Published: Wednesday, 3rd June, 2009 1:23pm

Pickles pledges MPs reform

by Rose Harland

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Therese Coffey, Alok Sharma, Pangbourne postmistress Angela Foot and Eric Pickles

TORY Party chairman Eric Pickles pledged support for local businesses and a clampdown on MPs" expenses during a flying visit to Berkshire.

Punching out the messages as he toured Pangbourne he said the Reading West parliamentary seat is 'winnable' and hailed David Cameron"s reaction to the expenses row for demonstrating 'stronger leadership' than Gordon Brown.

The shadow secretary for communities and local government said: 'I"ll be blunt. When the allegations came out the telephones at Conservative headquarters were off the cradle with people"s anger. We had to allocate extra people to answer the line.

'Then Mr Cameron did his press conference and the nature of the calls changed. We even had people ringing back to say they were sorry for being angry.'

He added: 'Most people don"t take an interest in politics, but during the expenses row they got a glimpse of what a better Prime Minister would be like. The leader of our party has a great sense of direction.

'We have been clear - we have taken fairly decisive action. A number of colleagues are retiring. In some cases I wouldn"t be human if I didn"t feel a degree of sadness but public money is public money.' Referring to MPs 'flipping' their primary and secondary homes to claim allowances, the Yorkshireman said: 'Originally if you"d said to me the word 'flipping", I would have thought it would be followed by the word 'heck".

'I think it is important to change the rules. There needs to be more transparency, less discretion about what we can claim and I think we"ll come out with a stronger Parliament on that basis.'

Mr Pickles knocked on doors with European candidate Therese Coffey, fifth on the Conservatives" South-east running order, and Reading West parliamentary hopeful Alok Sharma on Wednesday last week.

Dr Coffey, who lives in Andover and was formerly finance director for the Winnersh Triangle-based Mars Drinks, said she favoured less European legislation for businesses.