Conway to cough up again

Former Tyne Wear Tory faces further rebuke

The independent MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup is Derek Conway, the former leader of the Conservative councillors on the old Tyne Wear County Council, I refer to him as the former Tory because that’s what he is after David Cameron rightly removed the Conservative Whip from him a year ago. Conway has already announced his decision not to stand at the next general election thus removing his embarrassing features from the newspapers whilst the campaign goes on.

No doubt George Smith will be sniggering behind his hand in South Shields this morning,(George took over the leadership of the Tyne Wear Tories after Conway’s ambitions took him out of the region.)

Today the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee has decided that Geordie Derek (son of a  Gateshead gardener) must write them a letter of apology and cough up another £3757 of tax payers’ cash that he used as part of the payment to his son Henry for work that it seems was difficult to find hard evidence of. This is the second repayment that the scheming MP has had to make, yet it only covers 10% of the amount paid to young Henry over the course of three years (the time it took to complete his degree). Conway has already been ordered to repay £13,161 over the similar “work” on behalf of his other son Freddie.

Considering that the costs to us, on behalf of his whole family amount to over £1.5m, Conway can consider that he has been reasonably well treated, perhaps if he’d been claiming such expenses from a private company as part of his employment, he may have been sacked and facing a fraud trial by now, who knows?

I guess the arms of the Standards and Privileges Committee are not quite as long as the depth of Derek’s pockets then?

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::