Alan Reid MP - Expenses Statement

This is not an article for publication – it’s far too long for that. It is background information about my expenses. Feel free to phone me for more details

 

Having obtained all the details from the House of Commons Fees Office, I have published my expenses on my website www.alanreid.org  The details comprise claim forms and receipts. Some information like bank account details, home addresses and staff names and addresses have been blanked out for security and data protection reasons.

 

The expenses details comprise the years 2004/05 to 2007/08. The Fees Office is still working on the claims and receipts for 2008/09. I will be able to publish these shortly.

 

Expenses totals for each year can be found at http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/alan_reid/argyll_and_bute

 

I was one of only 27 MPs who voted against the attempt that many MPs made in 2007 to block the publication of these expenses. I was on the losing side of the vote that day, but the High Court forced the Commons authorities to publish all expenses details. So I am pleased that the Fees Office have now supplied me with the necessary files. 

 

The following is background information about my expenses.

 

I will deal with each category of expenses in descending order of total amounts.

 

1. Staff.

 

More than half the annual cost. I employ four staff in my Dunoon office, not all full time, and pay a few thousand pounds each year to Lib Dem research staff to produce research documents which I find very useful. Most of this money is pooled with other Lib Dem MPs so that we can share the costs of producing research papers. All the parties adopt this practice. But the vast majority of my staffing expenses are paid to staff who live in Argyll & Bute and so goes into the local economy. None of my staff are related to me.

 

2. Incidental Expenses Provision.

 

This is office costs. The largest single item is the rent for my constituency office. Because my office is part of a building with a common heating system, the rent also includes rates, electricity and heating. I pay £8,100 a year to Argyll & Bute Liberal Democrats. The Liberal Democrats rent a floor in the building from a landlord. They use one room on this floor and sub-let the rest of the floor to me. The floor space of the Liberal Democrat room is 10% of the total floor space of the floor. So my rent to them is 90% of what they pay to their landlord. Because of a possible conflict of interest I obtained a valuation by an independent surveyor. His valuation concluded that the rent was a fair market rent.

 

3. Travel

 

I fly between Glasgow and London. The House of Commons Travel Office makes the bookings and buys the tickets. These are fully flexible because travel plans are often changed at the last minute due to unexpected events. I use the train and underground to get from the airport in London to Parliament. I use ferry and car to get from home to Glasgow Airport. I also drive several thousand miles a year within the constituency and also use planes and ferries to get about the constituency.

 

4. Additional Costs Allowance.

 

This is the allowance used by MPs to live away from home on Parliamentary business. My main home is in Dunoon. I stay in hotels when in London. Hotels in central London are expensive, but staying in hotels has worked out far cheaper than buying or renting a flat in London. If I had bought a London flat, the taxpayer would pay mortgage interest, Council Tax, repairs and maintenance, furniture, utility bills etc. Because of the fall in interest rates, buying may be temporarily the cheapest, but, over a long period, staying in hotels is definitely far cheaper.

 

The London hotel market is an example of a market in which, because of the high costs of a new supplier entering the market, the supply is fixed, but the demand varies hugely over time. As a result, hotel prices vary wildly according to the time of year. They are highest in summer and on dates on which there is a big event on in London. My average nightly stay, bed and breakfast, since I was elected in 2001, has been £169 a night.  This has varied from year to year and the following table shows prices tracking the boom and bust of the economy.

 

Year                             Average Nightly Amount

2001/02                                               £123

2002/03                                               £124

2003/04                                               £150

2004/05                                               £167

2005/06                                               £185

2006/07                                               £233

2007/08                                               £198

2008/09                                               £184

2009/10 (to date)                                 £137

 

Because I am usually in my Commons office until about midnight and back in it by early the next morning, I stay in hotels within walking distance of Parliament.

 

Because of the size of Argyll & Bute, the Fees Office allow me to stay in hotels and B&B’s when on Parliamentary business in parts of the constituency from which it is not reasonable to return home at night. I am also allowed a second home in the constituency. I have a second flat in Cardross. I use this flat when going for an early flight or coming off a late flight at Glasgow Airport. I also stay at the Cardross flat when attending events in that part of Argyll & Bute. I bought the Cardross flat without any help from public funds. I have no intention of selling this flat, but, should I do so, I will return to the taxpayer any profit made whilst I was claiming the mortgage interest from the taxpayer.

 

The arrangement of two flats in the constituency costs me a great deal of money from my own pocket. I am prepared to spend this money because it helps me to represent Argyll & Bute to the best of my ability.  I own the flat in Cardross and rent one in Dunoon. I claim for the Cardross flat, not the Dunoon one, because the Cardross one is the cheaper of the two and I spend more time at the Dunoon one. Buying is cheaper than renting. For the Cardross flat last year, my only claims from public funds were £2,204 in mortgage interest and £1,494 in Council Tax.  In contrast, I paid, out of my own pocket, £5,100 in rent and £909 in Council Tax for the Dunoon flat. I also pay two sets of utility bills. I have never claimed for repairs or improvements, furniture or fittings, house cleaning or utility bills. If, for example, I stayed in hotels when in the Helensburgh/Cardross area and at the Airport, claimed these costs from public funds, and rented the Cardross flat out, I would be far better off.

 

MPs are allowed to claim up to £400 a month on food without receipts. I have only ever claimed for food when I have eaten out when on Parliamentary business and have receipts to back this up. My food bill has only been a few hundred pounds a year, well below the annual limit of £4,800.  Although I could claim for food eaten in my Cardross flat I have never done so.

 

5. Communications Allowance

 

This was introduced in 2007. Prior to then, the expenditure under this heading could be claimed from the Incidental Expenses Provision. This allowance is to enable MPs to communicate with their constituents. The two main uses I make of it are surgery adverts and Parliamentary Reports. For example in 2008/09 I claimed £7,080 for surgery adverts in the local press, £2,978 for printing a Parliamentary Report, and £2,240 to Royal Mail and £252 to Database Direct for delivering it. The remainder of the allowance was £38 spent posting letters to constituents. The Parliamentary Reports have to be approved by Commons officials to ensure that they have no party political content.

 

6. Miscellaneous.

 

This comprises, Staff travel, House of Commons Stationery, House of Commons Pre-paid envelopes and computer equipment.

 

Contribution to local economy.

 

Something not mentioned in press articles on MPs expenses is the contribution these make to the local economy. I employ 4 people who live in Argyll & Bute. I stay in hotels and B&B’s in Argyll & Bute. I put surgery adverts in the local press. I use a local printing company.

 

Extra costs of representing a large rural and island constituency.

 

I haven’t worked out the extra costs involved., but these must amount to over £10,000 a year.

 

Staff Costs. Because of the long hours driving and the need for someone to help supervise queues at surgeries and summer tour stops, I often take a member of staff with me. In terms of salary, overnight stays, ferry fares, meals this must add up to well over a thousand pounds a year.

 

Overnight stays for myself within the constituency adds up to a few thousand pounds a year.

 

Travel costs within the constituency are a few thousand pounds a year.

 

I need to pay Royal Mail £2,240 to distribute my Parliamentary Report. If I represented an urban constituency this would be carried out free by volunteers, but this is not practical in Argyll & Bute.

 

Surgery adverts. These would cost a lot less in an urban seat because one advert would cover the whole constituency. I know the cost per advert would be more, but with a lot less adverts, the annual cost would surely be a few thousand pounds less.

 

At a rough estimate, the extra costs of representing Argyll & Bute must be over £10,000 a year compared to an urban constituency.

 

Could Costs be Cut?

 

I have been looking at ways of cutting costs. It’s easy to cut costs by doing less work. However, the key aim must be to find a way of cutting costs without giving a worse service to constituents.

 

Staff Costs. No real option to cut costs here. Staff are on fixed contracts.

 

Office Costs. Again no obvious option. Rent is fixed. Most office consumables can’t be bought any more cheaply. When my present phone contract with BT expires, I will look at other options.

 

Travel. Only real cost cutting option here would be to buy non-flexible plane tickets in advance, rather than fully flexible ones. Inevitably, because of last minute changes to travel plans, some of these would be forfeited and costs could even rise as a result. I already travel second class on the train between the airport and Parliament. I already buy books of ferry tickets where this makes sense.

 

Hotel Bills. I could cut my London hotel bills by travelling out of central London. However, this fails the ‘doing less work’ test. The time spent travelling to these cheaper hotels would mean I had less time to work. Also, since I would often be travelling to the hotel after midnight a taxi fare would need to be factored in.

 

Communications Allowance. I could cut this, but, at the expense of giving a worse service to constituents. Not distributing Parliamentary Reports to constituents would cut costs, but constituents would not get my contact details and information on local issues. For the one Report produced in 2008/09, £2,240 went to publicly owned Royal Mail, therefore the net cost to the taxpayer for this transaction was zero. The rest, £3,230 went to local companies for printing and distribution. I could cut costs by using a printing company from outside the constituency, but that would take money out of the local economy. I could stop putting surgery adverts in local newspapers. I could advertise them on my website and Parliamentary Reports instead. About half of those who come to surgeries do so as a result of phoning my office to ask when the next surgery is. The numbers who phone as a result of newspaper adverts is small and it may be that this £7,080 of expenditure could be cut. On the other hand some constituents would be unaware of my surgeries and less money would be spent in the local economy.

 

As you can see from the above, finding cuts that do not impact on the service I give to constituents is not easy.

 

I have always tried to follow the principle that I should not derive personal financial gain from my expenses. I have always been well down the bottom half of the expenses league table. Over the three years of this Parliament for which expenses totals have been published, I am the third lowest of those Scottish MPs who have served throughout these three years. If I had bought a London flat when I was elected in 2001, I would have made a substantial profit by now.  I consider being an MP to be a full-time job and so I have no outside earnings.

 

If you have any queries about my expenses, please phone 07787-570-961.

 

Alan Reid MP              17 June 200