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May 16, 2009

'Safe seat' MPs three times more likely to have dodgy expenses?

In Has our electoral system contributed to the MPs expenses scandal?, 'Mark Reckons' attempts to trace links between safe seats and dodgy expense claims.


After this, it got me thinking even more. I decided to do a little bit more analysis on this. I divided the data set up into 4 sections. The top 25% of safe seats, the second 25%, the third 25% and the bottom 25%. Because 647 does not divide perfectly into 4 I have had to make them very slightly different sizes. I then totalled up the number of implicated MPs in each quartile. I have taken a snapshot of the result from Excel and put it here:




Now again, I need to caveat that this is not scientific etc. etc. However, using this methodology again there is a clear increase in the likelihood of an MP being implicated in the expenses scandal the safer their seat. It is in fact a fairly steady progression until it leaps up in the top quartile. Using this data, an MP is more than 3 times more likely to have been implicated in this scandal if their seat is in the top quartile as compared with the bottom quartile. They are almost twice as likely when comparing the top quartile with the second quartile.

I had suspected there might be a correlation but I had not expected it to be this stark.

If I am right about this then there are surely very serious questions to be asked about our electoral system. Advocates of First Past the Post always claim as one of their main arguments that the constituency link needs to be maintained (even though STV, a much more proportional system with multi-member constituencies that the Electoral Reform Society and Make Votes Count advocate also has a constituency link). However looking at the above analysis it strikes me that FPTP does not serve its constituents well at all when it comes to this scandal.


See also Himmelgarten Cafe's We need fair votes to restore faith in our system.


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May 16, 2009

MPs expenses: Voters want general election

Almost two thirds of voters want a general election to be held as soon as possible amid mounting public anger at MPs' expense claims.


A poll by ComRes for BBC Two's Daily Politics programme found that 65 per cent of those surveyed felt there should be an election while 33 per cent disagreed.

Politicians who have been "named and shamed" in the expenses revelations should be forced to quit Parliament, according to 64 per cent of those questioned.

The poll also suggests that fears the controversy over MPs' expenses will effect voter turn out at the next election are unfounded.

Although 28 per cent said they were less likely to vote in next month's local and European elections following the revelations, 25 per cent said it had made them more likely to cast their ballot.

Another 47 per cent said the scandal had not affected their decision.

ComRes spoke to 1,011 voters between May 13 and 14.

via telegraph.co.uk

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May 16, 2009

Make MPs' Poverty History

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May 14, 2009

'Cash for amendments' peers suspended

Lords Truscott and Taylor are first to be suspended from Lords since 1643

Two Labour peers will be suspended from the House of Lords until the autumn after being found guilty of offering to try to change the law in return for money.

An investigation into the so-called "cash for amendments" affair has concluded that Lord Truscott, a former energy minister, and Lord Taylor of Blackburn, broke Lords rules saying that peers must "always act on their personal honour".

They will be the first peers to be suspended from the upper house since 1643, when parliamentarians removed those peers who had taken up arms in support of King Charles I.

Two other Labour peers implicated in the affair, the former MPs Lord Moonie and Lord Snape, have been cleared of any wrongdoing but ordered to apologise to the Lords for "inappropriate" conduct.

Full story on the Guardian website

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