Hey Big Spender: Emily Thornberry leads the way

11.29.34am GMT Tue 30th Oct 2007

New figures published by the House of Commons reveal that Islington South and Finsbury MP Emily Thornberry spent nearly £20,000 in the last year just on postage. This is the seventh highest of any MP, and more than six times that spent by Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn.

In the last year Emily Thornberry spent £19,728 on pre-paid postage. This puts her in the top 1% of MPs for spending public money on postage.

Cllr Lucy Watt commented:

"It's incredible that she's managed to spend so much - it's nearly twice the income of someone on minimum wage in Finsbury! According to the MP Responsiveness League Table on TheyWorkForYou.com, Emily Thornberry comes 587 out of 633 MPs when it comes to responding to constituents. That means she is 46th from worst in the whole of Parliament. How does her low performance add up with her high expenditure? Something's not right here.

"By my calculations, she'd need to have been sending out 234 letters a day, 365 days a year, for this to even add up. No-one can achieve that without doing mass circular letters¾ and it's strictly prohibited for MPs to use public money for that sort of political campaigning.

"More than anything, it just goes to show the cavalier way in which the Islington Labour party spend public money. Give them some cash and they'll find a way to squander it."