Prime Minister Gordon Brown and opposition leader David Cameron told lawmakers Tuesday to pay back disputed expense claims or risk losing their jobs, as the scandal returns to haunt politicians. They were speaking the day after members of parliament (MPs) returned to the House of Commons after a near-three month summer recess to find the expenses scandal, which dogged them for weeks earlier this year, had flared up again.
Cameron, whose centre-right Conservatives are well ahead of Brown's centre-left Labour in opinion polls with a general election due by June, was the first to issue the warning in a breakfast television appearance. "If people are asked to pay back money and if the authorities determine that money should be paid back and they don't pay it back, in my view, they can't stand as Conservative MPs," Cameron told ITV. Hours later, Brown - who said Monday he would pay back over 12,000 pounds (12,800 euros, 19,000 dollars) in gardening and cleaning expenses - took a similar tone.
Asked if MPs who did not cooperate would be kicked out of the parliamentary Labour party, he said: "If, of course, people are not prepared to cooperate, then we'll have to consider that action as well". In May, the Daily Telegraph newspaper started revealing how MPs spent taxpayers' money on everything from a duck island to gardening, triggering a wave of resignations, including then House of Commons speaker Michael Martin. The story is making headlines again because ex-civil servant Thomas Legg - appointed by Downing Street to audit MPs expenses from the last five years - has just written to them, telling many to pay money back.