Our Honourble Members?

Our local paper today has the headline 'Our Honourble Members'; praising the towns two MPs for not claiming second homes. MP who live within, say, an hours commute from London should not need a second home.

But the headline rather ignores the standards and privileges committee report from 2006.

The Committee found Salter guilty of using pre-paid House of Commons’ envelopes to distribute unsolicited material and a failure to say it had been paid from his parliamentary allowance.

He had to pay it back, not unlike the current crop of MPs mired in sleaze.

Rob Wilson included party material with a report when it was delivered which carried a specific reference to the local party name 'Reading East Conservatives'.

Mr Wilson has apologised for the fact that a number of copies of the report were delivered along with copies of a Conservative Party survey with the parliamentary material not separated from the party material, as Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) guidance requires

There are more tales of Martin Salters deeds at ex Reading MP blog jane-griffiths-my-book.

I have written before about the standards of Salter before.