Portrait of the week | 13 February 2010

Three Labour MPs, Mr Elliot Morley, Mr David Chaytor and Mr Jim Devine, and a Conservative peer, Lord Hanningfield, were charged with false accounting under section 17 of the Theft Act 1968 with regard to claims for parliamentary expenses. Lawyers for the MPs let it be known that they might claim immunity from prosecution under parliamentary privilege guaranteed by the Bill of Rights 1689. Mr David Cameron said that he had asked Sir George Young, the shadow leader of the House, to draft a Parliamentary Privilege Bill to clarify matters. Lord Hanningfield was quickly suspended from the parliamentary Conservative party and stood down as leader of Essex County Council. Three days later the MPs were suspended from the parliamentary Labour party. The prosecutions had come a day after Sir Thomas Legg, the retired civil servant entrusted with examining claims relating to second-homes allowances made by MPs between 2004 and 2008, ordered 390 MPs to pay back expenses totalling £1.12