Zero tolerance for Tory sleaze

‘What gets me,’ said David Cameron in a speech to the CBI last November, ‘is the deliberate extravagance committed by the people at the top of the government machine, the administrators and managers and quangocrats who administer public money.’ He went on to name Home Office officials who had blown £800,000 on taxis in a year, the MoD, which spend £2.3 million on a headquarters for itself while soldiers in Afghanistan had to do without their proper kit, and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which ate its way through £1.6 million in just six months on hotels and conference centres.

It was a fine and timely speech by the Conservative leader, striking a chord with an electorate increasingly shocked by public sector waste. Unfortunately, it has now become clear that there is one class of extravagant public servant which Mr Cameron omitted to mention: his own MEPs, and to a lesser extent, his Westminster MPs.