I was always very uncomfortable with Nick Clegg (and other politicians) saying that whatever Sir Christopher Kelly proposed on MPs expenses should be adopted without question. I accept it makes good politics, but if parliament signed up to anything else without reading it first they would be considered irresponsible and would rightly be trashed by the media. However, on MPs expenses, even if Kelly could have come up with some completely unreasonable proposals, the public would never have had any sympathy for MPs anyway. In fact, the key bit of these proposals he has missed as far as the public is concerned is the idea that MPs should wear sackcloth and ashes, turn the cafe at Portcullis House in to one that only serves gruel, and birch MPs daily in Parliament Square. But thankfully, Kelly’s proposals are actually quite sensible and shows a decent understanding of how MPs work.
The key areas that had already been trailed in the media were the ban on MPs employing members of their family and the obligation for MPs to rent their second home. I’ve written before about the issue of second homes and why MPs do need them and why you can’t have a one size fits all policy on second homes. I’ve also been really twitchy whenever anyone mentions the idea of building a big block of flats to house all the MPs, (I mean, would you want to spend all week living with your work colleagues, and doing this is hardly going to dispel the notion that MPs don’t know what life is like outside the Westminster bubble). Although my suggestion wasn’t just to force MPs to rent, it is a perfectly reasonable solution. Kelly is also suggestion that a commercial agency handles all the rentals and finding suitable properties. That is fine, but as with the decision on what the maximum rent should be, there is the potential for a huge row about it. I do actually think that MPs need somewhere decent to live in London, (I don’t mean posh, I just mean with a bit of space and a bit of room to both relax and to work and to have room for family to stay) and I just hope the new rules will allow that to happen. On the issue of MPs employing their families, I think this is just inevitable. I know MPs who employ their spouse, and their spouse does the job well, and there are also some good practical reasons why in this job there are more grounds for employing a spouse than in other workplaces, (writing about the whys and wherefores of that issue will make a blog post in its own), but I think the ban is essential given what has happened recently and by phasing it in, it gives MPs time to adapt and for their spouse to find alternative employment.
The rest of Kelly’s ideas are pretty sensible, and as I say does show a certain understanding of how MPs work. Whilst I think it is only reasonable to stop MPs who are in commuting distance of London from having second homes, my concern was that this would become a problem when there were late night sittings in parliament. I would really prefer to see these stopped and for parliament to move towards more regular working hours. This is unlikely to happen anytime soon however, and at least Kelly understands this issue and has therefore allowed MPs to claim for hotel accommodation if parliament has sat so late they cannot get back home.
One area that I think is going to be difficult though is with the restriction of MPs’ staff undertaking political activities. I am pleased that Kelly didn’t ban MPs from recruiting their own staff. After all, every MP works in a different way, they have different priorities (whether it is their constituency, a special political interest, being a frontbencher etc) and want to employ staff to do different jobs. At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong way for an MP to do their job and the way they work often varies between political parties, what sort of constituency their represent, where their home is, how much of the correspondence they want to do themselves, how they want to split the workload between constituency and Westminster. It is entirely up to the MP to make that decision and for their constituents to decide at an election whether they have got that decision right, and thankfully Kelly has allowed MPs to still make that decision. But he does say there should be appropriate restrictions on MPs’ staff undertaking political activities. On the face of it, that sounds like a good idea, after all these are people employed using taxpayers money and so shouldn’t be subsidising the work of political parties. But my concern is that this is never a clear cut issue, for example where do you draw the line if an MP is campaigning against Post Office closures? That is a issue that both the MP and his/her party will want to campaign on, but when does the campaign stop being parliamentary and become party political? Many MPs also share an office with their local party and use shared facilities, which is sensible and in some areas it actually saves the taxpayer money as the party had the office before they elected an MP. They also sometimes share a member of staff who works partly for the MP and partly for the party, as some activities, such as press and managing the office, can overlap between parliamentary and political work. What I also hope is that we don’t end up replicating in parliament the bizarre situation we have in local government, where staff who work as researchers and political assistants to political groups on councils are even barred from being involved in party politics in their spare time.
I am also pleased to see that Kelly hasn’t been draconian in saying that MPs shouldn’t be allowed to do any outside work. Whilst I agree that being an MP should be a full-time job, there has to be some flexibility. After all, to take some current examples. I like the fact that, regardless of what you think of Diane Abbott, that This Week includes at least one sitting MP. This is something she does for 50 minutes, (give or take the time involved in getting ready for the programme), and it’s in her spare time and so it is fair that she therefore gets paid for it. There are also MPs who are writers, there are some who are still on the board of a family firm even if they don’t get involved in the day to day running of it, and there are I imagine many other similar examples. Banning second jobs should be about stopping those MPs who are highly paid advisors to companies or unions or who are spending half their week earning money running a major company, rather than stopping people from doing any other activities, and it looks as though these rules will do that.
Apart from these slight quibbles, the rules are largely sensible and will improve things massively. Although, as I have also mentioned before, one of the big issues is the reliability of the parliamentary authorities to properly manage the current system of allowances and claims. This is the other issue that must be resolved to ensure MPs’ expenses are transparent and accurate. If there was a proper computerised system for claims and expenses, it would allow MPs’ offices to see in real-time what claims have been made, how much of their allowances for postage, computer equipment and so on have been used, to enter new claims, and to scan in and upload relevant paperwork. There should perhaps then be a slight time delay to allow MPs offices to correct any errors, and then after this time the public can also see online exactly what their MP is claiming without having to wait for an official publication date.
I have never bought in to this idea that we need a General Election immediately to solve the scandal of MPs expenses. Instead what we needed was a new set of rules that could be brought in before the election, so the matter is resolved well before people have to vote. That gives time for those MPs who have made dodgy claims to decide not to restand, it gives time for potential new MPs to understand what the new set-up will be before they stand as a candidate, and it also means that when people vote it will all be about the main issues that government should be about – the economy, the health service, environment, transport etc., rather than what, (is still a minority), of MPs have done with their expenses.
