What did David Laws do wrong?

As I understand it, he claimed back from the taxpayer (that’s you and me) a load of money for renting a room from his ‘partner’ without disclosing that he had a close relationship with said partner.

The homosexual aspect has nothing to do with it.

Nor does the fact that he might have claimed back even more money from us had he rented a room somewhere else at an arm’s-length (so to speak) commercial rent.

Iain Dale makes an eloquent case here but gets it wrong, I think:

If he had moved into a one bedroom flat the taxpayer would have been paying far more. If Laws was seeking to maximise his income he would have either designated his Somerset home as his second home and claimed for the mortgage on that, or he would have bought a property in London and claimed for that. He didn’t, and yet he’s being mercilessly slagged off.

What we have done here is create a system where MPs are now, on average, claiming far more than they used to before.

Yes! True. But that is irrelevant. What we are aiming at is to rule out – for any use of public money – financial hanky-panky between family members or people in some sort of close private bond. Even if it costs us something extra to uphold this level of honesty.

It is not enough that transactions involving public money must be honest. They must be seen to be honest.

In my Balkan postings I was now and again lobbied fervently by local Embassy staff members urging me to offer a vacant job to one of their relatives:

"We have served the Embassy honestly for years – you can rely on Sasha to do the same!"

I told them firmly that even if we ended up recruiting someone less able and less honest, there was a vital value for Brits in having an honest process. Which meant a process in which everything was above board and transparent. Sorry, but we were just funny that way.

I spent an hour today chatting to a senior Greek financial expert (based here) who told me in great detail how petty corruption had overwhelmed the Greece system at all levels. Much of the way things have been fixed in Greece goes directly through family members. And look where all that has got them.

It would have been wholly improper for me as Ambassador to allow the Embassy to rent for Embassy staff a flat I owned, unless the whole process had been done in a 200% transparent competititive way with no involvement from me.

It would have been wholly improper for me as Ambassador to instruct the Embassy to buy supplies from a firm owned by one of my relatives, even if the cost to the taxpayer was less than the market rate, unless the whole process had been done in a 200% normal transparent competitive way with no involvement from me.

It was wholly improper for David Laws to claim back all this money from renting a room from a close friend without declaring the close friendship.

If he were not ready to do that, he should have moved somewhere else. Or simply not claim any rent allowance.

He has done well to resign promptly and with dignity. Viva British democracy.

Simple, really?

Update: Matthew d’Ancona gets it spot on:

We did not take advantage of the financial support available to couples, such as travel to and from my constituency,” pleaded Mr Laws in mitigation. Again, however, that was his choice.

His wish was that the relationship between himself and Mr Lundie should remain private. As a consequence, the proper course of action was clearly for him not to make any claims at all related to Mr Lundie’s properties.

In spite of the impression one might have formed from the expenses scandal, MPs are under no obligation to make such claims. I doubt that many taxpayers, considering the prospective impact upon their lives of the painful public spending cuts ahead, will have felt much sympathy with Mr Laws’s argument that he needed £40,000 of their money to protect his sensibilities. Privacy, in this case, was available for free.