LONDON — A lawmaker at the center of Britain’s growing expense-account scandal said Saturday that he has been humiliated by public revelations about his attempt to get taxpayers to pay for a duck hut on his country estate.
Opposition Conservative Party legislator Peter Viggers’ duck hut, used to shield ducks from predators, has become a potent symbol of expense-account excess in recent days.
He tried in vain to bill taxpayers 1,645 pounds, or $2,600, for the structure. It’s just one of many misdeeds in a scandal that has turned British voters against their elected representatives and led many chagrined lawmakers to say they will step down when their terms are up.
“I have made a ridiculous and grave error of judgment,” said Viggers, who has dropped plans to seek re-election. “I am ashamed and humiliated, and I apologize. As has been reported, my claim for the duck house was rightly ‘not allowed’ by the Fees Office. I paid for it myself, and in fact it was never liked by the ducks and is now in storage.”
New polls released Saturday indicated that an increasing number of Britons want a national election to be held this year. Still, there are no indications that Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose Labor Party is far behind in the polls, plans to risk an early vote.
Some of the mystery surrounding how Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper got access to millions of receipts was solved Friday when a former special forces officer disclosed he had served as the middleman for the information.
John Wick, now a private security consultant, said he provided the data because it was in the public interest for the truth to come out.
“Parliament will be a better place; society will be a better place,” he said.
Wick, a Conservative Party backer, did not say how he obtained the information or whether the newspaper had paid him for it.
