It would be a lie to say that I feel sorry for the Tory MEPs who have been attacked for paying their staff allowances to companies of which they or members of their family are members, but they are not the most at fault. Giles Chichester, for example, and Den Dover, did at least follow the instruction which came from David Cameron after the Derek Conway affair: they disclosed. The information being used against them is information they have published. More interesting are those who are refusing to disclose. Roughly, the way the European Parliament’s system for staff allowances works is that an MEP can have the full amount (£15,000 per month) sent to his designated paying agent. But the parliament runs no check on whether all the money is in fact dispersed. Once you have retired for six years as an MEP, you can no longer be pursued for any debt to the parliament. So the likely scam is that MEPs pay out only a proportion of the money and invest the rest. Once they have been out for six years without being questioned, they then invite the paying agent to pay the sum into a Swiss bank account, or whatever, thus enriching themselves at public expense. It would, of course, be libellous to suggest that any particular MEP is doing such a thing, but it is interesting that such a small number of them have answered the ‘transparency initiative’ of Open Europe which asks MEPs how much they pay out and to whom. About half the Tory MEPs have answered at the time of writing, four out of 19 Labour MEPs, and only two out of 11 Liberal Democrat MEPs. All seven Tory MEPs who want to leave the Europhile European People’s Party to form a Eurosceptic grouping have answered the questions.
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