---

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

I am just wondering which category I fall into: the rich or the junior anoraks with no experience of life. New Members will have read the previous debates. They will have seen that there was a debate not only in January 2009, but in July 2008. They will have studied that debate. One need not read it for too long, however, because one is rehearing it today. I tabled an amendment on 3 July 2008. Unfortunately, my amendment did not manage to persuade the Speaker that it should be selected. So it is today, but there has been some progress, because today I have been called to speak in the debate, unlike in 2008. In that debate, a year before the expenses scandal became a public issue, the same arguments were made. That was exactly a year before—well, not exactly: it was nine months before—The Daily Telegraph got that leaked information, and the rest, as we say, is history. That debate of 3 July 2008 is therefore of significance and relevance. The same Westminster club, with its desire for a special status in society, was eloquently defended then in the same way that we have heard this afternoon. The rich or the junior anoraks with no experience of life? Well, I am not rich: I have no inherited wealth, no wealth siphoned away—