Here’s a non story for you: “Tory minister Anna Soubry claimed £14 cost of delivering Remembrance Day poppies.” Shocking, you might think. Typical bloody Tories, always on the take. And that’s what the Daily Mirror would have you believe, but for once I am going to defend a Tory. She’s done nothing wrong.
The story goes like this: ‘Tory minister Anna Soubry claimed the cost of delivering Remembrance Day poppy wreaths to constituents to honour the war dead on her behalf. The office of the former TV presenter, 58 – who was Veterans Minister at the time – billed taxpayers £14.54 for travel expenses for the 32.3-mile trip last November.’
Read that alone and you think, “You are a disgrace. You were earning nearly £100k a year at the time, lots more than soldiers earn and yet you bill the taxpayer to deliver wreaths.” But she didn’t. In fact, Soubry doesn’t claim a penny for mileage incurred with her job. (Now I think she should, but that’s another story.) The real story is that someone from Soubry’s office delivered the wreaths and, being out of pocket, claimed reimbursement which they were fully entitled to do. And they claimed it at the rate of 45p a mile, the same rate claimed by civil servants when they use their own cars for official duty, a rate that is set by HMRC. You can argue that Soubry should have slipped her office administrator a few quid form her own money to cover the costs, but she didn’t and so what?
The Mirror then tastelessly invites comments from the mother of a soldier who died in conflict and a Labour MP who calls for her to be sacked. I mean: really?
I am all in favour of MPs being outed when they are on the take and I always condemned each and every one of them, from all parties, after the expenses scandal. But this is about a sum of £14.54 incurred by a member of staff, not over £40,000 claimed by the Lib Dem MP David Laws, which went to his landlord who just happened to be his boyfriend, something that may have seen him sent to prison if he was claiming housing benefit in the same circumstances.
And it’s the Mirror making mischief. I don’t know anything about Ms Soubry but she’s done nothing wrong here. By all means attack her for her past Commons voting record, or for supporting a Tory government whose policies I despise, but let’s not pretend she has committed some heinous crime.
