Order, order me a £1,000 taxi!
Bercow claims expenses for 256-mile cab ride to Nottingham and back... for a talk on trust in MPs
JOHN Bercow spent more than £1,000 of taxpayers’ money on a 256-mile return taxi ride from Westminster to Nottingham, it emerged yesterday.
In total during his final year as Commons Speaker, he ran up a £13,627 travel bill with visits to the US, France and Italy.
His expense claims included £1,003.80 in April last year on a cab to Nottingham Trent University – even though an offpeak return train ticket only costs £67.
Aides claimed he was advised to take the taxi rather than public transport due to ‘heightened security concerns’, but critics said the spending defied ‘common sense’. At the event, Mr Bercow gave a speech on how Parliament should respond in an ‘anti-politics age’ at a conference organised by the university’s Political Studies Association.
In his remarks, he defended breaking his promise to only stay in the role for nine years. Mr Bercow, who eventually stepped down at the end of October, said it had been ‘essential’ for him to remain to preside over the Brexit wrangling.
‘Wherever you go, whether it be down the pub, at the dinner table, standing at the school gate or in conversation with colleagues by the water cooler, there is no doubt people are talking about Brexit, politics and Parliament,’ he told the audience of more than 400 academics.
‘It is the most important issue in the country right now, which is why it is essential for me to be in the chair while the process remains uncertain.’
Mr Bercow also argued that the Com
mons ‘much timetable more fluid would and flexible’ have in to future become as he suggested ‘the arrival of remote electronic voting cannot be deferred forever’.
Other expense claims submitted by Mr Bercow last year included almost £7,500 on a US trip in May that included visits to Washington DC, Virginia and Boston.
A bill of £2,639.74 was also racked up for a trip to Brest in France for a G7 conference in September.
And Mr Bercow put in a £74 claim for a train ticket to Heathrow en route to the Edinburgh Festival.
James Roberts of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: ‘Frittering taxpayers’ funds on his farewell tour is a sad end for a Speaker who came in committing to clean up parliamentary expenses. Like so many public officials, a common- sense approach to keeping down travel costs and entertainmailplus. ment expenses became a tall order for this spendthrift.’ A Commons spokesman said: ‘Due to heightened security concerns for the safety of MPs, Mr Bercow was advised it was safer for him to travel to the university by taxi.’
Mr Bercow, who has been pictured taking public transport in London, faced criticism in 2015 after spending
£172 of taxpayers’ money on taking a chauffeur-driven car to a conference just 0.7 miles from the Commons. On taking the Speaker’s chair in June 2009, Mr Bercow promised to serve ‘no more than nine years in total’. He abandoned that commitment ahead of the 2017 snap election, but allegations of bullying by former members of his staff, denied by Mr Bercow, led to calls for him to quit.
In his final year in the chair, he came under fire for a series of controversial rulings that were widely considered to favour Remain supporters.
He admitted to voting Remain in the 2016 referendum and his wife’s car bore a ‘b******* to Brexit’ sticker. The Speaker is supposed to be neutral.
Since stepping down, Mr Bercow has also made a series of appearances on TV shows around the world – including in Italy where he was filmed shouting the Italian word for ‘order!’.
If public transport‘s ‘unsafe’ how does he explain these?