The new Speaker, John Bercow, is reported to have ordered a £20,000 refurbishment of his official grace-and-favour flat in the Palace of Westminster. The Daily Telegraph (who else, eh?) reports on a confidential and detailed note that it has seen:
The confidential document shows that he has ordered redecoration for Speaker’s House totalling £20,659.36.
Of this, £3,600 has been spent on fitting locks to the windows and having workmen check that access ducts in the wall panelling are lockable or childproof.
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A further £3,880 has been spent on planters to provide additional child safety on the terrace.
One of the two studies is to become a playroom, with £1,087 spent on redecorating it.
Apologists for the Speaker have been quick to defend his spending plans as “child-friendly” and “family-friendly”. “It’s perfectly justified,” one Bercow supporter told me this afternoon. Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, Mike Granatt, who was a spokesman for Bercow’s predecessor Michael Martin, said the Speaker’s contract required him to live in the flat and it was “not unreasonable that the place should be made safe for his kids”.
Hmm. Perhaps John Bercow and his army of fans inside and outside Parliament could explain why having a wife and three kids justifies spending £6,764.30 on a new sofa suite, £760 on window seat cushions and £275 on eight lampshades. Are they special “child-friendly” cushions? Could he not find a sofa suite big enough for five people that cost less than £7,000? Here is one I found at DFS for less than a grand.
Bercow has form on this issue – MPs knew about his alleged “flipping” before they elected him (with Labour MPs backing his candidacy simply to spite David Cameron and the Tories). The Telegraph reports today that he has paid “£6,508 plus VAT to HM Revenue & Customs to cover the tax he could have been asked to pay. He also paid back £1,470.62 that he claimed on his office expenses for accountants’ services in helping him complete his tax return.”
To borrow from John McCain: “That’s not change we can believe in.”
In fact, I have long argued, as have others, that reforming Parliament and politics involves much more than electing John Bercow as the new Speaker and having him a don a lounge suit in the Commons. Bercow needs to change the mindset and the mentality of our MPs – and he could start by changing himself.
(Disclaimer: the New Statesman backed John Bercow for Speaker).