Public have their say on expenses at Grieve meeting

Although there was criticism of members of parliament generally, none was directed at Mr Grieve personally.
Mr Grieve, who lives in West Kensington with his barrister wife and two teenage sons, claimed just under £19,000 in 2007-8 for his second home, a cottage close the the Thames near Marlow, which is not in his constituency. He claims for rent, council tax and gardening bills only.
He c claimed £335 for petrol and £1893 for rail in 2007-8, and this includes, to the surprise of some in the audience, the tube fare to and from Westminster. However this year he is not claiming for mileage, he said.
Mr Grieve also handed out a list of his diary movements for the last two weeks, which showed that he returned home at 11pm or later due to work commitments on eight occasions.
Although the meeting was orderly, and supportive of Mr Grieve, there was anger too. One person said: "My wife (a nurse) was charged £3 to park in a hospital car park while she was on a shift. It's things like that that make me very angry indeed."
Another said: "If I told my chief finance officer that I wasn't putting in receipts for anything under £250 he'd have something to say about that."
Another said: "If I hire an accountant to check expenses, and he he fails to do so, he is fired. MPs are only supposed to claim what is required to carry out their duties and it's quite clear that there's been a massive breach of that rule."
Talking about the publication of expenses, another said: "What we saw this week was frankly an outrage, it puts two fingers up to all of us, and what was the greater outrage was that you (MPs generally) allowed it to happen."
Mr Grieve said he was "dumbfounded" by the amount of information that had been withheld without reason when expenses were published this week.
He said: "We were told there was a need for it, to cover confidential information such as telephone numbers, but the level of redaction that's taken place is well above that and includes information that's utterly innocuous." He said that if anybody wanted more information about documents relating to him, that he would provide it, "and if I can't I will explain why."
Mr Grieve said MPs shouldn't be stopped from having other jobs, but that he had not taken on any work for 12 months, since becoming shadow justice minister. He said: "It's very unlikely that I will ever do any professional work again if we are elected and if I were given a place in David Cameron's government."
Chris Brown, of Gerrards Cross Parish Council, asked whether Mr Grieve was able to influence decisions made by Conservative Councillors, and if so, why Conservative controlled Bucks County Council had gone against Conservative Party policy by choosing to build an incinerator.
Mr Grieve replied: "County councillors have a degree of independence, but they also have to implement policy that central government tells them to.... and consider incineration."
The Advertiser's reporter Polly Manser was present only for the second half of the meeting as she was delayed by the closure of the M40 for an accident at Hillingdon. However Mr Grieve spent last night in his constituency home, and was therefore not held up on the motorway.