This piece on David Laws in the Guardian yesterday was very good:
David Laws: Diehard liberal with no qualms over wielding Treasury axe
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This blog post makes some good points I think:
The Laws simply don't cater for such privacy
Especially, if you focus on the money, this part (given that if he had been open about his relationship & the London property had been a proper full-on Second Home he could have claimed far *more* money than what he actually claimed)
Quote:
David had put money into this London house - he says he remortgaged his constituency home to do so - and had he been in any other personal circumstances, with a name on the deeds, say, it would have been partly his second home, for which generous expenses of £20,000 per year, have thus far been available. Even those who do not own, but rent, their "second home" in London have been allowed to claim that. And here is David, it would appear, having claimed a fraction of that - half of it or less for most of his time as an MP - as rent, paid to someone who for whatever reason he felt unable to acknowledge publicly as anything more than someone he shared a house with.
The expenses system simply has not the rules to deal with such circumstances. If you ask me, the taxpayer has had a bargain out of Laws's domestic arrangements, much more so than many others from far flung and closer constituencies who have had available to them the simple expedient of being open enough about their relationship to openly buy a house with the person they live with.
So I reckon the Telegraph has done absolutely nobody any favours with this supposed "revelation". I reckon that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards should clear David and that if this has caused any family friction for David, the Telegraph ought to take the blame.
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