lesson for Indian MPs in UK Minister scandal
Many politicians in India will be amused that a Minister in the UK Government has had to resign over financial irregularities. By Indian standards, the allegations are trivial and, compared to what some of our politicians have been accused and convicted of, even laughable. Such response would be understandable given that even policymakers convicted by the courts of grave crimes have tried to hang on to their positions, and only the pressure of the judiciary and the public managed to cut short their devious designs. Perhaps, some of these leaders — and they are thankfully still in a minority — should learn a lesson or two from the British example. This does not mean that the charges against UK's Culture Secretary Marie Miller are frivolous or that she did not try to fend it off with all sorts of explanations — like her Indian counterparts do when they are caught in the wrong. She did, except that eventually it became all too difficult to sustain. As public pressure piled on, she has little choice but to resign from her Cabinet position on April 9.
Ms Miller was elected to the House of Commons in 2005 to represent Basingstoke in south central England. In the next few years, she rose quickly through the ranks of the Tory party and was inducted into Prime Minister David Cameron's Cabinet in 2012. In the intervening years, she claimed about £90,000 in expenses for her property in the south london suburb of Wimbledon which she tagged as her secondary home even though her children, husband and parents were living there. A rented cottage in Basingstoke was registered as her primary residence. In 2011, she flipped the status of the two properties and began claiming expenses on the Basingstoke home.
In 2012, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, in-charge of regulating the financial propriety of MPs, began investigating Ms Miller's claims after the media reported that she may have violated the rules regarding expenses on second homes. Sixteen months later, this April, Parliamentary Commissioner Kathryn Hudson found that Ms Miller had wrongly named the Wimbledon home as her secondary residence, that she should have claimed far less money given that her parents were also sharing the accommodation, and that she had over-charged the state exchequer by around £45,000 for interest on the mortgage. Ms Miller was ordered to pay back this amount but the matter went to the Commons Select Committee on Standards which oversees the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner and consists of 10 MPs (mostly belonging to Ms Miller's party). The Committee diluted the ruling. This infuriated the British public, already upset with Ms Miller, first, for being uncooperative in the investigation, and later, for issuing a half-hearted apology. The situation became so untenable that even strong note of support from Prime Minister Cameron could not stem Ms Miller's fall from grace.