Legg letter to Evan Harris MP: "Dr Harris has no issues."

5.45.00pm GMT Tue 8th Dec 2009

Evan Harris, Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon, has been given the all-clear by Sir Thomas Legg. The independent scrutineer of MPs expenses has been examining all MPs claims dating back to 2004.

Dr Harris was asked to provide further documents to support some of the claims he made under the Additional Costs Allowance, and following clarification, Legg stated simply:

"The conclusions about the ACA payments made to you that I now intend to include in my report to the Members' Estimate Committee is as follows: Dr Harris has no issues."

Reacting to the letter, Dr Harris said:

"I am pleased that Sir Thomas Legg has found no problems with my expenses claims.

"The MPs expenses scandal has cast a long shadow over Parliament and strongly damaged public trust in politicians. Throughout my time in Parliament I have consistently voted for reform of the system: for full transparency about MPs' expenses claims, the least generous pension scheme, lower mileage charges, and for MPs not to vote on their own pay.

"Despite this, I will not shirk my responsibility to help clean up the system. For this reason I announced in June that I would from now on only claim for very basic costs (mortgage interest, utility bills, council tax, repairs and a service charge) incurred on my one bedroom flat in London, and additionally backdated this policy to the previous year."

The letter in full is available at the bottom of this page.

Related Link:

Sir Thomas Legg letter to Evan Harris MP.