9. LETTER
TO
RT
HON
JACQUI
SMITH
MP FROM
THE
COMMISSIONER,
2 MARCH
2009
Thank you very much for your letter of 24 February
responding to mine of 17 February about this complaint in respect
of the identification of your residence in London as your main
home for the purposes of your claims against the Additional Costs
Allowance.
I was most grateful to receive such a full and prompt
response. This will be very helpful to me in the resolution of
this complaint and I do appreciate it. I appreciate also the need
to protect your security. If I decide to prepare a memorandum
for the Committee on Standards and Privileges, I will both take
close account of that consideration and show you all the factual
material I would propose to submit to the Committee in advance
so that you can comment on the security aspects of any disclosures
in that material. It would then be open to me to redact any references
which raise issues and which are not essential for the understanding
of the evidence. There is also an additional stage where a Member
can ask the Committee not to publish evidence which I have submitted
to it.
Turning to your letter, you kindly offered to let
me have the days and nights information on the basis of each of
the last financial years. It would, indeed, be helpful to have
that if you are able to produce it for me. It would also be helpful
to have both the number of nights so far this financial year and
so far in 2009 as you suggest. Thank you for your help with this.
Since it is widely known that you receive police
protection, I would like to ask your permission to approach the
Metropolitan Police Service, and, through them, the West Mercia
Constabulary to ask for information based on their logs. Again,
I do not need information in more detail than you have provided
to me and would not wish to put your personal security at risk
in any way, but I think it would be helpful for me to have this
information. I hope therefore you might agree to me approaching
the police to ask if they could provide it to me. I hope also
you might agree that I may share with the police the statistical
information about the number of nights and days spent in each
location which you have given me.
Finally, I set out in my letter of 17 February the
provision in Section 3.1.1 of the Green Book describing the scope
of the Additional Costs Allowance. In explaining that section,
the answer to the frequently asked question "what can I claim?"
given in the preamble to Section 3 is as follows:
"Only those additional costs wholly, exclusively
and necessarily incurred to enable you to stay overnight away
from your only or main UK residence, either in London or in the
constituency. If you receive the London Supplement you will not
be eligible."
Could you let me know whether you considered your
claims under the Additional Costs Allowance against the criterion
that your claims must only be for those additional costs which
enable you to stay overnight in your constituency, given that
I take it from your letter that you have owned a home in the area
with your husband since before you were elected to the House in
1997?
I would be happy to have a separate response to this
final point if it enables you to respond more quickly to the earlier
matters raised in this letter. I can then get on, if you agree,
with contacting the police service.
Thank you again for your prompt help on this matter.
2 March 2009
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