Danczuk - Another IPSA Telling Off

While Rochdale’s nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk faces an anxious wait for the investigation into his conduct to reach its conclusion - the verdict is expected imminently - news has arrived on Zelo Street that he has fallen foul of Parliamentary watchdog IPSA once more. This time, it is not about his expenses, although a vehicle for generating More And Bigger Paycheques For Himself Personally Now is involved.

Danczuk is a director, and sole shareholder, of Danczuk Media Limited, which exists mainly to facilitate payments for all those newspaper articles which bear his name (even though many of them have been written by his sidekick Matt Baker), along with the appearances he is paid for, and the cut from all those exclusive photos, such as the ones taken outside Rossendale Police station recently.

What Danczuk Media Limited is not is anything to do with his constituency business. However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, the address for service of documents for this company was changed last November to 26 St Mary’s Gate in Rochdale. This address can be revealed because it is that of his constituency office. This news was not universally popular with all those long suffering voters.

So it was no surprise that one of them decided to make their displeasure clear to IPSA’s compliance officer. The correspondence has been seen here on Zelo Street and it can be revealed that the initial complaint was made no more than a fortnight ago. It might have been thought that the wheels would still be grinding slowly right now, but that thought would have been misplaced: action was swift and decisive.

This time, the Companies House form CH01 - Change of Particulars for Director - went through swiftly enough to have been dated only last Monday. IPSA, I am told, was assured that the constituency office was only being used as the address for service of documents, and not the registered address. But the compliance officer was still not happy and the MP was directed to have it changed forthwith.

So it came to pass that Danczuk Media Limited had its address for service of documents changed to one which has had to be redacted. Whether the Labour Party nationally has been made aware of this episode is not known. And the awful coincidences just keep stacking up for Simon Danczuk, as yesterday’s Rochdale Observer front page shows.

There he is, facing an inquiry by his own party that was triggered by his “sexting” of a 17 year old girl, and the paper’s lead story was “School puts parents on ‘Sext’ alert”. Yes, a secondary school in Danczuk’s constituency has been warning about its pupils getting involved in “sexting” incidents. It was just a coincidence, but when he’s in his current mess, it was the last thing that Rochdale’s MP needed.

And on top of that, Labour’s canvassers are finding their MP’s name coming up on the doorstep rather a lot, and always in a negative way. Not a good look.