Holding MPs to account

MPs are complaining that there is a furore over their expenses claims. But they've been asking for it.

According to figures released for the first time by the House of Commons yesterday, the average MP earns £57,485 but claims an additional £118,000 in expenses. One MP claimed over £40,000 in postage costs, and another spent nearly as much travelling to and from her Scottish constituency. Peter Pike, MP for Burnley, called the figures 'quite misleading'. He told PA News that he employs two-and-a-half people in his constituency, and another in London. 'This is not about filling our boots,' said another MP, Stephen Pound. 'This is not about trousering a lot of money. This is about the money it takes to do the job.'

It doesn't help that one MP apparently claimed £90,000 for a house he did not possess. However, that case is exceptional and there is some justication for these figures given what MPs do. But they have only themselves to blame if accusations of sleaze follow. New Labour was elected on a platform attacking the Tory government less for its policies than for its MPs' sleaze and corruption - reinforcing a poisonous atmosphere in which politicians (and in fact, anyone with a political view) are widely regarded as being in the pay of some vested interest or other. Even the act of publicly detailing these figures for the first time looks like a tacit admission that they are not to be trusted.

The fact that MPs are spending more and more money also indicates a problem with what they do. They are spending less time defending broad-ranging political positions and more time as a kind of national complaints department lobbying ministers over trivia. Is this what we elected them for? Or are most MPs not so much a waste of money as a waste of space?

Average MP's expenses cost taxpayer £118,000, Guardian, 22 October 2004