Expenses

I met this chap while out on the Unlock Democracy / Hang-em rally this afternoon. Barry Gardiner’s £198,500 dwarfs Dawn Butler’s £66,000 expenses claims.

Brent councillor James Powney laments the threat and use of legal writ to silence debate, tending towards an environment where ‘legitimate freedom of speech could be restricted by self censorship.’ Legal writ has its strength though. When Brent Labour distributed a leaflet with false claims about Sarah Teather, the Brent Leb Dems took appropriate legal measures. In the face of the legal action, Labour have now admitted their story was false and agreed to pay the Lib Dems legal costs....

Brent’s Labour Group formal apology for issuing leaflets with defamatory claims about Sarah Teather is on page 4 of the WB Times this week. Willesden and Brent Times, 23 April, 2010

LibDem Voice has some news on Brent Centrals dirty politics. Labour Minister Dawn Butler has issued a legal apology to Sarah Teather for calling her a hypocrite over MPs’ expenses. Butler made the accusation while the running of Sarah Teather’s office was under investigation. The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner later dropped the investigation because there were no grounds to suspect any wrongdoing by Ms Teather. This issue came up at the MapRA Hustings on Monday night....

“A letter of complaint against Sarah Teather was sent to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, supposedly from a man at an address in Brent. Then a second letter of complaint was sent, again from this man, but giving a new address. However, this new address does not exist. There is a real address with the same house number and postcode (but different rest of address), at which there is one person on the electoral register – a woman who has the name of someone listed on Labour MP Dawn Butler’s register of interests as being a member of her staff....