No wonder they spent £100,000 of our money....

On Saturday The Times gave prominence to the news that under the parliamentary allowances scheme a husband and wife couple of Labour MPs insured each other for large sums with monthly premiums of £867. The claim was duly allowed by the expenses Department. The Times Blogger, Sam Coates, asked in his Red Box blog the same day, "..whatever you think of the behaviour of MPs, what on earth possessed the expenses department to authorise these payments. It beggars belief."

Elsewhere we learn of another such couple, or perhaps the same, living in London and representing London constituencies, claiming for further accommodation within Westminister because an hour's travel was too much.

Richard Littlejohn, in his column in the Daily Mail, reports on those destitute people, Tony and Cherie Blair, who at one point decided that their constituency house was their second home and obtained a 200% mortgage on it, when they were living in a house with a value which had appreciated from the relatively small amount they paid originally.

None of this is illegal. All MPs are entitled to claim up to £23,083 annually as a second home allowance. Many use it almost all to pay towards the mortgage on an (necessarily) expensive dwelling in London. This is on top of the £61,820 they receive in salary, much higher if they hold ministry appointments, generous travel payments, a pension of one fortieth of final salary for each year as MP, and a resettlement grant of 100% of final salary, the first £30,000 untaxed.

Now the MPs are suggesting that that the £23,000 should be added to their salary, no questions asked. They have been found out, and from Dereck Conway onwards a number of creative ways have come to light of benefitting themselves or their families at our expense.

The solution to all this must wait until July, when MPs are due to vote on a report of the Speaker's committee on the matter.

The present system is not acceptable. Over a twenty year period an MP could go some way towards acquiring a second home as an asset paid in some measure by the taxpayer, and the various near-fiddles are evidence that they have been over-generous and under-careful in using public funds.

Incorporating the allowance into salary is not satisfactory. It takes no account of the fact that some MPs, from Scottish or Northern constituencies actually do incur greater expenditure in travel than those who live in London or the Home Counties, who arguably do not need a second home or additional living allowances. This is reflected in the claims at the moment, where some MPs do not claim the full £23,000. They would be having a straight salary increase. In the present circumstances, with many people struggling because of higher taxes and prices, it would be hard for MPs to have salary increase of over 30%, and intolerable if this added to the future level of unfunded pension demands.

Whatever is decided must counter the suspicion that MPs, in charge of settling their own levels of remuneration and compensation, do and will act like pigs with a nose in the trough, - people following their own ambitions and careers unmindful of the burden they are imposing on electors who are struggling.

Whatever happens there must be a transparency and frugality which shames the arrangements enjoyed by MEPs, where disgraceful and dishonest claims are encouraged.