Wednesday 13 July 2011

The infamous 274 - Number 2

Is Henry Smith, Conservative MP for Crawley.

EUReferendum, Richard North, posts that Henry believes in having his foot in both the 'Aye' and 'No' camps - in other words abstaining fence-sitting - and that also Conservative Home, as we all know, indulges in a little mis-reporting spin.

One wonders if he is trying to emulate his leader by sitting on the fence?


Update: Err, can an MP use his constituency office to flog off his unwanted family possessions? 

Update 2: Courtesy of Christopher Booker, another little problem for Our Henry: "According to Erskine May, MPs may vote in opposite directions only when they have made a mistake. But they must then explain to the House which side they had intended to support. Otherwise, the gambit practised by the member for Crawley, Mr “Facing Both Ways” Smith, is officially “deprecated as unparliamentary”. No doubt this man will go far.

4 comments:

James Higham said...

He can if no one says anything.

WitteringsfromWitney said...

JH: Don't believe so. MPs cannot use constituency material for personal gain and that must include using the office phone nbr for personal gain, albeit £1.

TomTom said...

HMRC has rules and using taxpayer funded exempt buildings for commercial activities must constitute a breach of MPs' tax status

WitteringsfromWitney said...

TT: One would have thought so - now we have to see whether HMRC do anything about it.......