terça-feira, 11 de janeiro de 2011

Eric Illsley

MP Eric Illsley admits expenses fraud


LONDON — MP Eric Illsley has admitted dishonestly claiming more than £14,000 in expenses, becoming the first sitting politician to be convicted over the scandal that has rocked British politics.
The independent member for Barnsley Central pleaded guilty to three charges of false accounting over claims for council tax, maintenance, repairs and utility bills for his second home in Kennington, south London.
He was due to stand trial at Southwark Crown Court in London after denying dishonestly claiming more than £25,000.
But the former Labour politician changed his plea Tuesday, admitting wrongly claiming a revised sum of about £14,500.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it accepted the revised figure.
Simon Clements, head of the CPS special crime division, said: "Eric Illsley, the MP for Barnsley Central, has admitted taking more than £14,000 of the public's money that he was not entitled to.
"This was a significant sum of money and the grossly inflated claims he submitted could not be attributed to an oversight or accounting error -- indeed he claimed that the expenses system was a way of supplementing members' salaries.
"By his guilty pleas he has accepted that he was dishonest in making these claims. As an elected representative, Eric Illsley took advantage of the trust placed in him by his constituents to act honourably on their behalf.
"Instead, he siphoned off public money into his own pockets and betrayed those who rightly expected the highest standards of integrity from him as a Member of Parliament."
On Friday, former Labour MP David Chaytor became the first person to be jailed over the Westminster expenses scandal.
He was sentenced to 18 months after admitting forging documents to falsely claim more than £22,000 for rent and IT work.
Illsley, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, was the only one of three politicians charged over their expenses who is still serving as an MP.
He was re-elected as a Labour MP in the May general election, but now sits as an independent legislator after he was suspended from the Labour Party following the allegations.
If he receives a sentence of 12 months or more will be disqualified as an MP under the Representation of the People Act 1981 and a by-election will be held in his constituency.

Eric Evlyn Illsley (born 9 April 1955) was a British Labour politician, now an independent Labour, who has been the Member of Parliament for Barnsley Central since 1987. In Jan 2011, he pleaded guilty to fraud relating to the Parliamentary expenses scandal.

Early life
Illsley was educated at Hunningley Lane Junior School, Barnsley's Holgate Grammar School for Boys and the University of Leeds, where he obtained an honours degree in Law in 1977. He was an official for the NUM for ten years, including during the miners' strike of 1984–1985. In the NUM, he was a compensation officer from 1978 to 1981; assistant head of general department from 1981 to 1984; and head of general department and chief administration officer from 1984 to 1987.

Political career
Illsley was first elected to the House of Commons in June 1987. He was on the frontbench while Labour was in opposition, but was a backbencher after it won power in 1997. He voted against the privatisation of the National Air Traffic Services (NATS).
On 11 March 2003, Illsley claimed in a speech to the House, regarding possible military action in Iraq: "The report states that any military action must be on the basis of UN resolutions. I fully agree: as a Committee member, I stand by that statement, and believe that there must be a second resolution before any military action is taken against Iraq".[1] One week later he voted in favour of the declaration of war on Iraq, despite the failure of the US led coalition to secure the second UN resolution, seemingly contradicting himself. He has since voted strongly against an inquiry into the Iraq war and has voted strongly in favour of the introduction of compulsory ID cards in the UK.

Expenses
Illsley voted against a bill proposing transparency in MPs' allowances and the publication of a list of allowed expenses, otherwise known as the John Lewis List. Illsley claimed £149,700 in expenses including £90,000 staff costs.
On 19 June 2009 he was one of dozens of MPs identified by the Daily Telegraph as having made "phantom" claims for council tax on their parliamentary expenses, receiving thousands of pounds more than they were entitled to. He was thought to have made the highest phantom claim—over £6,000. He has claimed over £10,000 for council tax in four years although he was charged £3,966 for his Band C property in Lambeth, south London, in this period. He regularly submitted claims for £200 a month, which meant that he did not have to submit receipts. On 19 May 2010 he was charged with three counts of false accounting and was due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on 17 June 2010. He was suspended from the Labour Party and had the Labour whip withdrawn in the House of Commons. He pleaded guilty to three charges on 11 January 2011

   

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