Ex-Labour Minister Elliot Morley is jailed for expenses fraud, sent down for 16 months after claiming £30,000 in bogus mortgage payments

Dear All

Elliot Morley is a legend for all the wrong reasons.

He has become the first former Labour minister to be jailed for cheating his expenses.

Sentenced to 16 months in Club Fed or HMP Longpoke today!

Morley decided to plead guilty last month to claiming more than £30,000 in bogus mortgage payments.

He entered two guilty pleas for false accounting relating to his home in Winterton, near Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, between 2004 and 2007.

Having plead guilty he will automatically get a reduction in his sentence which was handed down at London's Southwark Crown Court.

Interestingly Morley showed no emotion as the sentence was delivered having resigned himself to his fate.

He knew he was getting banged up.

The former Labour MP pocketed £30,428 by claiming for a phantom mortgage and inflating the amount he was previously paying.

So, he knew that a long sentence in the clink was on the cards.

Passing sentence, Mr Justice Saunders who is rapidly becoming the jailer of the Labour Party said Morley was guilty of 'blatant dishonesty' and had 'thrown away his good name and character.'

He said:

'I am satisfied from the nature of the mortgage transactions and the correspondence that the excessive claims were made deliberately and are not explicable even in part by oversight.'

A Labour Party spokesman said after the hearing that the politician had now been excluded from the party.

Labour likes to bury its liabilities pretty quickly.

The mouthpiece added:

'Elliot Morley had already been suspended from the Labour Party and following his custodial sentence he has now been excluded from the party.'

Its part of the ‘we are all virgins again’ mentality.

The prosecution of Elliot Morley overshadows a political career lasting more than 20 years which ended in prison.

This as I say is no way to leave public office.

Some people who effectively have it all are blinded by greed, he had a career, prospects and a decent life in public service and it’s all gone now.

Everything is ruined.

In some regards this is a sad story.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University