Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nadine Dorries says Ipsa is ‘asleep on the bloody job’, but MPs’ pay and expenses will cause even more grief this year

Nadine Dorries has vowed to ‘go after’ Ipsa today after the watchdog announced her expenses were under investigation. There will clearly be more to come on this, but the claims the Mid-Bedfordshire MP is making about Ipsa being ‘asleep on the bloody job’ by not noticing that a travel ticket receipt had accidentally been submitted twice won’t come as a surprise to other MPs.

Remember that Adam Afriyie’s confidence about his coup (which I understand from friends that he remains very confident about) stems partly from the help he has given fellow Tories in fighting the current Ipsa system. Louise Mensch raises some of the problems that she identified with the system in her interview with the Standard today. And this week as MPs responded to the government’s Royal Charter proposal on Leveson, Edward Leigh warned MPs that they should ‘learn from personal experience’ when calling for statutory regulation as a response to the phone hacking scandal.

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Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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