WHAT a difference a few months make. The MPs' expenses published today may seem just as outrageous as the last ones -- claims for lawn feed, shoe repairs and oak vanity units will rouse justifiable public derision -- but they look very different from those published in June. Not just because they cover one year rather than four, and are in respect of just one set of allowances -- for expenses incurred in staying away from home -- but because they omit the most striking element of the files last time: the passages blacked Panerai Fake out to prevent public scrutiny. It was impossible to judge from those blacked-out parts whether MPs were engaging in "flipping" the designation of their second homes between one property and another to maximise their claims. The authorities clamped down on that abuse in May, after the revelations of the practice by the Telegraph. This time more is on the record.
The publication of claims for other allowances takes place next year but it is worth noting that this time, MPs engaged in a last- ditch attempt to suppress the overall figures. They wanted the figures to be withheld until next year, when they would take into account the repayments which Sir Thomas Legg obliged MPs to make. However, a Commons committee saw Replica Yves Saint Laurent off that belated attempt at concealment. It shows, however, how deep seated is MPs' reflex to conceal what they can.
There will still be controversy over the figures published today. For Sir Peter Viggers (the notorious duck house claimant) to charge Pounds 800 for lawn feed, for Jacqui Smith to ask for Pounds 1,400 for a bed and TV and for Elliot Morley to charge Pounds 2.99 for a corkscrew, looks bad. But the authorities have called time on the most blatantly abusive practices
embroidered patches in respect of expenses; the Kelly report has identified them and the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority will in future be in charge of MPs' allowances and expenses. It is still worth noting that left to themselves, MPs would not have agreed to the principle of transparency on expenses and curbs on their ability to make up in expenses what they see as a shortfall in salary. It took newspapers to do that.
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