I WON'T CLAIM ANY MORE NELC CASH, SAYS TORY MP (AND COUNCILLOR) LIA NICI

                                               

Ms Nici - paid twice for doing the same job?

GRIMSBY'S first Conservative woman MP,  Lia Nici, has decided to  cease claiming payments from North East Lincolnshire Council in her other role as an elected councillor.

Ms Nici has been an undoubted financial beneficiary of lockdown.

When she was elected on December 12 last year, it was thought she would step down as a  councillor, representing the Scartho Ward.

After all, expecting electors to share the same representative for  both local and national government scarcely seems appropriate. 

It also distorts the relationship between the elected member and officers at the council.

When they speak to her, are they addressing her as a councillor or as an MP, a position of far more exalted status?

What is more, there is so much overlap in duties and responsibilities that basically it is paying someone twice for doing the same job.

But Ms Lici did not step down from the council last December - partly because  she did not want to put NELC to the cost of holding a  by-election in the Scartho ward and partly because the Conservatives did not want to risk losing the seat to political opposition.

Come May this year - the date when borough-wide elections were due to be held -  and surely she would now step down?

But no.

With the local election  postponed for 12 months because of the pandemic lockdown,  nothing changed. 

To this day, Ms Nici remains both an MP and a NELC councillor, thus able to  claim two sets of remuneration for doing, in effect, the same job.

Her MP's salary is £79,468 plus  expenses.

As a councillor, she has also  received £4,995 in allowances from the coffers of NELC since becoming an MP.

However,  she decided to cease claiming as of July 1.

The Grimsby News says: It is to her credit that Ms Nici has ceased claiming monies from NELC, especially as she knows full well that the authority's resources are being squeezed to the maximum by the pressures of the pandemic. Otherwise, it might have appeared to many of her constituents that she was taking advantage of the system. But Great Grimsby's  MP  could also go one better - both by paying back all the money she has claimed from the council since becoming an MP and by announcing a commitment to stepping down as a councillor as soon as it becomes feasible to hold a by-election in her Scartho ward.