Is this the bravest man in Westminster?

From the start of the new financial year, MPs will have to submit receipts for everything over £25, a tenth of the current minimum receiptable value, according to an announcement this morning.

This brings them into line with the private sector after a series of embarrassments, yet has prompted much mumble gumbling in the members' lobbies that it has increased bureaucracy and a hassle and so on. Yet, despite the sniffiness, no one has been prepared to put their head above the parapet to say so publicly, presumably for fear of the backlash.

Until today.

Martyn Jones, a veteran Labour MP for Clywd South, issued the following press release. While many will disagree with him, at least he has been brave enough to come forward. Here is the full text: do you have sympathy with any of his points?

“I do feel let down by this decision. It seems to me that it is a strong reaction to a web of corruption in Parliament which simply doesn’t exist. Of course, given the recent issues concerning Derek Conway it is impossible to say that there isn’t the odd MP trying to exploit the system for personal gain. However the majority of MPs stick rigidly to the rules and even hold themselves to a higher standard for fear of being accused of corruption.

It is a shame that certain elements of the tabloid press have whipped up such a storm regarding MP’s expenses. The result is this review, which has landed us with a system that will turn out to be steeped in bureaucracy. The aim of this

review was to safeguard taxpayer’s money; unfortunately it seems likely that it will waste more than it saves.

Monitoring an influx of allowance claim forms will require the Department of Finance and Administration to employ more staff for more hours. This department already costs £17,000,000 per year to run and has increased by over a third the amount of people it employs in the past twenty years.

I am not trying to say that MPs are above scrutiny – that is not the case. However there must be a better way to safeguard the public purse than having a mass bureaucracy to analyse and process every single receipt we touch.

Many of my colleagues have shown an interest in a random spot check, whereby a smaller bureaucracy would employ a full audit on only a few MPs' expenses per year. This has to be a better system. It would save taxpayers real money, which could be devoted to providing real public service rather than the creation of a personal judge looking over every MP’s shoulder.

MPs' time schedules are tight and the demand to serve our many constituents is great. It’s a shame that we have now introduced a mechanism where we will spend more time ticking boxes and filling in forms than we will serving the needs of our local people, which is after all what we were all sent here to do.”

Comments

[David Boothroyd]

Some years ago the Mail on Sunday ran a story about MPs who employ their relatives, and listed Martyn Jones for employing Steve Jones as his researcher. The News of the World had also said made the same connection.

Martyn Jones and Steve Jones are not related. The newspaper mistake is understandable; who would ever think to check their facts, given that the surname 'Jones' is so unusual in North Wales?

[The Wonderful Jones]

What rot!

[marty]

Increase in administrative burden... a bit like that felt by small business owners everywhere in Britain. I say good, let the MPs see what it's like to bear such burdens like the rest of the country. And maybe then they'll have sympathy and repeal some of the worst of it.

[Teesbridge]

If time filling out expense claims (a few minutes at the end of each day, surely - how much is he spending, for God's sake?) takes longer than time working for constituents, then this buffoon is either cretinously stupid (which I do not rule out) or already utterly, hog-wimperingly idle in respect of his existing parliamentary duties.

And if the rest of Government had kept its manpower growth to around 33% over twenty years (as the House book-keepers apparently have) then we wouldn't be facing fiscal Armageddon in the morning at the hands of Captain Darling.

It does not apparently occur to this Panglossian dimwit that the enforcing of such rules usually eliminates some of the expenses being paid, and is thus self-financing; unsubtle message - "we're MPs, and we're not taking a penny less than we steal already".

The Conservatives simply need to put a copy of this fatuous document through every letterbox in the Land, and sit back waiting for power to drop into their laps like (in the words of that Greatest of Expensers, Woy, Lord Jenkins of Clawet) "wipe fwuit".