Commons in denial over the old claims gravy train

12 April 2012

As David Chaytor completes an epic fall from revered MP to imprisoned thief, two equally strong reactions can be heard.

In homes and offices, people are saying with venom: "Good! It's about time one of them got what they deserve."

But the mood is different among embittered MPs gathering at Westminster for the new session. There, the feeling is a glowering sense they are being victimised.

Has there ever been such a chasm between the way ordinary people think and the political elite respond?

The expenses safeguards cobbled together by Gordon Brown have come to a crossroads. When MPs get back to work on Monday the biggest topic of conversation will be how soon they can water down or abolish the new regime that requires every claim to be pre-approved and checked.

Several are demanding the head of Sir Ian Kennedy, chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority which enforces the rules Parliament itself voted for. He, however, seems as deaf to the genuine grievances of honest politicians as some MPs are blind to the anger of constituents about the old expenses free-for-all.

MPs are right to review a system that has reduced some decent men and women to despair, but must do so with sensitivity to the disgust at what went on in the past. Westminster has a real blind spot about the expenses scandals; MPs still believe it was all a media witch-hunt, and that nobody really did anything wrong apart from a few bad apples.

"It's disgusting what the media are doing — they are out to destroy us," a notorious garden claimant complained privately during the exposures, oblivious to what seemed (to everyone else) to be clear breaches of the old rules in his claims.

Another, with tears in her eyes, spoke of the heartbreak of seeing respected colleagues brought down.

Westminster is in trauma still — and it has affected its judgment about rules that will work and last.

Mercifully few stooped to such shabby frauds as the disgraced Chaytor. But plenty milked the system for all it was worth, and many tried to ensure the unexpurgated files went to the shredder unseen.

It will be difficult to put a workable expenses regime in place until Westminster admits what the public already knows: this scandal was not a few bad apples or a media confection, but a systemic fall from grace.

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