The Treatment of Rental Income
38. By failing to offset the rental income he received
against his OCA claims, Mr McLeish was in effect over-charging
the public purse for the rental cost of his offices. To put the
matter differently, in charging the full rent to the OCA, he was
claiming more than the rental expenditure he had necessarily incurred
in pursuit of his parliamentary duties.
39. That said, it has to be acknowledged that Mr
McLeish was not improperly using the allowance, in this sense:
that he was not siphoning off the income he received from the
sub-lets for his own private purposes. The evidence available
confirms Mr McLeish's account that the income went into his constituency
office account, where it was used for office purposes.
40. It should also be acknowledged that the implication
of Mr Cameron's letter to me of 5 April 2002 (quoted at paragraph
20 above) is that Mr McLeish made a number of additional payments
from his own resources between 1994/95 and 1997/98 to meet expenditure
on parliamentary business which could not be covered by his OCA
because there were insufficient funds available, and may have
made such payments before then. Mr Cameron has indicated that
if Mr McLeish were able to show that what he had spent in this
way had come from rental income, he might not have been required
to repay that amount to the Fees Office.
41. If it accepts my analysis and conclusions, the
Committee will, no doubt, wish to take these factors into account
when assessing what penalty it would have recommended had Mr McLeish
remained a Member of the House. The Committee may also wish to
bear in mind Mr McLeish's expression of regret for what happened;
his co-operation with my predecessor, with Mr Cameron and with
my own inquiry; and the impact this affair has already had on
him and his family.
26 June 2003 Sir Philip Mawer
