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Former MP found to have committed allowance scam (14 November 2012)

Date: 14/11/2012

Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, Former MP found to have committed allowance scam

A former MP for Luton South who had claimed £60,000 including one claim which was almost her entire annual allowance as expenses for broken boilers and phone lines which did not exist was ruled by the jury to have committed the scam. But she would be spared jail after it was found that she was unfit to stand trial on mental grounds.
The biggest commons escape fund scam saw the 57, year old, MP claim £60,000 and having received £53,000. She was representing Luton South from 2004 to 2008.
Moran became one of the most high profile casualties of the MPs’ expenses scandal after it emerged she claimed £22,500 to remove dry rot on a property in Southampton which was neither in her constituency or near Parliament.
Jurors at Southwark Crown Court in London were unable to return a guilty verdict after it was ruled that Moran, of Ivy Road, St Denys, Southampton, was found unfit to stand trial due to mental health issues, which meant proceedings took place in her absence.
But in a trial of issue, the jury found that she had committed 15 counts of false accounting and six counts of using a false instrument over the claims for parliamentary expenses.
After the jury reached a unanimous verdict on all counts Mr Justice Saunders adjourned the disposal of the case to a later date.
Now Mr Justice Saunders has the options of putting Moran to a supervision order, a hospital order or absolute discharge which would stop any further proceedings against her. All in all Moran is not going to face a criminal conviction.
Mr Justice Saunders said that Moran was at present being treated by psychiatrists at home and that the treatment would continue.
The total value of the false claims exceeds any other submitted by MPs exposed in the Commons expenses scandal. Last year former Labour minister Elliot Morley was jailed for dishonestly claiming more than £30,000 in parliamentary expenses.
Moran submitted an invoice for £22,500 in August 2008 which is almost the annual maximum expense allowance for an MP.
She not only flipped by changing her addresses but she also changed invoices so that it looked like the dry rot work had been carried out after naming the Southampton house as her second home.
She had claimed £14,805, for boiler repairs and work on her conservatory in her constituency home in Luton, when it was actually at her house in Southampton, the court heard.
Defending Moran, fraud solicitors, said the case represented ‘a very, very unhappy period for British democracy’.