Allowances and claims by parliamentarians have been in the news a lot recently.  This Question & Answer (Q&A) sheet  should answer the main questions that people may raise about allowances.However, if you need any further information you can click here or email Caroline’s office.

Headline points from the Q&A sheet:

1. Caroline claims legitimate allowances to help serve her constituents. They are not part of the Westminster MP expenses system where MPs were able to claim large sums for dubious household improvements and other perks.

2. Caroline’s allowances are for the costs of running an office, travel & subsistence and paying staff salaries to ensure she can effectively serve a vast region with nine million constituents. In comparison the typical Westminster constituency only has around 90,000 constituents. The South East MEPs represent the same area as 83 Westminster parliamentary constituencies.

3. Caroline’s reporting is amongst the most public and detailed available of all Euro-MPs. In the Southeast region of ten Euro-MPs, no other party has disclosed the same detail of information. Caroline came top, ahead of all the other Euro-MPs in the Southeast (Conservatives, Labour, LibDems and UKIP) in the Open Europe openness rankings of Euro-MPs. The rankings of Southeast Euro-MPs are below..

4. Caroline and other Green Euro-MPs have led calls for a clearer and more detailed reporting system: for example Greens have urged other parties to back a move to force all MEPs to declare 50% of their general expenditure receipts but other European Parliamentary parties have opposed reform, including the groups in which Conservative and Labour Euro-MPs belonged.

You can access the Question & Answer sheet here.

SE MEPs’ Transparency Ranking* by Party - ranking by Open Europe. 

Caroline came top in the Southeast with 43 points.

Caroline Lucas 43 Green Party

Richard Ashworth 38 Conservative

Daniel Hannan 34 Conservative Party

James Elles 30 Conservative Party

Sharon Bowles 28 Liberal Democrat

Peter Skinner 26 Labour Party

Ashley Mote ** 24 UK Independence Party

Nigel Farage 23 UK Independence Party

Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne ** 23 Liberal Democrat

Nirj Deva 21 Conservative Party

_________________________

* Open Europe’s ranking is based on a range of activities, including voting records, attendance, written declarations, and whether the MEPs themselves have taken part in wasteful activities, such as the controversial second pension fund.

MEPs have been awarded points based on a ‘Premier League’ model, where 3 points is the highest score, followed by 1 point and 0 points. On attendance, a scale from 1 to 6 was used. A total of 58 points is available for each MEP. In addition, MEPs who have been the subject of substantive press reports of wrongdoing have been shown a ‘red card’ in our ranking and had 10 points deducted from their score.

The ranking has two main categories: ‘Transparency, openness and democracy’ and ‘Fighting waste and misuse of EU funds’.

** 2009 European Election replacements, (for which transparency rating data is not currently available for)
- Ashley Mote replaced by Marta Andreasen (UK Independence Party)
- Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne replaced by Catherine Bearder (Liberal Democrat)