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Parliamentary Standards Act 2009

I chair the liaison committee with IPSA, which includes Members from all parties, and know that it can be a deeply frustrating experience. We do our best, but one of the problems we have had is trying to convince IPSA that its primary motivation must be to allow MPs to do their job and have a system that is not bureaucratic, does not allow fraud or error and, above all, saves taxpayers' money. That is why a central recommendation of the report is that there should be an independent cost-benefit analysis of whether a flat-rate, taxable allowance, so that there could be no fraud, error or detailed administrative costs, would save taxpayers' money.