Remove Tessa Munt MP for Wells

Tessa Munt was elected as Liberal Democrat MP for Wells with a slim majority of 800 in May 2010. Her campaign was largely fought on the backlash over the MPs expenses issue, promising openness, honesty and trust. In her election material she promised "no benefits, no expenses", "MPs you can trust", "I'll claim only essential work expenses", and that voters should have the right to "Sack corrupt or rule-breaking MPs" and must "make politicians accountable".

Within weeks of her election, newspapers revealed details (http://bit.ly/9TeSSu, http://bit.ly/9hORSY) of an investigation by Sedgemoor District Council into her claiming Council Tax single person benefit while actually having several other adult males living in, and registered to vote at, her home.

The revelations leaked out over a period of weeks. At first, only knowledge of the first two men became public and she was quick to issue denials (http://bit.ly/cSI1uZ) and assure voters that the men were not actually resident: "Neither of these two people were living with me". Following these initial reports, it was alleged in newspapers (http://bit.ly/9xrqC1, http://bit.ly/a6Jdy9) that one had actually been living with her for almost ten months, having left his wife for her and had also been paying her £200 per month rent. She was unable to deny these reports: "I did not know about the contents" [of his ex-wife's statement to the council].

It was subsequently alleged (http://bit.ly/bYdA2K, http://bit.ly/bMdGmo) that there was a third man who also was living with her while she was claiming 25% single person discount on her Council Tax (and saying "no benefits, no expenses" and that voters should have the right to "Sack corrupt or rule-breaking MPs").

At the time of creating this petition, Tessa Munt has apparently been unable to respond to the latest allegations and has not issued any statement and is now "unavailable for comment". This is very far from open and honest. We believe that she has clearly broken the rules which she was elected to protect, and should therefore stand by her pre-election promises and go. Her party leader, Nick Clegg said: “I’ll be putting forward my ideas for political change to make sure [that] corruption... is never again given fertile ground in which to grow. But we need to make sure that MPs are held to account for any wrongdoing. We cannot let change be limited only to the symptoms of sleaze. Unless we tackle the root causes, it will just shift from expenses to something else. The only way to clean up politics is to change it from top to toe... giving people the right to sack their MP”.