Anne Moffat MP collects ill health pension as she was planning to stand down as MP

Although when you first read this news story that Anne Moffat MP had in fact planned to stand down due to ill health and had already agreed a pension on this basis you think Anne Moffat has had the last laugh over her former colleagues.

Technically she has, but it isn't her laughing just at the East Lothian Labour Party, the Scottish Labour Party or even Iain Gray MSP, she in fact is laughing at us, the taxpayers, who as well as the Scottish Labour Party she has therefore taken for a ride.

Because it is us, the taxpayer who will be funding her £30,000 per year pension.

It appears that Anne Moffat MP had intended to actually stand down due to ill health.

If that is the case, then why has she gone through multiple selection races?  Surely that actually implies no she wasn't and was therefore keeping all her options open at our expense?

She said she kept the deal secret so that her opponents in the constituency did not know she planned to step down.
One of the criteria for receiving an ill health pension from the Commons is that you can no longer perform the duties of an MP.

According to the BBC this deal was arranged "some time ago", which could mean that when Anne Moffat was hospitalised for a suspected brain haemorrhage she sorted this out then.

The ill health retirement, means she will be paid a pension which assumes she served as an MP until she was 65.

There is something not quite right with all of this;  Either Anne Moffat planned to stand down due to ill health or she planned to carry on, I would suggest that as she has until recently been actively fighting a reselection campaign and has publicly stated she intended to carry on that she therefore forefeits this pension package because of that.

I suspect that the House of Commons Authorities and their pension provider may view this in a similar light if everyone is being honest and wanting to clean up politics?