UK MP’s Spent over £74million on Expenses During the First Year of the Pandemic
What on earth did they spend it on?
In 2020, UK MP’s spent a reported £74,155,910 on expenses— during a pandemic.
That converts to around £104,000 of additional spending that’s on top of their basic salary of £81,932… Each.
What blows my mind is that those expenses are over £14million higher than a pre-covid year (2018-2019).
Weren’t we all supposed to be locked down?
How did they spend so much?
To put that into perspective. The average UK salary is £38,131, so you’d need to work full-time for 367 years, just to earn the ‘additional’ £14million they spent.
So what exactly did they spend £74million on?
Following on from the 2009 parliamentary scandal I wanted to see where the money is going now.
There were 713 members of parliament listed in the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority’s expenses report.
It shows us that each MP cost the UK tax-payer approximately £104,000 (excluding their salary).
How their expenses break down for the tax year 2020-2021
The Reasons for the Expenditure
Let’s take that £9million in accommodation expenditure for example. It’s not hotels.
Each MP gets a budget of £23,010 “for renting a property in the London area”… Aka their second home.
But what you may not know is that they can claim an extra £5,435 each, as “an uplift to cover the cost of one dependant.”
Or an extra £10,870 each to “cover the cost of two dependants.”
I don’t know about you, but isn’t your base salary supposed to cover the cost of your dependants?
If you’re not actually paying for them, then by definition, they’re no longer dependants. Right?
In actuality, your taxes paid for their dependants. So I guess they’re actually your financial dependants now.
It gets worse…
Each MP was also given “an uplift of £16,480 for Covid-related business costs” —which they absorbed into their ‘additional staffing’ budget. A budget that was almost £13million higher than a pre-pandemic year (2018-2019).
How can your business costs increase that much working from home, with most non-essential staff being furloughed?
As for travel expenses, to be facetious, the £2million they spent, at the HMRC rate of 45 pence per mile, would equate to just over 4,564,108 miles.
That would get you to the moon and back almost 10 times. Which is not as close as you may think… and becomes even more difficult to get to when there’s a ‘stay-at-home’ order enforced.
Let’s be honest, this laughable report shows that there is ‘fuckery’ afoot.