Feed My Greed, MP Julie Kirkbride admits claiming for £50,000 second home extension for her brother, it just gets better every single day under British rule? all the British political parties are just as bad as each other all on the take and thieving what ever they think they can get away with,
Time for English Rule
Tory MP Julie Kirkbride was mired in fresh controversy tonight after it emerged that she got English taxpayers to part-fund a £50,000 extension to her second home.
The embattled Bromsgrove MP admitted she decided to build an extra bedroom on the Worcestershire flat for her brother, who has lived rent free at the property for the last five years.
She admitted using public cash to fund a £50,000 remortgage, at a cost to taxpayers of an extra £1,632 a year.
MPs are banned from claiming the costs of childcare and Miss Kirkbride recruited her brother Ian, a 59-year-old bachelor, to help care for her eight-year-old son Angus.
Miss Kirkbride claimed the arrangement was necessary because it ‘was inappropriate’ for her son and brother to share a room.
But if she had hired a babysitter, there would have been no need for the extension, sparking new claims that she has milked the expenses system to line the pockets of her family.
She also employs her sister as a £12,000-a-year secretary.
Miss Kirkbride insisted the arrangement was above board and ‘fully complied with the rules’ on MPs' allowances and had been signed off by officials in the House of Commons fees office.
But the revelations were a near fatal blow to her credibility, coming just hours after she had defiantly refused to stand down despite a growing chorus of public outrage.
A study of her expenses shows that Miss Kirkbride claimed £12,420 in mortgage interest payments in 2007-8 at the rate of £1,035 a month.
But after she took out the new mortgage, her monthly claims on the home loan increased to £1,171, a rise of £136 a month or £1,632 a year.
Earlier, Miss Kirkbride said she hoped to defend her seat at the next election but accepted that the decision was out of her hands.
'I can understand why people are
Miss Kirkbride stressed that Tory leader David Cameron had accepted that her arrangements were 'quite separate and quite different' from her husband Andrew MacKay.
But she admitted that she knew Mr MacKay had been claiming second home expenses of £23,000 a year on the couple's London address, despite not having a property in his Bracknell constituency.
Asked whether she had known how her husband was structuring his expenses claims, Miss Kirkbride replied: 'I was aware that he had that advice, and at the time I was a new MP.'
She said at that stage she was 'taking advice' from Mr MacKay, who had already been an MP for some years, over many issues to do with her job.
She accepted he had made an 'error of judgment' by making the claims.
Pushed on her decision to pay her sister, Karen Leadley, a £12,000 salary from allowances for part-time secretarial work, Ms Kirkbride replied that she did an 'absolutely fantastic job'.
'My secretary has been my sister for about 12 years,' she added.
'It has been quite open, everyone has known that my sister worked for me.'
And Miss Kirkbride insisted that she still hoped to stand again at the next election, although she acknowledged that her prospects depended on the support of her local constituency party.
'I would dearly love to be re-elected to the job that I simply adore and which has been very fulfilling and personally very satisfying for me over the last 12 years, but that is not my decision,' she said.
Miss Kirkbride said Mr MacKay had paid a 'big price' for his error of judgment in claiming £23,000 a year against the couple's second home in London when he had no property in Bracknell.
'He was told to do that by the Fees Office shortly after we got married, and he took that advice,' she said.
'I was aware that he had that advice, and at the time I was a new MP, taking lots of advice from him on a whole series of issues.
'I did not question it. We both regret that now because Andrew has given up the career that he loves because he made an error of judgment.'
Mrs Leadley works from her own home in Dorset - 141 miles from her sister's Bromsgrove constituency and 107 miles from Westminster
A new poll by the Conservative Home website today shows a massive 81 per cent of Tory voters think she should resign.
Miss Kirkbride could be in breach of parliamentary rules state office costs should only be for work in the Commons or at an MP's constituency office.
She is also under fire for letting her brother live at her second home in Bromsgrove rent free for five years while running an IT business from the flat.
And it emerged yesterday that he bought £1,000 of electronic gadgets on her office expenses.
The MP had already been attacked for claiming under the second home allowance on the Bromsgrove property while Mr MacKay, who is also a Tory MP, claimed on their joint home in London
Senior Tory officials are frustrated at Miss Kirkbride's failure to explain her behaviour to voters in her Worcestershire seat.
Party chiefs called for her to hold a public meeting with her constituents - 4,000 of whom have signed a petition calling on her to resign.
Campaigners have also demanded she attends a public meeting this weekend, where they will insist she falls on her sword.
In an open letter to activists, the MP has apologised for dragging them into the furore but insisted she did not expect any problems over her second home claims.
'Having spoken with senior officers, it is my intention to try to work my way out of these difficulties by facing my critics, working doubly hard to seek to restore my reputation and by being out and about around Bromsgrove as usual,' she said.
Leader David Cameron has not ordered her to go but stressed again today that she had 'questions to answer' and did not give her his explicit backing.
He admitted the MP was 'very effective' but added: 'She does have some questions to answer, as many, many MPs have questions to answer.
'She is answering those questions and she will do so both in front of my scrutiny panel in Westminster and also to her own constituency party. She will be having meetings with them later on and that is the right thing to do.'
Tory donor and former party treasurer Lord Kalms refused to comment on her case directly but stressed the six MPs already forced out were 'just a starting point'.
Anyone who had seriously breached the rules or acted unethically or immorally should not be an MP, he declared.
A 'Julie Must Go' rally will take place on Sunday and the MP will be presented with a petition telling her to go.
Campaigners hope to have 10,000 backers by the time of the meeting.
This would be the same as the majority Miss Kirkbride received at the last election in 2005, when she won with 24,387 votes to 14,307.
Chair of the 'Julie Must Go' group, Louise Marnell, said: 'What we want is simple - we want Julie to resign and for an immediate by-election.
'If Julie is convince she has done nothing wrong and still has the support of the majority of her constituents, then let the people decide.'
Miss Kirkbride and her husband outraged many when it emerged he had been claiming second-home allowance on their London home, while she collected it on the Bromsgrove flat.
Mr MacKay met with his outraged constituents on Friday and was called a 'thieving toad'. The next day he announced he would stand down at the next election.