MPs’ expenses scandal: Taxpayers' bill for police investigation 'could top £1m' (and that's in addition to £2m admin and legal costs)

Police probe into abuses of expenses has cost more than £840,000

Commons authorities initially spent around £150,000 fighting disclosure of details - and well over £2 million processing and censoring receipts.

The police investigation into abuses of parliamentary expenses has now cost the taxpayer more than £840,000.

Up to 13 officers have been working on cases since the scandal broke in May 2009, according to Scotland Yard.
The figures, disclosed in response to a freedom of information request, suggest the final bill for bringing errant MPs and peers to justice could be well over £1 million.

So far, former Labour MPs David Chaytor, Eric Illsley and Jim Devine, and ex-Tory Lord Taylor of Warwick have been convicted of fiddling expenses.
But police are still examining other cases, and the costs of bringing the prosecutions are also not yet known.

A Yard spokesman said its bill up to the middle of last month was estimated at £840,000.

Some £820,000 of that was so-called 'opportunity costs', where officers could have been used on other duties.

'There have been up to 13 police officers employed on the MPs and Lords expenses inquiry between May 2009 and the middle of January 2011, which is the most up-to-date financial information available,' the spokesman said.

'No costings are available per case investigated. Not all the officers have been employed on a full-time basis.
'They have worked on a case-by-case basis and as the need has arisen. The time they have spent doing it has been costed on the basis of the percentage that they have dedicated to this inquiry.'

The bill is the latest financial blow to the taxpayer from cleaning up the corrupt system that was operating at Westminster.

The Commons authorities initially spent around £150,000 fighting disclosure of expenses details, and well over £2 million processing and censoring receipts after they finally admitted defeat.

MPs have repaid some £1.2 million since May 2009 - but that is roughly the same amount it cost to carry out the audit of their claims by Sir Thomas Legg.

When the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) was given responsibility for MPs' expenses after the general election, one of the aims was to reduce the cost of the system.

But while claims have dwindled in the wake of damaging revelations about abuses, some politicians complain that the bill for administering allowances has actually risen.

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