An unfashionable view

Ted Tedford

I think our MPs should be made to feel the forensic scrutiny of an army of unsmiling bureaucrats. I'd pay happily to subject them to the kind of treatment the British taxpayer receives at almost every encounter with the bloated, unaccountable State.

Chris Gilmour

Spot checks would be neat to save on checking everything, and running a report like this http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/3/4/just-how-far-are-their-snouts-in-the-trough.html to pick likely candidates

Danvers

Why will there be an "influx of allowance claims forms"? Surely there will be the same number of forms as before, just with reciepts attached. Or maybe he means it will take more forms to be making 10 claims of £24.99 instead of the usual one for £249 (on the basis the threshold is currently £250). Sounds suspicious, if you ask me.

TGF UKIP

"Does make some persuasive points" - it bloody well doesn't. Except one - if the Department of Finance and Administration does indeed cost £17m a year to run then an audit of that Department is long overdue. Alongside the revelations of just how much the Speaker blows on external as well as directly employed spin doctors, it just confirms the whole place should be re-named as The Palace of Waste and Corruption.

C Powell

Just like the rest of us in the working world, MPs should have to provide receipts for everything they spend. Why the £25 exemption? And it's quite absurd that it should cost £17 mio to audit their expenses. Of course the costs could be brought down quite drastically if the list of expenses MPs claim is reduced. No food for instance or mortgages on 2nd homes: they should be given enought to rent a modest furnished flat in London (so avoiding them spending in John Lewis at our expense) and there should be upper limits on what can be claimed. Similarly they should use public transport at all times, fly economy or go 2nd class on trains etc. I'm quite sure with these and other measures we could reduce the expenses significantly and MPs would even have the novel experience of enduring the same lives as the rest of us.

Chuck Unsworth

Had Martyn Jones MP and his colleagues acted with rather greater integrity and openness then this 'additional' expenditure might not have proved necessary. What Mr Jones carefully avoids saying is exactly how much more this might cost than, for example, publishing his and other MPs accounts or, indeed what this 'extra cost' might amount to in real terms. Yep, you can see they're going down fighting. The next examination - and one which involves far more of our cash - should be of the abuses of the various 'allowances' that these people have voted for themselves over the years.

Max Kaye

Administration costs can be cut in half quite simply: halve the number of MPs.

Do we really need so many?

dexey

It sounds that it will be like an Ofsted inspection. Perhap a few MP's will commit suicide under the pressure, as a few teachers did. Let it happen; they have proven that they cannot be trusted.

Richard Jenkins

Those of us who have actually had responsibility, inter alia, in the private sector, for a department responsible for monitoring the expenses of a sales force of a number similar to the number of MPs, would be just delighted to take £17 million to track MPs expenses, and keep the change. Oh really, what planet etc. ...?

cityboozer

You are all missing the top question: What reasonably reimbursable expenses under 25 GBP could an MP possibly incur? I can only think of taxis. They object not to the scrutiny and bloggers with spreadsheets but to the fact that the scrutiny will lead too many of them to have to abandon a million little taxpayer subsidies to their lives which simply wouldn't be legal (or would at the very least be taxable) in any other field. I work for a firm which doesn't expect me to travel less that first class and which has generous allowances for meals incurred when away from home. I can any number of colleagues or clients out to dinner when I'm in New York and expense 100 USD per head, but I cannot claim 5.24 USD for breakfast without a receipt. This is easy because my expenses are limited to taxis, hotels, meals and the odd "meal" which was mostly liquid. A simple conservative approach to MPs' allowances regime would admit that the existing system allows too much leeway and cut to the bone claimable expenses which do not fall into a small number of simple categories.