Conway: I am not a crook
Conservative party MP Derek Conway has argued his parliamentary payments to his sons were legitimate, adding: “I am not a crook.”
Mr Conway, the MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, has been expelled from the parliamentary Conservative party and suspended from the House of Commons after it emerged he had paid his son thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money for work he reportedly never carried out.
And he has announced his intention to stand down as an MP following the next general election after Tory leader David Cameron withdrew the party whip following a report from the Commons standard committee which showed there was no record of Mr Conway’s son Freddie working as a researcher in Westminster, for which he paid some £40,000 of taxpayer’s money.
Speaking to the Mail on Sunday newspaper, Mr Conway has argued: “I have done nothing wrong”.
Mr Conway has denied the report’s claim that 22-year-old Newcastle University student Freddie and his other son Henry, 25 – who he had employed earlier – did not carry out the work for which they were paid.
“A lot of students do part-time work. He [Freddie] was working for his father rather than working in McDonald’s,” he said.
“He used to come home frequently. He would go up and down like a fiddler’s elbow while he was away.
“There are MPs who commute greater distances than that on a weekly basis and some are three times Freddie’s age. I don’t think it was unusual.”
The report had said Freddie was “all but invisible” at Westminster, and labelled his payment for work as a researcher “at the least an improper use of parliamentary allowances” and “at worst, a serious diversion of public funds”.
However Mr Conway has claimed his sons would work at the family’s London flat, due to the lack of air conditioning in Mr Conway’s Commons office.
The MP may face a second investigation over oldest son Henry, also paid with his father’s Commons expenses while a student in London.
“He’d fillet post, scrutinise emails and stuff envelopes,” Mr Conway argued.
“I am one of many MPs who employ family members. It doesn’t mean there’s not a job to be done or that they weren’t doing it.”
