I certainly think there should be a higher level of scrutiny if money is going to someone who is a relative or close friend etc.
However, what David Laws did is not at all the same as e.g. Derek Conway (claimed expenses to pay his son for work which allegedly was not actually done) or
Ian Gibson (claimed expenses to help pay for a flat which his daughter used as her main residence).
Yes, he paid money to his partner, but his partner *was* also his landlord. It's not like he was paying for something which did not exist, or paying rent for somewhere he did not actually live. OK, it was against the rules once they changed in 2006, but I don't see it as being anywhere near as "wrong" as what many other MPs did.
It's not just the Lib Dems who had a lot invested in David Laws... the Tories did too. George Osborne didn't just want any old Lib Dem as his Chief Secretary, to tie the Lib Dems into the unpopular but necessary cuts, he wanted David Laws (& had previously asked him to defect, offering him a front-bench role with the Tories), someone who he said "had been put on Earth" to do the job of Treasury chief secretary. Other Tories apparently also considered him the best man for the job, & are quite disappointed that he has gone.
Danny Alexander has taken his place because he is a Lib Dem, & the Coalition agreement requires a Lib Dem to be replaced with a Lib Dem (or Tory with a Tory). I don't think he's going to be as good as David Laws was though, which is unfortunate given the importance of the position in this current economic situation.
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Originally Posted by Flyboy
What did he do with the money?
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Paid the cost of his accommodation... same as he did before he & Mr Lundie became romantically involved.
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Originally Posted by Flyboy
I can see some relevance to parallels here. Laws paid his partner for a room he neither used, nor intended to use. Therefore paying someone for services never received.
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Hardly the same. Mr Laws may not have used the actual specific bedroom (although we do not actually know that), but even if he did not sleep in that bedroom & instead slept in the same bedroom as Mr Lundie, he still slept in the property in question & still used the property in question. Therefore he still would have had to pay rent, would still have had to contribute to the accommodation costs. Not the same as claiming expenses to pay a relative for allegedly non-existent research (Mr Conway) or claiming expenses to pay for a property a relative used as their main residence instead of him (Mr Gibson).