Thursday 18 June 2009

The Taxpayer: An MP's No Win, No Fee Safety Net


Fido at The Lone Voice has unearthed an interesting claim from Paul Flynn, Labour shitarse for Newport West.

Just been having a look through Paul Flynn MP's expenses, Paul who was sued for libel and had to pay Endowment Justice damages of 36K, did he use his own funds for this or public funds? Also if he used his own money did he claim that back off of the taxpayer?

Now he claimed £10k for professional fees in Nov 2005 - was this for the solicitor in the libel action? Yes it looks like it was!

Flynn claimed expenses on the solicitor fees!

It doesn't just look like it was. It ... err ... was.

Flynn

Flynn was sued for defamatory comments, despite meetings with the company concerned, and many requests for a retraction, prior to legal proceedings.

Endowment Justice launched legal proceedings against Mr Flynn this year after he criticised the growing number of complaints handling firms that work with endowment mis-selling victims. The company had previously held talks with Mr Flynn over its concerns about bad practices at several complaints handling firms. But the MP subsequently named Endowment Justice in accusations he made about the whole sector.

Marianne Fitzjohn, a director of Endowment Justice, said the company had been angry about being criticised for sharp practices because it believed it had played a leading role in campaigning against such behaviour. "We repeatedly asked Paul Flynn to apologise and withdraw his comments"

The ignorant, stubborn pillock refused to give in and was made to shell out just under £36,000.

You may remember that Flynn was the MP who complained on his blog about having to actually work while Obama was being invested.

'It would not happen if it was a football match' an irritated fellow Labour MP told me in the Lobby.

Two minutes into Obama's speech, the division bell rang and we were all dragged from the mesmerising television pictures to vote in the Commons Chamber. The whips decided these things and their timing stank today.

The difference being, of course, that if England were playing a football match (or even Wales) it would at least be something to do with the country which Flynn is employed to govern. A rubber-stamping across the Atlantic was apparently more important to him at the time than doing the job for which he is handsomely (and then some) paid.

He could have Sky+'d it of course, like those of us who have to miss big occasions through work have to do, and claimed Murdoch's subscription from the Fees Office.

Anyway, I digress.

I suppose we should be thankful that Flynn didn't claim the full £36k penalty from us in his 'Incidental Expenses'. His charging the cost of his defence is very ironic though.

Flynn repeatedly mouths off about a no-win no-fee solicitor and gets in trouble. Then employs a solicitor to argue his case without the need to worry about having to pay legal fees should he lose.

Why should he? He just reclaims the fee from us, the taxpayer.

Ingenious.




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How that man gets away with it Dick is beyond me.

I believe a bombardment of his constituency is required!

No doubt he'll have them all brainwashed though - like the majority of the pathetic NuLab souls

Anonymous said...

His posts on smoking and ridicule of F2C and the way in which he retrospectively edited the subsequent comments convinced me that his integrity was questionable. I think that he's a nasty piece of work.