When the scandal of parliamentary expenses erupted in 2009 it was clear, of course, that a new system for paying MPs’ expenses was needed immediately. Before the end of the year parliament had passed legislation to bring the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) into existence. Equally urgently the new IPSA assembled everything, including staff, premises and software to begin operations after the election in May 2010.
Now the National Audit Office (NAO) has had time to review the success of the new authority and the value for money that it delivers. Credit is due for the exceptional speed, described as “a major achievement”, with which the new authority began work and the NAO is sympathetic towards some of the difficulties faced, even dismissing excess spending on temporary staff as “the right thing to do in the circumstances”. Inevitably, though, there are suggestions for how IPSA can do its job better and cheaper as the authority reaches maturity including moving to more suitable and cheaper premises once the current exorbitant lease expires after five years.
It is doubtful whether the MPs themselves would have given such a positive report on the new scheme. Certainly the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee in its report on IPSA has stronger reservations based, probably, on the mood of MPs as a whole. The NAO provides statistics that demonstrate this dissatisfaction. Apparently, “89 per cent told us they were dissatisfied with at least one aspect of the a new Scheme”. In detail, 61% of MPs were either very or fairly dissatisfied with the system for claiming subsistence and accommodation expenses and “an adversarial relationship appears to have developed between IPSA and many MPs”: not surprising when “most MPs believe they routinely subsidise their work and do not claim what they are entitled to”. Considering that virtually all MPs thought that the old system needed replacing this does not amount to a vote of confidence in IPSA.
In describing the process, at least as far as MPs and their staff are concerned, for claiming these expenses the NAO may well have identified the fundamental problem. Figure 10 in the report presents in the form of a flow chart the incredibly repetitive sequence that has to be followed in order to make a claim. Looking at the diagram there is good reason to believe the MPs when they estimate that they are spending four hours each month and their staff a further 12 hours toiling over their claims. It beggars belief, for instance, that the computerised system which IPSA has implemented, ‘expenses@work’, requires a whole new claim form to be initiated for each of the six different categories of expenditure that an MP might have incurred. The computer should do the analysis for the users, not the other way round! The NAO has attempted to place a cost on this incredibly laborious process and has arrived at a total expenditure in terms of staff time of £2.4million. The figure would have been very much higher if the amounts used for cost per hour had been those for a combination of senior and junior staff at IPSA rather than their more lowly paid claimants from the House of Commons.
So MPs are saddled with a frustrating expenses system that leaves almost all of them out of pocket. Maybe, after the expenses scandal, that is the system they deserve? The public has an costly and hideously inefficient mechanism for enabling MPs to do their job but perhaps, after all our righteous indignation, that is also our just reward?