From porn to political chaos, UK expenses row spreads

By Luke Baker

LONDON (Reuters) - Like many political scandals, from Watergate to Italy's notorious "Bribesville" affair, Britain's parliamentary expenses row has its roots in humble if somewhat undignified events.

In March, the husband of Jacqui Smith, Britain's interior minister and one of the most powerful politicians in the country, had to publicly apologize for charging two pornographic films he watched at home to his wife's parliamentary expenses.

It followed a disclosure about Smith's use of parliamentary housing allowances, and led to a flood of revelations about politicians' expenses in The Daily Telegraph newspaper that has gripped the nation for the past four weeks.

Smith, once regarded as a future potential leader of the governing Labour Party, has now announced she is resigning, becoming the latest in a string of members of parliament (MPs) to be brought down in the slowly seeping affair. Another senior minister, Hazel Blears, announced on Wednesday she was going.

At its heart, the scandal is about MPs, who are relatively lowly paid in Britain by comparison with politicians in the United States or elsewhere in Europe, earning around 65,000 pounds ($108,000) a year, using the expenses system to its fullest extent in order to flesh out their income.

In some cases the claims have been absurd: one MP charged more than 1,600 pounds for a floating duck house, another for horse manure, one for cleaning his moat and others for everything from tennis court repairs to a bath plug. Voters have been outraged, seeing parliament, where MPs sit on green leather benches and follow stuffy traditions dating back 800 years, as little more than a clubby world for a few to enrich themselves and feather their nests.

The most egregious cases -- or certainly the ones that have angered Britons the most -- have involved second home allowances and the ability of those who represent districts outside London to switch the first and second home designation, avoiding costly capital gains tax when they sell property.

As many have pointed out, in the vast majority of cases no rules were broken, but the scandal has revealed such an unseemly, money-grabbing underbelly to British politics that it now threatens to bring down the government, even if members of all the major parties have been involved in exploiting the rules.