Defending indefensible

She stated that Mrs Miller was “found to be innocent of all allegations of wrongdoing”. That assertion is certainly not true as both the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and the House of Commons Committee on Standards decided that Mrs Miller should properly have designated the London property as her ‘main’ home and if she had properly done so she would not have qualified for any of the accommodation expenses she claimed and was paid.

At the outset, Mrs Miller had a very simple decision to make and that was to peruse the appropriate parliamentary rules and then to decide whether the London property – where she lived and spent most nights, where her parents lived, where her children lived and went to school, and where her husband lived and went to work as a city lawyer in London – was her ‘main home’ or her ‘second home’. She chose the latter and that decision alone was the beginning of her downfall.

This initial and improper decision has nothing whatever to do with job performance, rule complexity or media frenzy, but everything to do with the receipt of a reported £90,000 of taxpayers’ money she was not entitled to.

Mrs Miller, due to her initial and improper decision, misappropriated public funds and for Claire Perry to consider this type of behaviour in such a cavalier fashion is disrespectful to taxpayers, many of whom have registered their disapproval to this type of conduct at the ballot box and will have a further opportunity to do so in 2015.

Mr R Griffiths Shurnhold Melksham