One would think lessons would have been learned but oh no. David Gauke, the Exchequer Secretary decides to take on (probably) the majority of the British public at a time of economic uncertainty and accuse them of being morally wrong by paying plumbers etc cash in hand. Leaving aside that most of us are certainly not going to take any lectures from MPs on morals when they quite happily rip off expenses and spend hard-earned taxpayers' money on a whim such as here...
Commons Speaker John Bercow charged taxpayers £624 to have his chauffeur rush him to Devon for a ‘dirty weekend’ with wife Sally before she entered Celebrity Big Brother.....such sanctimonious pontification from an MP is obviously going to lead to papers asking awkward questions. And so it proves:
People who pay plumbers and cleaners cash in hand are doing nothing illegal or immoral, a cabinet minister insisted on Tuesday, as senior members of the Government were forced to admit engaging in the practice themselves.
David Cameron and other senior cabinet ministers including Nick Clegg and George Osborne admitted that they had paid traders cash in hand in the past. And an analysis of expenses claims by The Daily Telegraph showed that two other members of the government — Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary and Sir George Young, Leader of the House of Commons — paid suppliers hundreds of pounds in cash, and claimed back the money from the taxpayer.One is tempted yet again to accuse the coalition of being amateurs but I do wonder if that is too much of a compliment.
