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An MP savaged by a judge over his submitted a bogus expenses claim is to be the first in Wales - and only the third ever - to face a recall petition.

In court on Tuesday, Mr Justice Edis blasted the "discreditable" conduct of the MP who he said had been trying to "pull the wool over the eyes of his constituents" to stop them finding out he had spent on photographs for his offices.

Rather than claim the £709, Brecon and Radnorshire MP Chris Davies submitted bogus claims for smaller amounts split between two budgets. He made no money from his fake claims. But, in the words of the judge, it would stop constituents seeing "what you had actually spent your expenses budget on".

The 51-year-old father-of-two school-age children was sentenced to community service and told to pay a £1,500.

Today (Wednesday), Speaker John Bercow launched a process called a "recall petition" which will give the residents of his constituency given a chance to say if he should stay as their MP.

The "recall petition" process was brought in four years ago after the MPs expenses scandal and means that in certain circumstances there is a process through which constituents can force a by-election.

The process is only launched if an MP is convicted of an offence and sentenced to serve time in prison; if they are suspended from the Commons for 10 days or more; or if they are convicted of an offender of making false allowances claim under the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 (as Davies was).

How the "recall petition" process works

(Image: PA)

A petition has been formally opened in Brecon and Radnorshire by the returning officer for the constituency (the council official who runs elections).

It will run from 9am on Thursday, May 9, to 5pm Thursday, June 20.

It can be signed at:

County Hall, Llandrindod Wells, LD1 5LG

Neuadd Brycheiniog, Cambrian Way, Brecon, LD3 7HR

Presteigne Library, Market Hall, Presteigne, LD8 2AD

Ystradgynlais Library, Temperance Street, Ystradgynlais, SA9 1JJ

Council Chamber, Broad Street, Hay-on-Wye, HR3 5BX

Clarence Hall House, Beaufort Street, Crickhowell, NP8 1BN

The buildings are open:

Monday: 9am to 5pm (except spring bank holiday Monday)

Tuesday: 8am to 5pm

Wednesday: 9am to 8pm

Thursday: 9am to 5pm

Friday: 9am to 5pm

The electorate is 53,032, so 5,303 Brecon and Radnorshire constituents would have to sign it within six weeks for it to be successful.

If more than that number of people sign, the seat becomes vacant and there will be a by-election.

A person is eligible to sign the petition if they are a registered parliamentary elector for the constituency and aged 18 or over (or the date of their 18th birthday is before the end of the signing period).

All registered parliamentary electors will be written to individually. Parliamentary electors who are currently registered to vote by post will receive their signing sheet by post.

New postal applications have to be received no later than 5pm on Wednesday, June 5.

New proxy applications no later than 5pm on Wednesday, June 12.

Whether Davies is allowed to stand again would depend on whether he was reselected as the candidate by the local Conservative constituency party for Brecon and Radnorshire.

Where this has happened before

The first recall petition against an MP was triggered in July 2018 after the House of Commons agreed to suspend Ian Paisley Jr, the MP for North Antrim, for 30 Parliamentary ‘sitting days’ for failing to declare two holidays paid for by the Sri Lankan government and lobbying on its behalf. The petition did not attract the required number of signatures to recall Mr Paisley, so he remained an MP.

The second recall was triggered on last month after Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was jailed for three months for perverting the course of justice. The solicitor had lied to avoid a speeding ticket. The petition will remain open until May 1. The number of signatures for the petition to succeed is 6,967.

What Davies did

Davies, who was elected in 2015, spent £709 on photographs for his office after the 2015 snap general election.

Rather than submit one claim, he proceeded to create two fake invoices so the £700 cost could be split between two different budgets. He billed£450 to budget for starting up a new office and £250 from the office costs budget.

Davies admitted an offence contrary to the Parliamentary Standards Act 2010,.

Sentencing, Mr Justice Edis said: "When confronted with a simple accounting problem your decision was to forge documents. That is a very puzzling thing to do.

"While it would not benefit you financially it would help to pull the wool over the eyes of any of your constituents with interest in what you had spent your expenses on.

"I accept that buying photographs for £709 was a proper use of public money, however the public are invited to make up their own minds."

Davies was sentenced to 50 hours of unpaid work, to be completed within the next 12 months.

He also has to pay £1,500 as a fine and £2,500 in costs as well as a statutory surcharge of £120.

After his sentencing, a Conservative spokesman said: "Chris Davies has been given a formal warning from the chief whip following today's ruling.

"He has apologised and it is right that the people of Brecon and Radnorshire now get to have their say about whether they still support Mr Davies."

What Mr Justice Edis said in full

(Image: Media Wales)

In March 2016, less that 12 months after you were first elected as a member of the House of Commons, you committed an offence contrary to the Parliamentary Standards Act 2010, and attempted to commit another. Both offences resulted from the same transaction and may have been designed to enable you to spend your whole budgets, or to conceal the fact that you had spent £700 of taxpayers' money on photographs for your constituency office, or perhaps both.

You had actually spent £700 on photographs, and you were quite entitled to do so and to reclaim that cost. You had two budgets available from which that money could have come. Your startup budget, only available in your first year, did not have £700 left. Your office budget did, but if you charged the whole of your expenditure to that budget, you might leave some of the balance of the startup budget unspent. In the result all the budgets were underspent and if you were concerned to protect some of the budget for later use, you never actually took advantage of that.

For whatever reason, you decided to create two bogus invoices which would split the sum between the two budgets. This would not benefit you financially because they amounted to the sum which you had actually agreed to pay and the money was in fact paid.

These fakes would also create the false impression that some of this money had been spent on furniture for the office. Members' expenses are a matter of public record and that lie would not enrich you, but it would pull the wool over the eyes of any of your constituents who were interested in what you had actually spent your expenses budgets on.

The statutory offence of which you have been convicted does not require proof of dishonesty. The Act requires that you knowingly used a document which was false in a material respect in support of an expenses claim. Whether the state of mind in which you did that is called dishonest or not, it is highly discreditable. Financial gain is the usual reason why people fake documents, but it is not the only reason. For the purposes of sentencing I accept that buying photographs for £700 was a proper expenditure of public money. The public, however, are entitled to make up their own minds about that question, on the basis of accurate information.

Your crimes would not have been detected but for their detection and much later disclosure by a member of your staff, Ms Lewis. When she checked with the photographer to see whether he had been paid or not for the second false invoice, he said he had only ever issued one. He wanted an explanation, and you told him the truth, which he accepted and the matter rested there until Ms. Lewis disclosed what she knew over 18 months later to the Conservative Party. This set in motion the sequence of events which has, three years and an election later, brought you here.

There was no error here. What you did was done quite deliberately and it must have taken you some time to create your fake documents. You created two, after all. You presented them at different times to suggest that there were two transactions, and attached a post it note to the second to this effect, thus trying to deceive your own staff. It is an aggravating feature of the offence that you intended that Ms. Lewis should be the person who actually made the claim on your behalf, having been deceived in this way. Involving the innocent in a crime can cause serious consequences for them. None happened.

The chief aggravating feature is, of course, the breach of trust which is involved. Members of Parliament ask the public to place their trust in them and on election that is what happens. They become the guardians of the nation's democracy which depends on the public holding them in high esteem. As the then Lord Chief Justice said 2011, the result of offences involving false expenses claims by MPs is 'serious damage to the reputation of Parliament, which correspondingly reduced confidence in the country's priceless democratic system and the process by which it was implemented and the country was governed'.

One consequence of the expenses scandals of which he was then speaking has in fact been to contribute to the lessening of that esteem, which is not in the public interest, and not in the interest of Members of Parliament who are scrupulous public servants. Members of Parliament are held to a high standard of probity by the criminal law for these reasons. Any significant betrayal of that standard is serious and crosses the custody threshold.

In mitigation, I accept that you are a person of good character and that goes in your favour. Powerful character references have been placed before the court. It is true that you have given good service to your constituents over the last 3 years, as was your duty. That is only what is expected of you and what you have now promised to deliver in two election campaigns. It is not for the courts to distinguish between good MPs and bad ones when sentencing them for crimes. That is a matter for their electorates to judge.

The Act provides that there will be a recall process which may end your political career. That is a substantial consequence of your offending, but is part of the machinery created by the Act to attempt to rebuild and then preserve the trust of the public in its Parliament. In the context of this case, you are entitled to a degree of sympathy for the predicament you have created for yourself.

It remains shocking that, when confronted with a simple accounting problem, you thought that the thing to do was to forge documents. That is an extraordinary thing for a person in your position, and with your background, to do.

Nevertheless, I accept that this case is in a quite different category from the cases which came to light nearly 10 years ago where much larger sums of money were involved. Those cases also involved claims which were entirely false. That is so even in the case of McShane who tried to recover a much larger sum of money which he believed he had genuinely spent on proper purposes by inventing a complex series of transactions which had never happened. This was apparently because of a chaotic accounting system which meant that the true position could not be ascertained. At least here there was a genuine transaction in which you actually spent the money you claimed, or tried to claim, on something for which you were entitled to claim. There was no risk of the taxpayer spending more on photographs for your office than you had spent, and than you were entitled to recoup.

The earlier cases also involved different and more serious offences which required proof of an intention cause gain for the offender or loss to another, and this offence does not. It catches conduct which, for anyone but an MP, would not be a criminal offence at all. I am less certain that the absence of a requirement for proof of dishonesty as a separate element of the offence makes much difference as to sentence. Knowingly providing false or misleading information for the purposes of a financial claim is the kind of conduct which most people would classify as dishonest without much trouble. That is what you did.

I also bear in mind your pleas of guilty in the Magistrates' Court and your honest acceptance of what you had done from a very early point in the various investigations which followed its revelation. This has been a long drawn out business, and that is not your fault. For all these reasons, although the offences do cross the custody threshold, I am not going to impose a prison sentence. Your offence is serious enough to require a community order and you will be subject to a requirement to complete 50 hours of unpaid work within the next 12 months, working when and where you are directed by your supervising officer.

If you fail to complete the unpaid work or to do it properly, you will be in breach of the order. That means you will be brought back before this court or the Magistrates' Court and may be given further requirements or resentenced or fined for this offence; and that may well mean custody

There will also be a fine of £1,500, with a term of imprisonment of 42 days in default of payment.

You will pay prosecution costs in the sum of £2,500. I accept that the CPS employees have in fact done the work for which a claim is made, and that the hourly rates claimed are extremely modest. However, I consider that the proper ambit of the claim for costs is the legal work connected with the conduct of the prosecution and that additional time taken over a case because of its high profile and public importance should be stripped out.

In view of the age of the offences, the statutory surcharge is £120 and must be paid.

I direct that the Clerk to the Court will notify the Speaker of the House of Commons of these proceedings and their result as required by the Parliamentary Standards Act 2010.