Darnton vs Clark

Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn reports that the Appropriation (2005/06 Financial Review) Bill has been introduced into Parliament.

So, tell me, why could the “validation” of the pledge card expenditure not wait until this entirely normal Financial Review bill?

Could it be that the Labour party was due in court at the end of October and Labour couldn’t risk appearing in the High Court because the High Court requires rather more truth-telling and a lot less mud-slinging and obfuscation than Parliament?

I/S claims that “this sort of retrospective validation is entirely normal”. He is technically correct in that each year there is a financial review bill. However, the items that it tidies up are quite different from this year’s rort. Under normal operation the government sometimes spends more than is budgeted on (say) sickness benefits and, with the Minister of Finance’s approval, this money is disbursed because the Crown arguably has an obligation to pay those benefits.

What is not “entirely normal” is that Parliament appropriates money for one purpose and then the ruling party spends money already appropriated for one thing on something different in willful contravention of the rules - rules that the Auditor-General had explicitly red-flagged before the expenditure was made because he knew what the buggers were up to.