Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ aide quits; blames blogger for “smears”


by Unity    
10:40 am - February 16th 2011

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Only a little over a week ago, blogger Tim Ireland published two blog posts raising legitimate questions about Dorries’ financial relationship with Lynn Elson and her company, Marketing Management (Midlands) Ltd.

Both articles did little more than aggregate information from public sources. Now Elson has started putting out allegations of harassment against Tim and calling it “spiteful and fabricated tittle-tattle”, while saying nothing of the issues involved.

It’s worth remembeing that Nadine Dorries’ expenses claims have been under a considerable amount of public and media scrutiny since May 2009.

Back in February 2010, I was the very first blogger to start asking questions about the large sums of money that Nadine Dorries was claiming for PR and media services.

My own preliminary research indicated that Elson’s company had received over £30,000 from Dorries between September 2008 and June 2009, £24,000 of which had been claimed from Dorries’ staffing allowance as payments for ‘agency staff’.

Most, if not all, MPs employ a parliamentary researcher. Most however are paid directly out of the Parliamentary payroll rather than being employed through a third-party arrangement with an outside company.

Then there’s the salary itself. IPSA’s current pay scales put the salary range for a research assistant at £23K-£33K a year, full time, although judging by the adverts on the W4MP recruitment website, around £25K-28K seems to be the usual going rate.

Throughout her time working for Dorries, Elson was receiving payments of between £3450 and £3525 per month, the equivalent of £41K-£42K a year salary before tax and national insurance (and with no employer’s NI payable by Dorries) putting Elson right at the top end of the scale for a Senior Parliamentary Assistant had she worked for Dorries full-time, rather than splitting her time between Dorries and her other PR work back in Gloucestershire.

There are several reasons then to justify asking questions about the manner in which Dorries has been running her Parliamentary office since September 2008.

There also the little matter of the Daily Mirror report, in January, which claimed that Dorries’ expenses file has been passed to the Police for investigation.

What is not at all clear, as yet, is why this file was given to the police and which of Dorries’ expenses claims, if any, might be under investigation. Is it the issue of main/second home that the police are interested in, or they investigating other matters that have yet to be fully disclosed.

We can say however, that Dorries claimed over £130,000 in expenses, including £30K to a couple of official Tory research operations, during her first five and half years as a backbench MP to cover the costs of PR, Media and Research services, despite being arguably the most consistently ignorant and ill-informed MP in the House.

Can anyone really call that value for money?

—
A longer version of this article is at Ministry of Truth.

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About the author
'Unity' is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He also blogs at Ministry of Truth.
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Conservative Party ,Westminster


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Reader comments


1. Tacitus

Now here we see the full power of blogging. Well done.

I suppose Dorries might argue she is a living example of the Orwelliam analysis that “ignorance is strength”.

2. Larry T

Surely there’s got to be a serious question of “wasting police time” here?

I mean, you read Tim’s blogposts, and they obviously fall under the category of legitimate investigative journalism.

If Lynn Elson & Nadine Dorries want to spin it as “tittle-tattle” that’s one thing, and people can make up their own minds.

But they’ve gone further than that – and are now attempting to use police investigations to avoid unwelcome scrutiny by intimidating their critics into silence. Surely that’s an abuse of the police’s role. Isn’t there a case for prosecution?

3. Sector

Further questions:

Dorries’ eldest daughter is presently declared as “office manager / executive secretary” ie the highest scale for pay in Commons staff circa 40k. Yet despite this all correspondence is directed to the constituency office rather than the parliamentary office. So who is she “managing” and what does she do given there are no other parliamentary staff and it is not known how often she works there?

Lyn Elson was also listed as a member of Dorries’ staff here and a passholder:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmsecret/101217/staff-02.htm

yet declares no other gainful employment despite as you say organising events such as this recently through her company:

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2010/09/03/make-your-community-awards-2010-nominations-here-92746-27194297/

(see email address at bottom)

4. Chris

Nadine Dorries, who is my MP so I feel very strongly about this, is an absolute insult to our political system. The local conservatives deserve to be deeply ashamed of themselves for standing for her. The national conservatives should step in and do something about her. She is way out of her depth as an MP and she should be fired.

It really shows what’s wrong with the system. Under FPTP we elect a local member. We don’t elect a party. But people think they’re voting for a party. So conservative supporters in a predominantly conservative area will go on voting for her. A lot of them probably don’t even know who she is – twitter isn’t as important as it thinks it is.

5. sally

Something you always find about conservatives. They never take responsibility for their actions. Taxes, morals, family values, responsibilities are for the little people.

Do as I say, not as I do is their way.

I’m sure The Daily Tory will get right on this, seeing how important they thought MPs expenses were. Oh wait, that was only when we had a Labour govt.

6. buddyhell

I’ll never forget how she pulled money out of her bra on “Tower Block of Commons”. The woman is a crook through and through. She deserves all she gets.

7. Watchman

Chris,

An argument for local primaries I presume? That way you select the candidate as well as the party, which would work well in Bedfordshire (or Hartlepool equally…).

Can’t say I particularly like Ms Dorries – she has a decidedly illiberal streak to her, but then again I’ve never liked Mr Ireland either, so this whole affiar is a bit of a snooze. Could someone wake me up when they finally prove she is a crook (or when Mr Ireland offers an appology…).


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
  1. Liberal Conspiracy

    Tory MP Nadine Dorries' aide quits; blames blogger for "smears" http://bit.ly/gxi3tE

  2. Alex Tomlinson

    RT @bloggerheads: Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ aide quits; blames blogger for “smears” http://t.co/nCZKwUt via @libcon

  3. Julia Hines

    RT @bloggerheads: Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ aide quits; blames blogger for “smears” http://t.co/nCZKwUt via @libcon

  4. Richard Bartholomew

    RT @bloggerheads: Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ aide quits; blames blogger for “smears” http://t.co/nCZKwUt via @libcon

  5. oy_vey_baby

    RT @bloggerheads: Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ aide quits; blames blogger for “smears” http://t.co/nCZKwUt via @libcon

  6. DanielPoxton

    RT @bloggerheads: Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ aide quits; blames blogger for “smears” http://t.co/nCZKwUt via @libcon

  7. Daniel Hoffmann-Gill

    RT @bloggerheads: Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ aide quits; blames blogger for “smears” http://t.co/nCZKwUt via @libcon

  8. Nick H.

    RT @libcon: Tory MP Nadine Dorries' aide quits; blames blogger for "smears" http://bit.ly/gxi3tE

  9. Angela la Land

    Incredibly bad value for money, the sums spent by Nadine #dorries on PR! http://bit.ly/gsa0Em Liberal Conspiracy via @trakgalvis

  10. beardy biker bloke

    RT @bloggerheads: Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ aide quits; blames blogger for “smears” http://t.co/nCZKwUt via @libcon

  11. Andy Bean

    RT @libcon: Tory MP Nadine Dorries' aide quits; blames blogger for "smears" http://bit.ly/gxi3tE

  12. sunny hundal

    Also, is anyone digging into what's going on with Tory MP Nadine Dorries? Aide resigns abruptly, blames "tittle-tattle" http://bit.ly/gxi3tE

  13. Carina O'Reilly

    RT @libcon: Tory MP Nadine Dorries' aide quits; blames blogger for "smears" http://bit.ly/gxi3tE





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