MPs’ expenses: the details that you’ve probably missed

The headline recommendations from Sir Christopher Kelly’s review of MPs’ expenses have been widely covered. Despite this coverage, there is a series of detailed proposals which have been largely overlooked – including one which may yet put the leaders of political parties on the spot over cases involving their own MPs which they thought they had dealt with.

You can read the full report below, but these are the details I have in mind:

Travel: “MPs should expect to be treated in the same way as their constituents in this regard, unless there are compelling reasons to the contrary. That implies, for example, that MPs should not be reimbursed for the costs of ordinary commuting journeys – that is, journeys directly comparable with those made by other people between home and their place of work.” and MPs should not be allowed to claim for the cost of travel to or from a home which is neither in nor close to their constituency..

This will put an end to situations such as Malcolm Rifkind who, despite representing a London constituency – and with Parliament itself obviously being in London, was able to claim for travel between London and Scotland on the basis that he had a home in Scotland. Likewise, Jacqui Lait, MP for Beckenham, was able to claim for travel to and from Rye, East Sussex.

Parliamentary candidates will have to declare financial interests: All candidates at parliamentary elections should publish, at nomination, a register of interests including the existence of other paid jobs and whether they intend to continue to hold them, if elected. The Ministry of Justice should issue guidance on this in time for the next general election. Following the election, consideration should be given as to whether the process should become a statutory part of the nominations process.

Will party leaders be put on the spot? There is a twist in the tail of the proposals to reform MPs’ “redundancy” pay to make it less generous. For Sir Christopher Kelly says, “We also recommend that the sanction of withdrawal of the grant should be considered for serious breaches of the expenses rules or of other aspects of the code of conduct, in this or future parliaments. It is not too late for the sanction to be applied in respect of current MPs found to have committed a serious breach of the rules. Most employees in other organisations who leave their jobs because of misconduct could not expect to receive redundancy pay.”

This is particularly pertinent given that the other recommendations to cut the amount of money received by MPs who voluntarily stand down (rather than being defeated in an election) are scheduled to come in to force only after the next general election – and so MPs currently planning to resign in disgrace would get the full, generous, pay-off unless these sanctions are introduced before the election.

Cue a round of demands for these payments to be curbed for MPs caught in the expenses spotlight, along with party leaders put on the spot over whether or not they support that for named individual MPs?