Hamish MacDonell

16 June, 2005 

THE furore over David McLetchie's travel expenses escalated last night when it emerged that parliamentary authorities had prevented the release of details of the Scottish Tory leader's taxi claims, while revealing more information about other MSPs.

Mr McLetchie has been coming under increasing pressure to publish the full details of his taxi claims because of suggestions that he might have used parliamentary taxis to go the offices of Tods Murray, the law firm he worked for until last year.

Parliamentary officials did release limited information about his taxi claims in response to a Freedom of Information Act request earlier this month, but blacked out the destinations on all the taxi chits before publishing them.

But it emerged last night that the parliamentary authorities had not been nearly so scrupulous when publishing details about the taxi claims made by Gordon Jackson, a Labour MSP and another lawyer.

Mr Jackson's travel expenses had also been requested under the Freedom of Information Act earlier this year and when Holyrood officials released them only some of the entries had been blacked out.

The destinations on some of the chits were clearly visible, some of them appearing to show his home address.

A spokesman for the parliament insisted last night that there had been no double standards and the differences in the two sets of information published was merely an oversight.

He stressed that the parliament had taken the decision not to release details of where MSPs had taken taxis to and if this had been done in Mr Jackson's case, it was a mistake.

He added that any similar requests in the future would be dealt with as Mr McLetchie's claims had been - with all destinations blacked out.

The spokesman said: "If there were any specific addresses included we would now not release those. Based upon extensive internal and external legal advice, we would not and do not give out information on specific addresses."

But the spokesman's comments failed to quell either the growing row over Mr McLetchie's taxi claims or the pressure on the parliament to be more open about the issue of MSPs' expenses.

Mr McLetchie has refused to be drawn into the issue, but a spokesman for the Tory leader has insisted that all the journeys were made for "parliamentary or constituency work".

It could well be that Mr McLetchie took parliamentary taxis to the offices of Tods Murray to work on parliamentary affairs and that he did not do private commercial work while he was there.

But his refusal to publish the full details of his taxi journeys or answer questions on the issue means he has not been able to shut the issue down.

And the failure of the Holyrood officials to be as scrupulous in blacking out Mr Jackson's expense claims has only added to the confusion.