LONDON // David Laws, the chief secretary to the treasury and the man charged with tackling the UK's record budget deficit, resigned yesterday after he admitted to receiving £40,000 (Dh210,000) in parliamentary expenses for renting a room in a house which was, in fact, owned by his partner. The decision to quit was "his alone," the BBC reported Mr Laws saying. He also said he had informed both the prime minister, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister.
"I do not see how I can carry out my crucial work on the budget and spending review while I have to deal with the private and public implications of recent allegations," Mr Laws said. MPs have been banned from claiming the taxpayer-funded allowances on homes owned by their partners since 2006. Yesterday, Mr Laws, a Liberal Democrat minister regarded as a rising political star, said he had done it not for personal gain but to conceal the fact he was gay.
That explanation seemed unlikely to wash as calls grew for his resignation earlier yesterday and as the parliamentary watchdog commission launched an inquiry into the affair. Last year, British politics were rocked when The Daily Telegraph obtained hitherto secret files on MPs' expenses claims. They showed that dozens had been fiddling the system and resulted in a record number of MPs standing down at the general election earlier this month, while three MPs, and a member of the House of Lords, are facing criminal prosecution.
The revelations over Mr Laws have now come back to haunt the fledgling, Conservative-led coalition. Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the committee on standards in public life, speaking before Mr Laws' resignation, said it was "staggering" that the information had only just come to light. "I'm genuinely shocked that somebody who is now chief secretary to the treasury is faced with disclosure of this nature where he clearly hasn't told the full truth to the people dealing with expenses in the House of Commons," he told the BBC.
"Given all the expenses farrago that has gone on over the past two or three years, the fact that it has come to light now when he is a key part of a coalition government is staggering really. "How did this not come out in the [parliamentary expenses] inquiry? Or why, knowing that these matters were in the spotlight, didn't he come forth himself?" Mr Laws apologised for claiming up to £950 a month in expenses for five years to rent rooms in two properties in London owned by the lobbyist James Lundie.
MPs with constituencies outside London - as Mr Laws' - are entitled to claim for weekday living allowances in the capital but not if they are "leasing accommodation from a partner". In a statement yesterday, Mr Laws said: "James and I are intensely private people. We made the decision to keep our relationship private and believed that was our right. Clearly that cannot now remain the case. "My motivation throughout has not been to maximise profit but to simply protect our privacy and my wish not to reveal my sexuality."
Mr Laws, a millionaire, is a former City banker whose main home is in his Yeovil constituency, has now referred the matter to the parliamentary standards commissioner - a move backed by Mr Cameron. "At no point did I consider myself to be in breach of the rules which, in 2009, defined partner as 'one of a couple who, although not married to each other or civil partners, are living together and treat each other as spouses'," Mr Laws added.
"Although we were living together we did not treat each other as spouses - for example, we do not share bank accounts and indeed have separate social lives." Mr Laws said he will now pay back the money he claimed. "I regret this situation deeply, accept that I should not have claimed my expenses in this way and apologise fully." He was one of five Liberal Democrat cabinet members in the Conservative-dominated government. @Email:dsapsted@thenational.ae * With Agence France-Presse