The Hindu : Costly exercise

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 21, 2002

International

International

Costly exercise

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON: Sometime, counting pennies can prove costly, a Tory MP discovered this week when he was told that his dogged efforts to keep a tab on Government expenditure had cost the taxpayer more than £500,000 this year. John Bercow, a shadow cabinet minister, who takes pride in exposing "government waste'' has been bombarding it with parliamentary questions relating to costs of various schemes. But recently he excelled himself when wanted to know how much it cost to answer a question in Parliament, and when the figure came there were guffaws all-round. But Mr. Bercow refused to be intimidated by mere statistics and declared that he intended to continue to hold "ministers to account''. The total cost of answering the over 2,000 questions he asked since June last came to a staggering £552,672. Each answer cost £123 and with 2,619 questions listed against his name, he was told he was costing the taxpayer up to £1900 a day. In some cases, the cost of supplying an answer exceeded the expenditure which the MP was seeking to expose through his question "This man is the problem he's complaining about,'' one newspaper said.

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