Review opinion: Anne Main should answer questions (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

Review opinion: Anne Main should answer questions

2:43pm Monday 1st June 2009 in

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This newspaper does not take sides.

The Review has no political motive and has often criticised the Labour Government; the Liberal Democrat administration at the district council; the Tory-controlled county council, and, of course, Conservative MP Anne Main.

If any step out of line, we believe it is a newspaper’s duty to report the facts and let our readers make up their own minds.

As a result we believe Mrs Main should be held to account for her expenses claims.

After all, we pay the mortgage interest and also paid for the furnishings of her St Albans city centre flat where she and, apparently more regularly, her daughter have lived.

Whether or not she has helped her constituents in the past is irrelevant, that is her job – she is paid to do it.

What is not irrelevant is - what many consider to be - an abuse of Parliament’s expenses system. No doubt she will claim she has stayed within the ‘spirit of the rules’ as most MPs have. She probably did. But it is precisely that point that makes it even harder for her constituents to understand why and how this was allowed to happen.

Mrs Main has hardly spoken to the Review since we published her expenses in our newspaper a fortnight ago. Our calls are going unanswered and we have now been asked to email questions to her, which are also going unanswered. Do you think that is the correct way for your elected MP to act? To talk only to those who nail their political colours to the mast and support her? It makes no difference to us, we will continue to print the facts as we find them.

And what of her Samuel Square flat? Where will the money go when she sells it?

Mrs Main has told us she is in negative equity on the property bought for £249,000 in November 2006.

However an estate agent has told us that it is now worth in the region of £322,000. Minus her £25,000 deposit, that could leave as much as £48,000. Will any profit be returned?

We will seek to get these questions answered and will not patronise our readers by even attempting to suggest that you vote one way or another. But one thing is certain: regardless of her previous work in St Albans as our MP, questions need to be answered and explanations need to be given. Not to those who turn up at Conservative meetings and applaud but to those who currently sit disenchanted with their MP and British politics in general. Over to you Anne.