MEP Expense fraud unveiled by Chris Davies

Date published: 21/02/2008

Rochdale Euro-MP Chris Davies has unveiled that MEPs abuse expense claims to the extent that "it makes the Derek Conway affair at Westminster look like small change".

Europe’s anti-fraud chiefs have launched an enquiry into the abuses after MEP Davies revealed the content of a secret report of a random audit in the European Parliament.

As part of European Parliament’s Budget Control Committee, Mr Davies was allowed to see the document but he was under surveillance and could not take notes or copies. He was supposed to sign a confidentiality agreement but did not do so and then revealed that a figure in the region of £100 million was being abused by MEPs in payments to office staff.

In one case it is believed that an un-named MEP paid an employee that did not exist, while another paid out a "Christmas bonus’ to an assistant that was 19 times higher than their monthly salary.

There are 785 MEPs in the European Union and most use the expense system that sees them appoint a "service provider’ to deal with cash for staff. In some instances the "service provider’ turned out to be a family member or friend, or they were completely made up.

"When I looked at this report my first reaction was to laugh at the outrageous extent of the abuses" said Mr Davies. "Then that feeling turned to anger and the realisation that the police or the anti-fraud people should be looking at this."

Mr Davies said that large sums of money paid as expenses were impossible to account for. The document did not name any MEPs and raised huge questions about the system used by the European-Parliament for claiming expenses.

This expense system used in Europe has been recommended to be used by Westminster in the wake of the Derek Conway affair, who has been suspended from Commons and is expected to step down as an MP at the next election. These astounding revelations make that prospect extremely unlikely as it appears the system gives MEPs plenty of scope to hide the true extent of payments and recipients.