Tory MP Chris Davies could face byelection after fake expenses claim

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/23/tory-mp-chris-davies-fake-expenses-claim-brecon-radnorshire

Version 0 of 1.

The Conservative MP Christopher Davies has been found guilty of submitting fake expenses invoices for £700 of landscape photographs to decorate his office, meaning he could be kicked out of parliament under the recall process.

The MP for Brecon and Radnorshire was not jailed, but was fined £1,500 and given 50 hours of community service at Southwark crown court.

Davies has not been suspended by the Conservative party but he will now face a recall petition to see whether his constituents want to force him to face a byelection.

A petition is opened when any MP is convicted of providing false or misleading information for allowance claims and a byelection is triggered if this is signed by at least 10% of the local electorate.

Davies was told he had committed two very serious offences that were absolutely intended to deceive, when he appeared before magistrates last month to admit two charges of attempting to provide false or misleading information for an allowance claim.

In sentencing the MP, Mr Justice Edis said: “It seems shocking that when confronted with a simple accounting problem, you thought to forge documents. That is an extraordinary thing for a man with your position and your background to do.”

Ian Lavery, the chair of the Labour party, called on the Tories to discipline Davies. “It’s shocking that the Conservative party has still failed to take action against Christopher Davies, over a month after he admitted stealing from the public purse,” he said.

“MPs getting away with this kind of self-serving, dishonest behaviour turns people off politics. Theresa May has continued to rely on his vote for her botched Brexit deal, when she should have kicked him out of her party immediately.

“Christopher Davies has shown he is not fit to sit in parliament. The prime minister should finally do the right thing and get rid of him.”

The two charges related to the period in which Davies was setting up his constituency office after the 2015 general election. He had contacted a photographer in his constituency and bought nine images from him to decorate and display in his constituency office, initially using his own money to pay £700 for them.

There were two budgets available to him: the startup costs budget for office furniture and IT equipment, and the office costs budget, both of which he could claim the full amount from.

But Philip Stott, prosecuting, revealed Davies found in February 2016 that only £476.02 was left in the startup costs budget, with £8,303.75 remaining in the other. He then created two fake invoices, so the £700 cost could be split between the two budgets – £450 to the startup and £250 for the other.

The judge said: “There was no error here. What you did was done quite deliberately and it must have taken some time to create your fake documents. MPs ask the public to place their trust in them and in an election that’s what happens.

“They become the guardians of the nation’s democracy and depend on the public holding them in high esteem. Any significant betrayal of that standard is serious and crosses the custody threshold.

“The recall process may end your political career – that’s part of the machinery.” The process can result in MPs who are handed prison terms of less than a year being subject to a petition to oust them.

For the defence, Thomas Forster QC said his client was in a privileged position as an MP, but his offending was a mistake rather than a “return to the bad old days” of “maxing out expenses accounts”.

He added: “There is a very real likelihood that his political career is in tatters. This is a tragically disastrous set of circumstances to which I accept he is the author. It is not a financial cost, it is a harm to the integrity of parliament.”

Forster said his client underspent across every single budget.

For the prosecution, Stott said it was accepted that Davies had not sought to profit financially from the action and that he was entitled to claim for the pictures. However, he said Davies was not entitled to split the costs across two budgets, and any claims had to be accompanied by genuine invoices.

Davies served as a councillor in Powys before he was elected as an MP at the 2015 general election.

He served as parliamentary private secretary to the Wales Office from January to July 2018. Before entering politics, he worked as a rural auctioneer, an estate agent and also managed a mixed veterinary practice in Hay-on-Wye.