Bureaucracy

Heather Brooke, writing in the Grauniad highlights what must be the most expensive waste of time ever invented.

"Currently we have: the senior salaries review body (which makes recommendations on MPs' salaries and pensions); the committee on standards and privileges (appointed by the House of Commons to decide on complaints against individual MPs reported to them by the parliamentary commissioner for standards – currently John Lyon); the committee on standards in public life (which deals with complaints about unethical conduct among MPs – the current chair is Sir Christopher Kelly); the members allowances committee (made up of MPs who advise the members estimate committee on the rules surrounding allowances); the modernisation of the House of Commons select committee; the reform of the House of Commons committee (created to modernise the house in ways presumably more modern than the modernisation of House of Commons committee): and the Department of Resources (the Fees Office) – previously responsible for paying expense claims. To this we can now add Ipsa, a commissioner for parliamentary investigations, and a new Speaker's committee on Ipsa."

Now chairmen of select committees receive an additional payment, plus there is the cost of reporting and publishing their findings including administration - and for what purpose?

How about one body who publishes all receipts and does nothing else. We the public will soon decide what is allowable and what is not - after all we provide the bloody money in the first place!

Simples!