Expenses are not free money

Sir, – As a person who has worked for MSPs and an MP dealing with their expenses, I really must puncture Tom Fowler’s post-truth bubble (Letters, December 6) in regard to politicians’ expenses and what they can spend them on.

Politicians have a salary, which they are paid in full for doing that job. Expenses are an entirely different matter, a finite budget amount, which each politician can access from their parliament for expenditure that enables them to do their job efficiently. Ask yourself if you expect your local MSP or MP to have an office, staff, a telephone, and an email address? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then your politician will need expenses.

Staff costs are the main expense and are paid directly by the parliament. An office to work in involves rent, electricity, gas, telephones, computers etc and politicians rightly claim expenses to pay for these things. They submit forms for these expenses to their respective parliaments and produce the bills and receipts as evidence.

The system is very tightly policed by the parliamentary expenses department and they do not hesitate to query anything they feel has not been properly explained.

Mr Fowler’s notion that a politician can simply walk into a supermarket and buy a couple of bottles of booze and claim it from “expenses” that they can simply trouser without explanation is ridiculous.

Politicians get a bad press and on some occasions this might be well deserved, but the idea that expenses are “free money” to be spent by them willy nilly is just plain wrong. Anya Lawrence. 74B Gray Street, Broughty Ferry, Dundee.