| The Bumper Book of Government Waste (2006) lists the MEP expenses entitlements: €3,785 a month office expenses; a travel allowance for attendance at sessions; €3,736 a year for travel anywhere in the world; €268 daily subsistence; €12,576 a month secretarial "These are often relatives of the MEP"; €50 a week for taxis
These sums are not out of proportion to the entitlements of Westminster MPs, especially considering the size of MEPs' constituencies and the cost of travel within the UK.
Four pages of the Bumper Book of Government Waste (2006) list MEPs' medical expenses 'entitlements', including mudbaths, glass eyes and saunas. The book concludes its EU section with the Supreme Waste Award for the 'glass eye allowance'.
The European Parliament's scheme was set up to provide only for treatment for MEPs that they could not get through their national health systems. Massages and other therapies are available by medical prescription only. The same applies to glass eyes: MEPs are not queuing up for their glass eye entitlement as the Book suggests, but if an MEP has lost an eye and is not entitled to a free glass eye on his/her own national system, there is no reason why he/she should not be provided with one under this scheme.
As with many insurance schemes, the maximum entitlements are far higher than the sums actually claimed: in 2004 the total cost of the scheme for 732 MEPs amounted to £340,000, less than £500 per MEP. A considerable proportion went to a very small number who were gravely ill. |