---

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Recently, there was an application for a job in my office from a candidate who described herself as ““IPSA literate””. The system is so arcane, irrational and impenetrable that to be IPSA literate is equivalent to having about two honours degrees. Many of us have taken the line that to impose the job of dealing with IPSA on an employee would be regarded by any tribunal as cruel and inhuman treatment. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that if a commercial organisation—an internet bank, for example—ran a system such as IPSA's, it would now be out of business because its system was so client-unfriendly?