The Sun

Fury as loan cheat MP Elliot Morley free after 4 months

JAILED MP Elliot Morley yesterday walked free a quarter of the way through his sentence for

expenses fraud amid outrage at him not serving more.

The disgraced ex-Labour minister who got 16 months in May was released under a

"home detention" scheme that lets low-risk lags out subject to a curfew.

Appalled Brian Duffort a neighbour of Morley's near the Lincolnshire constituency the MP

betrayed raged: "Four months is too short.

"He robbed from his own people and is the most pompous man I've ever met." Another

resident stormed: "It's a disgrace." Morley, 59, swindled taxpayers out of 32,000 more

than half of it for a "phantom" mortgage that had been paid off. His trial at Southwark Crown

Court in London heard the Scunthorpe MP "engaged in the wholesale abuse of the expenses

system".

Former environment minister Morley emerged from Ford Open Prison in West Sussex after

being fitted with a tag. Last night there was no reply on the intercom at his gated home in the

Lincolnshire town of Winterton. Emma Boon, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "This will do little

to restore taxpayers' faith in politics after the expenses scandal.

"Even if he is not a dangerous criminal he and other MPs and peers convicted over fraudulent

claims should have served more of their sentences to reflect the seriousness of their crimes."