to the Tories.

Mrs Spelman will now be under a cloud of suspicion until the unquiry is completed - which could take months.

Two members of the Government have suggested to me that Labour should not even put up a candidate in Haltemprice and Howden - and let David Davis fight it out with Miss Whiplash and the Monster Raving Loony Party.

The idea would be to portray the Shadow Home Secretary's decision to resign from the Commons as a stunt, which will force an expensive by-election which nobody wants.

It's certainly hard to see what a by-election will prove. If his seat was a Conservative/Labour marginal then, perhaps, a by-election resulting in a crushing Tory victory would prove that the public backs Mr Davis in his campaign to defend "fundamental British freedoms".

But it's actually a Tory-held seat where the Lib Dems are the challengers - and they're not even going to stand against him. Referring to Wednesday's vote on holding terror suspects for 42 days, Mr Davis said that if he is returned to Parliament it will be "with a single, simple message - that the monstrosity of a law that we passed yesterday will not stand." But the message, surely, will simply be that without a Lib Dem candidate, his is a safe Tory seat.