Some numbers…

In brief:

Of the top 100 Commons troughers,

• 62% are Labour MPs (against 54.1% of 646 parliamentarians)
• 21% are Conservative MPs (against 29.9% of 646 parliamentarians)
• 15% are Lib Dem MPs (against 9.8% of 646 parliamentarians)
• 2% are other (against 6.2% of 646 parliamentarians) (% figure corrected)

and

Tory MPs cost, on average, about £5500 less than Labour MPs and almost £9000 less than Lib Dems.

Source? Below…..

At www.Theyworkforyou.com there is a useful list of all serving (and past) MPs, which you can download as a CSV and import into excel – get it here.

This was a good start for what I’ve been doing on a bored Sunday evening.

All of the following is ‘errors & omissions excepted (E&OE)’

I added their 2007-2008 expenses, claims and allowances to the spreadsheet.

A little rudimentary crunching told me the following, about 635 of our MPs (the rest of the chaff was cut out of these workings):

Party	MPs	Claims Total	Average	% of counted MPs	% of  counted  claims	Var %
Labour	350	£47,599,244	£135,998	55.1%	55.8%	0.7%
Conservative	193	£25,157,158	£130,348	30.4%	29.5%	-0.9%
Liberal Democrat	63	£8,777,335	£139,323	9.9%	10.3%	0.4%
DUP	9	£1,181,944	£131,327	1.4%	1.4%	0.0%
SNP	7	£837,133	£119,590	1.1%	1.0%	-0.1%
Sinn Fein	5	£682,187	£136,437	0.8%	0.8%	0.0%
Plaid Cymru	3	£412,504	£137,501	0.5%	0.5%	0.0%
SDLP	3	£408,855	£136,285	0.5%	0.5%	0.0%
UUP	1	£125,072	£125,072	0.2%	0.1%	0.0%
Respect	1	£136,390	£136,390	0.2%	0.2%	0.0%

• Labour MPs are the biggest troughers taking 55.8% of allowances paid, while having 55.1% of MPs in the mix here.
• Conservative, while still in the same league are the least trougherous, taking 29.5% of allowances, amongst 30.4% of MPs in the mix here.
• This means Tory MPs cost, on average, about £5500 less than Labour MPs, and almost £9000 less than Lib Dems.

Of the top 50 troughing MPs

• 33 are Labour MPs (66% against 54.1% of 646 parliamentarians)
• 10 are Conservative MPs (20% against 29.9% of 646 parliamentarians)
• 7 are Lib Dem MPs (14% against 9.8% of 646 parliamentarians)

Expand that out to the top 100 and it looks like this:

• 62% are Labour MPs (against 54.1% of 646 parliamentarians)
• 21% are Conservative MPs (against 29.9% of 646 parliamentarians)
• 15% are Lib Dem MPs (against 9.8% of 646 parliamentarians)
• 2% are other (against 6.2% of 646 parliamentarians) (% figure corrected)

Again, on these measure, Tories are less trougherous than the other contenders. Proportionately, Lib Dems come out worst on this measure.

Here’s the top 100 list… click to enlarge.

More if I’m still bored tomorrow… like adding columns for their majorities etc.

AJ