Party passed a motion of no confidence in her on the grounds of her lack of support for the party leadership, her support for fracking and her opposition to water re-nationalisation. Smith tweeted that her "first priority is always to do my job, to the best of my ability" and that her defeat was as a result of "a cabal of hard left members" who had "absorbed everyone's precious time and energy on an inaccurate and divisive motion of no confidence". Expenses Smith was one of 98 MPs who voted unsuccessfully to keep their expense details secret in 2007. She defended her vote on the grounds that it would help member-constituent confidentiality and help prevent the private addresses of MPs being readily available to the public. In 2009, Smith was one of the MPs whose expenses were highlighted by The Daily Telegraph during the Parliamentary expenses scandal, as she had submitted expenses claims for four beds for a one-bedroom flat in London. Smith employed her husband as her Senior Parliamentary Assistant on a salary of up to £40,000. The practice of MPs employing family members has been criticised by some sections of the media on the grounds that it promotes nepotism. Although MPs who were first elected in 2017 have been banned from employing family members, the restriction is not retrospective. The Independent Group and The Independents On 18 February 2019, Smith and six other MPs (Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Mike Gapes, Gavin Shuker, and Ann Coffey) resigned the Labour whip to sit as The Independent Group of MPs in the House of Commons. These resignations were prompted by issues with Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party, including allegations of the mishandling of antisemitism and his approach to Brexit. In June 2019, she left this group to sit as an independent MP. In 2019, Smith attracted condemnation when, shortly after citing antisemitism as one of her reasons for leaving Labour at the Independent Group launch earlier that day, she appeared on BBC Two's Politics Live where she referred to fighting racism as "not just about being black or a funny tin..." before hesitating and then finishing the sentence with "from the BME community": the unfinished word was widely taken to have been 'tinge'. She later issued a video statement in which she said she "misspoke very badly". Smith later told Sky News that she had been "very,