Brown feels expenses wrath; Mersey MP accuses PM of 'lack of leadership'.

Byline: IAN HERNON

A N OUTGOING Merseyside MP accused the Prime Minister of failing to show leadership during the Parliamentary expenses row.

Crosby MP Claire Curtis-Thomas blamed Gordon Brown for refusing to stand up for MPs who are having their reputations "trashed".

She also claimed he has been "cowed and diminished" by the furore.

Ms Curtis-Thomas recently announced she will not be standing at next May's general election because she had received hate mail over the last four years since she legitimately claimed the highest office cost allowance.

But the latest row over Sir Thomas Legg's inquiry into expenses provoked the Labour backbencher into launching into a ferocious attack on the prime minister in a BBC radio interview.

Thomas She said many MPs across all parties could not afford to pay back cash they claimed within the rules and now face financial r uin.

She said: "People who have spent a lifetime working in politics feel bitterly let down on a personal level.

"The lack of a defence, the lack of unequivocal support, has been really disappointing. People rally to a leader."

Ms Curtis-Thomas said Mr Brown has only just "caught up" and has failed to take the flak as a leader should.

She claimed other Labour MPs are also deeply disappointed at Mr Brown, adding: "Colleagues are pretty damning."

She went on: "He is a fine, upstanding, decent chap and he has had to pay back a considerable amount of money.

"He is the leader of the party but he is also a human being, and a good human being, but in this area it is not his strong point.

"He appears to be completely - not completely - cowed by it, made smaller by it because it affects him personally, it assaults him personally."

Asked if there were MPs who cannot afford to pay back expenses running into thousands of pounds, she replied: "Good heavens, yes.

"Many of them are either standing down or they are going to lose their seats, so if you ignore the fact they are an MP, and they are a wage earner, and they have family responsibilities, they are between a rock and a hard place.

"The more this goes on, the more their reputations are notionally trashed."

Yesterday, Ms Curtis-Thomas revealed how the strain placed on her family over expenses issues was "too much".

The abusive letters and emails came after she topped the list of MPs' published expenses five years ago.

Meanwhile, Riverside MP Louise Ellman has paid back pounds 260 in mortgage interest payments she wrongly received in 2006.

GORDON BROWN defended his leadership following the expenses scandal after criticism from Crosby MP Claire Curtis-Thomas .

Mr Brown, speaking yesterday at the home of former West Lancashire councillor Mary Whitby, in Aughton, near Ormskirk, which he visited as part of a tour of the region, said he made the right decision on Parliamentary reforms.

After thanking Ms Curtis-Thomas for her work as an MP, Mr Brown said: "I think our duty is to clean up politics.

"If people think we are going to go slow, if people think we are going to be hesitant in the cleaning up of politics, then they will draw their own conclusions.

"But we are determined to have a more transparent system, we are determined to end the self-regulation, and we are determined to have a new system brought in as quickly as possible.

"All these things are being done, and I think I made the right decision to move forward.

"MPs proved the selfregulation system did not work, so the government had to make proposals, which we put to the Parliamentary Standards Authority. I am just determined to clean up politics."

CAPTION(S):

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Rosie Cooper MP, at the home of Mary Whitby, in Aughton Picture: GARETH JONES/ grj151009gordonbrown-3 Claire Curtis-Thomas