Skipper

This morning we learn about the claims of Tory MPs and the result is just as unedifying as it was for the Labour lot. But I thought I'd like to run through the arguments for and against the MPs to see how they stacked up. There is an argument of the MPs and I'd express it thus:

Case for the MPs:

1. MPs work exceptionally long hours at a very important job. They deserve fair recompense, especially if Parliament is to attract the best possible people to its benches.

2.The whips have intimated to MPs in recent decades that while their salaries should not increase, their expenses allowance will be boosted. This has nourished a culture in which it is seen as quite fair to regard expenses as a virtual salary 'top-up', which can be freely exploited.

3. Almost all the accusations against MPs are misplaced in that they have acted strictly within the rules. They have not broken any laws and often have consulted the Commons fees office before submitting their claims.

4. To expect MPs not to claim is ingenuous and unrealistic. Anyone in a job with a culture of generous expenses will inevitably behave like anyone else. I recall people I knew in the media during the 1970s eagerly collecting restaurant receipts from friends in order to submit them as their own expenses. Being wholly honest, how many of us would not have joined in this free for all expenses culture had we had the chance?


Case Against MPs

1. MPs receive a decent professional salary of £63,000 p.a. It does not compare with salaries in the law, accountancy, business in general or the City but if people want to earn high salaries, they should avoid politics, just as they should avoid academe for that matter. Serving one's national community as an MP should be an honour for which the level of remuneration should not be the prime consideration.

2. While MP's expenses are generous they were still designed to relieve expenditure disbursed in pursuit of their parliamentary roles. Paying for repairs to a lawnmower, for landscape gardening or indeed food bills- and I'm not even mentioning entering the property business- are seen by us taxpayers as desperately inappropriate. Nobody pays for our gardens or food except ourselves out of our own salaries.

3. Not all MPs joined the free for all snouts in trough mentality. An honourable minority, for example Ed Miliband, submitted very modest claims which were true to the spirit, rather than the strict letter of parliamentary expenses regulations.

4. We expect our MPs to behave in exemplary fashion, to live up to their own idealistic rhetoric; the fact that they have not has hugely diminished trust in the trade of politics and in consequence we are all poorer.

5. MPs seem to have fallen prey to a culture which sets them apart from those who elected them. When they talk about 'ordinary people' they are excluding themselves from the category.

So where does the balance of the argument leave MPs? I fear it leaves them looking more than a little short on honesty and genuine commitment to serving anyone apart from themselves and their families. But we should not be too condemnatory: few of us could claim to be wholly immune to the lure of material advantage and MPs are essentially no different from the rest of us. A change in the system is essential if trust is to be reborn in our parliamentary system and establishing an independent outside body to set salaries and monitor expenses seems like an excellent start.