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Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

As one of the last Back Benchers to speak, I hope that I can say that we have had a good debate. Everyone has said their piece and made a valuable contribution, including the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is fast becoming a national treasure. If he was not there, he would have to be invented, because his arguments have to be listened to. The fact is—there is no doubt about it—that we cocked up the system. The thing collapsed, and we have a system that we all know is not working, and that is hugely complex and massively bureaucratic. Above all, it is costing the taxpayer more money—namely £10,000 to administer it before any money is handed out. We are only a small body—a medium-sized company of 600 people—and if this was the private sector, there would be a little accounts department run by half a dozen people. We do not need this vast bureaucracy, so in the few minutes I have to speak, I shall offer a simple solution. I make no criticism of the staff. As I am pretty hopeless with computers, a very nice young man from IPSA sat next to me last week for two and a half hours while, with two fingers, I tried to claim for about five journeys. My criticism is not of the young people who work in IPSA, but of our Front Benchers, and particularly the three party leaders who got into a bidding war last year and landed us with this mess. By the way, thank God they are backing out of this and leaving it to Back Benchers, because this is a Back-Bench affair—it is nothing to do with Front Benchers. My criticism is also of Sir Ian Kennedy who, with his board, seems to have no conception of how Parliament is run. My first guiding principle is that the electors want complete transparency, yet we have created a system that is so complex and bureaucratic that it is too expensive to publish receipts that were sought in the first place. It is Kafkaesque. My second guiding principle is that the system should cost the taxpayer less, but this is costing the taxpayer more, so no one is happy—what are we gaining? There is something of the biter bit here, because for years we have created ever-more complex social security systems to try to regulate people's behaviour. That resulted in massive fraud and error in the Department for Work and Pensions, and now it has come here. Perhaps it is time for us to try to create simpler systems throughout the civil service. That is why I have always argued for a simple system of no-fraud, no-error child benefit—a flat-rate benefit. We should have a simple, flat-rate allowance like the old London costs allowance, because every single Member of Parliament has to live in London. I say to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw and others that it is not for us to determine what that should be—it would be for an independent body. I would be out of pocket under such a system because, unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field), I need a home in my north Lincolnshire constituency, which is three and a half hours away, as well as a home here, but we all know that the secret of happiness is not to compare oneself to others. Let us have the same allowance for every Member of Parliament.