Ex-Labour minister Denis MacShane jailed over expenses
Former Labour minister Denis MacShane is jailed for six months after admitting to making bogus expenses claims amounting to nearly £13,000.
The former MP, who pleaded guilty in November to false accounting by filing 19 fake receipts for “research and translation” services between January 2005 and January 2008, said “cheers” as the sentence was delivered, before adding: “Quelle surprise.”
Mr Justice Sweeney told MacShane his dishonesty had been “considerable and repeated many times over a long period”, adding: “You have no-one to blame but yourself.”
The judge said the former minister had shown “a flagrant breach of trust” in “our priceless democratic system”.
MacShane, who used the money to fund a series of trips to Europe, including one to judge a literary competition in Paris, will serve half his sentence in prison and will have to pay costs of £1,500 within two months.
The politician, who was granted unconditional bail until the sentencing, was facing a term of up to seven years.
His guilty plea followed more than four years of scrutiny into his use of Commons allowances.
Damning correspondence
Parliamentary authorities began looking at his claims in 2009 when the wider expenses scandal engulfed Westminster, and referred him to Scotland Yard within months.
But the principle of parliamentary privilege meant detectives were not given access to damning correspondence with the standards commissioner – in which MacShane detailed how signatures on receipts from the European Policy Institute (EPI) had been faked.
The body was controlled by MacShane and the general manager’s signature was not genuine. One document, dated October 2009, told how he drew funds from the EPI so he could serve on a book judging panel in Paris.
It was not until after police dropped the case in 2012 that the cross-party standards committee published the evidence in a report that recommended an unprecedented 12 month suspension from the House.
MacShane, 65, who served as Europe minister under Tony Blair, resigned as MP for Rotherham last November before the punishment could be imposed.
‘Grotesque mistake’
Police then reopened their probe in the light of the fresh information and he was charged in May – even though the letters are still not thought to be admissible in court.
He is understood to accept that he made a “grotesque mistake”, but argues there was no personal gain from the claims.
He has insisted that he told police “everything and more” that he told the standards commissioner before the criminal case was initially dropped.
