In my last full year as an MP (2023-4) I claimed £103,266 in office costs and staff expenses. 2 people helped me do my job. I claimed no travel , no one off expenses . I supplied my own car and diesel for the task. My two staff members concentrated on following up and handling the detail of constituency cases which I discussed with them. I was grateful for the efficient, well informed and caring way they dealt with a wide range of sensitive issues for people. I did not have any staff to write speeches, research problems, monitor political agendas and highlight issues that needed government attention. I regarded all that as my job as the MP. I wrote my own blog seven days a week to keep constituents informed and paid for it myself. We replied to all incoming emails and letters from constituents by the next working day following receipt.
The Lib Dem replacement in Wokingham, Mr Clive Jones, claimed £178,207 in staff and office costs for the part year 2024-5 he has served as MP, or an annualised rate of £237,000. So he has landed Wokingham and national taxpayers with a 130% increase in the bill for his office. The main reason is large parts of the job of being an MP which I did myself he expects others to do for him. His staff list runs to nine staff employed for part of the year 2024-5. IPSA lists a Chief of Staff, a Communications Officer, a Senior Parliamentary Assistant, a Constituency Support Officer, a Senior Casework Team Leader and 4 caseworkers during the first year.
It is difficult to see why he cannot handle his own communications with the public and media, or why he needs a Parliamentary Assistant when an MP has full access to Commons papers and can go into the Chamber to find out what is going on.He should not need someone on the state payroll to design and advise on campaigns.
On top of his claims for his large office he claimed £20,995 for accommodation in his first nine months, and £2579 for travel including some for dependants. This is an expensive MP. No wonder our taxes have to go up with public servants like him undermining public sector productivity, unwilling or unable to do the job they are paid to do without people to do most of it for them.
January 3, 2026
Indeed children let loose in the sweet shop!
But of course the truly expensive things are when our halfwitted government spend hundreds of billions on insane and often actually harmful things like Climate Change, Net Zero, Equality Laws, subsidising renewables, banning fracking, drilling, mining, rigging energy markets, the vast net harms of the Covid “vaccines” and net harm lockdowns, the Covid “vaccines” statistics cover ups, the counterproductive wars, the open door to low skilled immigration, the vast government propaganda agendas, wars on landlords, private schools, motorists, vastly bloated state sectors, huge payments to feckless scroungers who could easily work…
Also in rigging markets in broadcasting, energy, banking, heating systems, schools and universities, in two tier justice, transport systems, planning, housing, building controls, mad employment laws …
January 3, 2026
To increase productivity in the state sector just stop doing the things that do net harms or no good and release the people doing these things to get real and proper productive jobs in the private sector. This alone would double state sector productivity and help grow the productive sector and the economy hugely. Start with all those pushing the net zero rip off energy devil gas religion. it is hugely harmful and total lunacy.
January 3, 2026
I see that Amanda Pritchard has been awarded a dame-hood for working at and running the NHS so appallingly for so much of her life! (Modern History at Oxford seems to be how she got in). I would have thought than the vast majority of the doctors in the NHS (usually paid a tiny proportion of the CEO’s pay) would have made far better CEOs! Whenever I heard her say anything she always sounded daft, ill informed and rather irrational!
Simon Stevens PPE Oxon before her was just as bad but slightly brighter I think, he is now in the Lords rewarded for abject failure!
January 3, 2026
“How a Lib Dem MP increases costs and lowers productivity“
Well implementing their dire mad policies would certainly do that!
Liberal Democrat policies focus on fairness, opportunity, and protecting rights, emphasising tackling the cost of living with free school meals, investing in the NHS for quicker GP access, and boosting environmental action like the insane net-zero targets, spending even more on benefits (ending the two-child limit, improving carer’s allowance), promoting “equality” (more hate crime laws, LGBT+ rights), even more taxation (targeting big corporations, taxing capital gains more), continuing with open door immigration, no deterrent justice… rather like so many ( words left out ed) Labour MPs in fact!
January 3, 2026
He may have spent more but if his spending is within the guidelines then I guess he’s well able to have more staff and claim the necessary expenses.
Reply That is why the public sector costs so much and delivers so little for it. You shoukd not claim expenses just because the rules allow it.