Conservative MP caught making false expenses claims fined and given community service
Sentencing judge tells Christopher Davies his allowance deceit was ‘an extraordinary thing for a man with your position’, before fining him £1,500
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Conservative MP Christopher Davies has been fined £1,500 and ordered to carry out 50 hours’ community service after being caught making two false expenses claims.
The Tory MP for Brecon and Radnorshire avoided jail, but was told he would face a recall petition to allow voters his constituency to decide whether he would now face a by-election after being convicted of submitting forged claims for £700 worth of photographs to decorate his office.
A party spokesman said Davies had been “given a formal warning from the chief whip” following his conviction, and said it was “right that the people of Brecon and Radnorshire now get to have their say about whether they still support Mr Davies”.
He was told he had committed “two very serious offences” which were “absolutely intended to deceive” when he appeared before magistrates last month to admit two charges of attempting to provide false or misleading information for an allowance claim.
Sentencing at Southwark Crown Court in London on Tuesday, Mr Justice Edis said: “It seems shocking that when confronted with a simple accounting problem, you thought to forge documents. That is an extraordinary thing for a man with your position and your background to do.”
The two charges related to the period when Davies was setting up his constituency office following the 2015 general election. He had contacted a photographer in his constituency and bought nine images from him to decorate and display in his constituency office, using his own money to pay £700 for them initially.
There were two budgets available to him, the start-up costs budget – used for office furniture and IT equipment – and the office costs budget, both of which he could claim the full amount from.
But Philip Stott, prosecuting, revealed Davies found in February 2016 that only £476.02 was left in the start-up costs budget, with £8,303.75 remaining in the other.
He then created two fake invoices, so the £700 cost could be split between the two budgets – £450 to the start-up and £250 for the other.
The judge added: “There was no error here. What you did was done quite deliberately and it must have taken some time to create your fake documents.
“MPs ask the public to place their trust in them and in an election that’s what happens. They become the guardians of the nation’s democracy and depend on the public holding them in high esteem.
“Any significant betrayal of that standard is serious and crosses the custody threshold. The recall process may end your political career – that’s part of the machinery.”
The recall process can result in MPs who are handed prison terms of less than a year being subject to a petition to oust them. This could trigger a by-election if at least 10 per cent of the electorate in that constituency sign it.
Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats called on the Tory MP to resign after his conviction.
The MP expressed his regret outside the court after Tuesday’s sentencing hearing. “I have accepted today’s ruling and want to take this opportunity to make an unreserved apology,” he said. “I would like to reiterate that I made a mistake and at no point did I at any time try to make any financial gain.”
Defending, Thomas Forster QC said his client was in a “privileged position” as an MP, but that his offending was a mistake rather than a “return to the bad old days” of “maxing out expenses accounts”.
He said: “There is a very real likelihood that his political career is in tatters. This is a tragically disastrous set of circumstances to which I accept he is the author. It is not a financial cost, it is a harm to the integrity of parliament.”
Prosecuting, Mr Stott said it was accepted that Davies had not sought to profit financially from the action and that he was entitled to claim for the pictures. However, he said Davies was not entitled to split the costs across two budgets, and said any claims had to be accompanied by genuine invoices.
Under parliamentary rules, Davies does not automatically lose his seat as an MP because his sentence was less than the 12-month minimum.
Additional reporting by PA