The rearguard action

Michael Martin, the Commons Speaker, has launched a last minute attempt to block the publication of MPs' expense claims.

We now have the delay of an appeal to the High Court to reverse the decision by the Information Commissioner.

We also have the spectacle of MPs, or at least some, including the Speaker himself, using taxpayers' money in a legal appeal to prevent taxpayers learning details of payments made by us to people we employ. It seems that a great deal of public money, perhaps £50,000 has already been spent fighting the Commissioner's ruling. Now we are to finance perhaps twice as much more.

The sheer scale of MP claims requires some supervision. The average claim last year was £134,000 per MP, on top of his/her £60,675 salary. This is a vast sum, and must be monitored.

The timid assertion by Michael Martin in support of his case is that the publication of MPs' second home addresses is a security risk. This is nonsense. Those details could be omitted without upsetting anyone, and any would-be terrorist could easily discover them without too much difficulty.

The whole thing smacks of people who have their noses in the trough, and slightly or greatly embarrassed about it, and are desperate to cover it up. Some MPs, including Cameron and Osborne among others, are very willing to reveal what they received, but there are surely other MPs who have something to conceal.