David Wilshire, the Tory MP for Spelthorne, announced last night that he will stand down at the next election after allegations that he had funnelled £100,000 in parliamentary expenses into a private company owned by himself and his partner.
Wilshire agreed to stand down after a meeting with the chief whip, Patrick McLoughlin, but Conservative sources said it was his own decision after discussions with his family and friends.
Earlier, Wilshire had submitted the allegations to the parliamentary commissioner for standards, John Lyon, but it was clear during the day that his efforts to defer the issue would not satisfy the Tory high command.
Wilshire, a former whip and a rightwing moralist, had insisted that his arrangement had been agreed with the fees office, but it is not clear if he had invoices to justify payments to the private company. He said in a statement: "I am very conscious that the allegations and investigation will cause great distress to my family and friends. These allegations also run the risk of harming my local party and our national party's chances of winning at the next general election. In the circumstances I have reluctantly concluded that it is sensible for me not to seek re-election next year."
It had been reported that Wilshire paid up to £3,250 a month in parliamentary office allowances to Moorlands Research Services between 2005 and 2008. Extra invoices were also submitted and the total paid to the firm â€" owned by him and his partner, Ann Palmer â€" was £105,500. Wilshire said the firm had closed last year, but before that had been included in his entry for the Register of Members' Interests.
In an attempt to show wider leadership to MPs during another gruesome week, the Speaker, John Bercow, yesterday urged MPs to accept the pain of paying back expenses, as demanded by Sir Thomas Legg.
His remarks came as more MPs vented their fury at Legg, describing his rulings as "an outrage". Legg was appointed by the prime minister to conduct an independent audit of all MPs' expenses claims since 2004.
Labour MPs continued to round on Brown for failing to provide a lead. One backbencher, David Drew, accused him of slamming goals into Labour's own net.
Harriet Harman, the leader of the Commons, joined criticism of Legg, admitting that some of his rulings were arbitrary.
But Bercow suggested the financial pain suffered by some MPs was worth paying. In an interview for BBC Radio 4's Week in Westminster on Saturday, he said: "If there is a choice of headlines between 'payback time' on the one hand and 'Westminster whitewash' on the other, I would much rather have the former than the latter." Bercow himself paid back an "accidental overclaim" of £978 for mortgage interest.David Drew, the MP for Stroud and a long-term critic of Brown's leadership, said: "It just seems schadenfreude that the very person who set this up gets handed with a £12,000 bill. It is almost hilarious, except it is deeply serious, to set up a review that was going to cause even more problems is an own goal.
"We are great for scoring goals now. The problem is we have got six in our own net this week." A Guardian survey of more than 200 MPs has shown so far that very few are so far owning up to the need to pay five-figure sums, but more than a third are still facing further questions from Sir Thomas.
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