TORY MP Nigel Mills brazenly plays Candy Crush on his taxpayer-funded iPad —
in a key Commons meeting.
Mr Mills, 39, was filmed playing the online puzzle for more than 2½ hours
during discussions between MPs and pensions chiefs.
Mr Mills asked just four questions in a lengthy session of the Commons Work
and Pensions Committee — spending the rest of the time playing Candy Crush
on his iPad.
The Tory was on the game when he should have been focused on the answers given
by pensions chiefs and discussions of payments to the elderly.
One astonished witness filmed Mr Mills as he brazenly lined up the game’s
coloured candy icons on his iPad while sitting beside fellow MPs.
The witness said: “This just sums up the attitude of our lazy MPs — feathering
their nests at taxpayers’ expense.
“It goes to show that people in Westminster don’t give a monkeys about the
people they represent. After all that happened with the expenses scandal,
these people are still out for themselves.”
The committee met on Monday to question the pensions and insurance industry
two days before reforms announced in George Osborne’s mini Budget.
The witness, who does not want to be named, said: “I was sitting on the Press
bench with another journalist.
“It was sickening to see what Mr Mills was doing.
“He had three or four questions and he was on the game, up until each
question. And as soon as he had finished these pre-scripted questions, he
was tapping away on the game again.
“He would temporarily go back to the home screen as the questions were being
answered but as soon as they were finished, he would go back into the game.”
Mr Mills logged in to the game shortly after the meeting started at 4.29pm and
continued playing with a couple of intervals until it ended at 7.03pm.
He admitted yesterday that The Sun had caught him out.
Mr Mills said: “It was a long meeting on pension reforms, which is an
important issue that I take very seriously.
“There was a bit of the meeting that I wasn’t focusing on and I probably had a
game or two.
“I shouldn’t do it but if you check the meeting I would say I was fully
engaged in asking questions that I thought were particularly important in
how we get the pensions issue right.
“I shall try not to do it in future.”
Mr Mills was among the first 90 MPs to get a free iPad in a drive to reduce
the amount of paper used for Commons business.
Our revelation will anger David Cameron as Mr Mills has a majority of just 536
in his Amber Valley constituency.
Andy Silvester of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “Taxpayers don’t put
representatives in Parliament to mess around on video games.”
