LONDON--British prosecutors charged four legislators on Friday with false accounting over their parliamentary expenses, a further blow to the major parties ahead of an election that must be held by June.
The cases stem from a wider scandal that erupted last year over politicians' expenses that angered voters and tainted both the ruling Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives.
"In four cases, we have concluded that there is sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges and that it is in the public interest to charge the individuals concerned," said Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer in a televised statement.
He named the four as Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine, who are Labour members of the lower House of Commons, and Paul White, known as Lord Hanningfield, a Conservative member of the upper House of Lords. All four denied the charges, which centred on dishonest expense claims backed up in some cases by false invoices.
The four men, who face a maximum sentence of seven years in jail, are scheduled to appear in court on March 11.
Labour said it had barred Morley, Chaytor and Devine from running for new terms. The Conservatives said White had resigned as the party's business spokesman in the Lords and would be suspended as a member of the party's group in the upper chamber.
"I am very angry about what has happened. These are very serious criminal allegations," said Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
"We've got to get rid of that old politics. It cannot be part of the new system," he told the BBC, adding that constitutional reforms he had proposed would help restore credibility in politics. The Conservatives dispute that.
The expenses scandal broke with details of claims for items ranging from toilet paper to moat cleaning and a duck house dominating the newspapers' front pages for weeks. Public outrage was vocal and widespread, ending several political careers.
With MPs from all camps tainted, no party has been able to score political points. Many MPs whose reputations were damaged will not run again for fear of being punished by voters. The fallout from the row may help a new generation of members of parliament emerge from the looming election.
An official report released on Thursday found 390 MPs had filed excessive expense claims between 2004 and 2009 and should pay back a total of more than one million pounds ($1.6 million).
Many of the claims were for household items deemed trivial by auditors, but some MPs stand accused of more serious abuses such as "flipping", or changing which house they declared as their main home in order to maximise second home allowances. In some cases MPs avoided capital gains tax when selling one of their properties by "flipping" its designation.
