MPs and peers still enjoy travel perks
Updated on 26 September 2009
You might think that after the great expenses fiasco, that our MPs would get it.
But no, they still don't or at least many of them don't. Leaving others furious.
Labour's John Mann, vitriolic in his condemnation of fellow MPs who had their noses in the expenses trough, told Dispatches: "They still do not get it. It's still the old boys' club."
And what they are not getting is the vast Westminister system of free global travel for which you, the taxpayer, are footing the bill. None of this the subject for any investigation, review or scrutiny in the wake of the expenses scandal in May.
Dispatches discovered that taxpayers sent a group of MPs and peers to the South Pacific this summer (business class) to fact-find on global warming. They didn't actually go to the major global warming conference held in the region. Only one of the eight-strong delegation has any climate expertise.
The Commonwealth Parliamentatry Associaton which sent them, said they were working "extremely hard". In fact the pace was that of a leisurely royal visit at bestn 14 August for instance saw most of the day on various beaches with just one half-hour visit to a school.
Moreover, right at that time Fiji, one of the islands they visited, was in deep crisis. Its military dictatorship about to be expelled from the commonwelath itself. Yet in all the eight days the delegation was on Fiji - not one of them issued one word of criticism for the junta there.
And that organised by the Commonwealth parliamentary group set up in 1911 to foster international democracy.
The irony of sending its delegation to a military junta, like the irony of flying the globe to study global warming - entirely lost on the organisation's secretary who told Dispatches it was an important and effective visit.
But it was just one of several such taxpayer-funded trips. Though they hate you using that word, insisting on "visits".
Well, next week they are off on yet another business class "visit" to Tanzania. Already the adverts around parliament have enticed MPs and peers with the chance of mountain climbing and a safari, all paid for by the Tanzanians.
Membership for life of the CPA sets you up for pretty much limitless taxpayer-funded global travel and all for just £35. All you have to do is keep your seat in the Commons. As for peers, well, you are pretty much there for life.
But the CPA is just one of a whole raft of outfits which exist to do great works no doubt, but in fact also offer comfortable global travel and all of it paid for by the taxpayer.
When Dispatches tried to find out more, we were largely rebuffed. the websites of these parliamnetary groups and associations will help you very little.
The detailed workings of many such groups are beyond the reach of the freedom of information acts. A recent test case saw former commons speaker, Michael Martin, slapping a certificate order, preventing details being published about one group offering free travel, the British Council.
Many MPs will also tell you the popular ruse across parliament is to use a business trip then get a cheapo holiday off the back of it. Dispatches will reveal how a number of prominent MPs have been donig this recently. It is not actually against the rules of select committees for instance, to do this.
One writes in a national newspaper of making sure there is plenty of time for golf on these taxpayer-funded trips and then writes again of setting up yet more golfing time after the trip has ended in Australia.
Try and enquire of MPs what they have been doing across the summer recess of 82 days and only a fifth bothered to reply to our question. Campaigning groups find they have fared little better. Only 42 of around 650 MPs replied when the group 38 Degrees asked them simply: "What work have you been doing during the summer recess?"
And there are some truly spectacular travellers. Tory Nigel Evans has been to around 50 countries in the past decade. The very day after he told the commons that the 82-day recess this summer was for working in the constituency, he was off on yet another free trip, this time to India.
Of course some, much, foreign travel is essential for MPs. Valuable work is done. but the system is so secretive and unaccountable that it is impossible for voters to judge where junkets begin and justification ends.
Astonishingly, after all that our parliament has been through in recent months, there is zero sign that the commons or lords sense any need to open the system up to any kind of genuine outside scrutiny.
