The repercussions of the Legg report

Sir Christopher Kelly, Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, talked to the Public Administration Committee this morning.

He refused several invitations to take a pot shot at Sir Thomas Legg.

He said to the committee: “I think all of you are guilty of having gone along with a system which you must have known was flawed.”

He also said that despite differences with the IPSA boss Sir Ian Kennedy about how his recommended changes to MPs’ expenses should be applied, he would be very surprised if he felt he had to resign over the way his report is implemented.

Ann Widdecombe, one of the few MPs willing to talk about expenses in the Salem-like atmosphere many MPs feel is abroad, just told us that she thought incumbency, long an asset for MPs running for election, might be a liability at the next election.

Not just, she said, for the worst offenders, but for anyone who has had to payback anything even where no impropriety is alleged.

The Legg Report, by the way, seems to take a swipe at the former Speaker, Michael Martin (para 28, p.12), saying that the fees office was: “vulnerable to the influence of higher authorities in the House of Commons, from the Speaker down …” and that “these influences tended more towards looking after the immediate interests of MPs than to safeguarding public propriety in public expenditure.”