You might have missed an excellent article this morning by my colleague Michael Peel.
He says lawyers are warning that the new threat of up to a year in jail for errant MPs guilty of expense scams is actually less severe than the existing penalty.
Transparency International points out that the current maximum jail time for fraud is 10 years – against the “up to a year” for MPs.
A former SFP prosecutor, Claire Shaw, who is a lawyer at Pinsent Masons, said: “They shouldn’t be passing a special act for MPs which has a tenth of the penalty the wider public face.”
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey