Credit card rules relaxed to end financial hardship as MPs prepare to report Ipsa to privileges committee

The expenses watchdog today staged a climbdown in its bitter battle with MPs when it announced they will be allowed to use credit cards to pay more of their expenses, in an acknowledgement that some have been left in dire financial straits by the new regime.

The announcement came as dozens of MPs are preparing to report the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) to the privileges committee when parliament returns on Monday.

In a statement, the head of Ipsa acknowledged that devising the expenses regime, introduced to clean up the system which led to last year's scandal, had not been easy and said changes offered a "sensible, pragmatic evolution".

Ipsa will now pay directly to landlords of MPs' rented properties, and for items valued above £200, such as computers. Credit cards that are currently allocated to pay for travel will also be used for council tax and utility bills from November.

MPs have complained that the new system forced them to pay out thousands of pounds to set up their new offices and that the slow reimbursement process left them under intolerable financial strain. Ipsa claimed its staff had been abused by some MPs.

On 26 August Sir John Stanley, the Conservative MP for Tonbridge, emailed all MPs asking for support in applying for a precedence motion in the house to refer Ipsa to the standards and privileges committee on the basis that it is interfering with members' privilege to do their job free from obstruction.

Such a motion takes priority over all other parliamentary business and would have forced a debate in the Commons, throwing Monday's timetable into disarray.

It is not clear whether the reforms announced today are enough to satisfy the MPs behind the move. A spokesman for Ipsa denied that it made the changes to placate angry MPs.

Andrew McDonald, Ipsa's interim chief executive, said: "Following the creation of Ipsa last year, we have had to work with great speed to set the rules and establish robust means to implement them.

"It has not been easy or straightforward, but we are meeting that challenge. We have learned a great deal along the way. We want to use that experience to make the process easier for MPs and to deliver efficiency savings for the taxpayer, while maintaining the scrutiny of MPs' expenses which was called for by the public."

Denis MacShane, the Labour MP for Rotherham, who has been a critic of the new system, said: "Ipsa has made a significant step to meeting MPs' concerns and with some more tweaks and discussion perhaps this war can be laid to rest so we can declare a truce."

Tom Harris, the Labour MP for Glasgow South, said: "It's very welcome but I don't feel grateful to Ipsa. That would be like being grateful to a mugger who stops kicking you and punches you instead."

Sir George Young, leader of the Commons, said: "I welcome Ipsa's statement. It recognises the legitimate concerns that MPs have been expressing over the last few months and provides some constructive and commonsense solutions."

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

Denis MacShane makes headlines over a spat with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. But where did the story come from?

Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham and a former minister for Europe, was president of the National Union of Journalists in an earlier life. He knows about claiming expenses. And he knows where news stories come from.

Consider, for instance, last week's accounts of irate MPs effing and blinding away at shivering counter staff from the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) over an "abortion" of a system run by "monkeys". Consider particularly the "grumpy" hon member who made one Ipsa lady cry – and bought her a box of chocolates to say sorry.

Yes, that was MacShane himself, and he's clearly not proud about losing his rag. How could he be, with a chorus of shame – from Sky to the BBC to Fleet Street – echoing around him, and actors on Newsnight having great fun re-enacting the exchanges? But where exactly did all these stories come from?

"Ipsa has leaked the records it's been secretly keeping of explosions of 'naval' language directed by frustrated MPs against its staff," MacShane writes in the Times. More specifically, somebody tipped off the Evening Standard, which made a freedom of information request, got a little list of undeleted expletives and set the storm raging. We're in chicken-and-egg territory.

Is the point of the story that 10 MPs – out of 650 – have blown their tops? Or that some high Ipsa staffer has muttered to a newspaper, prompting an FoI trawl? Not a problem to get too worked up about, perhaps. Politicians who live by leaks may also expect to be skewered by them. But somehow not quite what you expect from a "standards authority" either.

• Newspapers & magazines
• Newspapers
• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

MPs are in the firing line again over alleged use of bad language in dealings with parliament's new expenses police. But the Ipsa system sounds a bad one

Oh dear – MPs are in the firing line again over their dealings with the new expenses police, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa).

Up to 10 are accused of using bad language, shouting and even making veiled threats, so the newspapers report this morning. You can read Nick Watt's lively account here.

No, I don't expect you to feel sorry for politicians over their expenses problems.

Many were caught misbehaving – and worse – last year, though many others were unfairly traduced, victims of arbitrary and inconsistent treatment by officials, both active and retired, who should have known better, and hounded by a media which doesn't.

No provocation excuses bad manners to young people, though one miscreant, Labour's Denis MacShane, admitted it was he who dashed out and bought a box of chocolates for an Ipsa volunteer he had upset (she had upset him, too).

Volunteer? Yes, apparently Ipsa has been using volunteers from a civil service department to front MPs' enquiries.

More senior staff also appear to have been keeping what the MPs call "secret files" on their behaviour, a version of which was leaked to the Mail on Sunday two weeks before its official release yesterday.

Leaks happen, but this one should serve as a reminder that not even parliamentary watchdogs chaired by eminent people such as Professor Sir Ian Kennedy are perfect. After all, mild-mannered Vince Cable and genteel Teresa May were among the allegedly abusive MPs exposed.

I realise I'm probably not making much progress defending the political class in front of the usual hanging jury of bloggers. So let me try another tack.

The Tory ex-minister Peter Bottomley (his wife, Virgina, got into John Major's cabinet), the veteran MP for Worthing West, is another vocal critic of Ipsa, which has cost £6m to set up and has had to pay out a reported £1m on tick since election day to tide MPs over for staff wages and office costs.

What makes Bottomley's assessment interesting is that he is a very independent backbencher, a champion of unpopular causes, quixotic and occasionally even eccentric in his views.

What follows is a slightly edited version of a letter he sent to Kennedy in July and copied to me.

Yesterday, my PA kindly prepared two claims, one a small one for stationery supplies. She had a frustrating time. A part, but no more than a part, was perhaps unfamiliarity with the system (she soon will have maternity leave and the two people covering her roles will also face the start-up problems).
I then, with her help, had to log on – interrupted by votes and other issues – and managed to complete my part of the process without error (I do not see how a bit of clicking adds much to the security or integrity of the system) but we then became bogged in how to print the sheet needed to go with the invoices.
It is some time since I was a salaryman with the British Steel corporation or a minister in three government departments.
I have never faced such a worrying system: I have no confidence in it and I have little confidence in my ability to use it appropriately. I avoid it as much as possible and I cannot delegate much of it.
I do not believe others put up with this kind of trouble for long. Please name four big London businesses with similar systems, and specify whether their principals have to claim for their paper, envelopes and Post It notes.
Before coming to two issues, can I put in a plea for colleagues now judged to be able to do without payment of additional home costs? I came in to Westminster having taken an early train from Hull (not at public expense). It took 35 minutes from the platform at King's Cross to the security door at Westminster tube. Which are the constituencies on that line that are judged to be within 60 minutes of Westminster?
First issue – I rang yesterday to ask if I could meet someone or talk on the telephone about constituency costs. I protest against the refusal of your system to let me talk to a helpful human being about the appropriate way to pay towards the support for my parliamentary duties helpfully provided by the Worthing West Conservative Association.
What follows would come more easily in conversation, at least as a preliminary step. I would bet the response will include questions. Email tennis is not my idea of sport.
The constituency organiser, with other employed staff and volunteers, provide advice, links to me and to the Westminster office and also provide a meeting place and photocopying of documents in addition to a listening post and direct help to local people, groups and businesses.
I estimate that the cost is not less than £700 a month at present, though that may change if the neighbouring constituency change their arrangement. I am satisfied that alternative arrangements would cost much more.
I want to arrange for £700 a month to be paid against an invoice. I also ask that if the value or cost is over £700 by a margin that I am not vulnerable to accepting help that is not public.
I do not want and I do not think it justifiable or possible to break down the £700 into a specified allocation of the utilities, council tax, maintenance and sundry costs, let alone a share of the photocopier and telephone bills. I wish to discuss this with who ever is able to give IPSA's views please.
Second issue: this is about travel. One day, I had to be early in Worthing. For household reasons, around midnight I drove our spare car (not one of the two my wife and I usually use – we carry the full costs of the three vehicles) from Westminster to our home in Milford, Surrey. After a few hours sleep, I walked for 30 minutes to Milford station to pay £18.20 for a single train ticket to Worthing, changing at Havant.
After the Worthing meeting, I came to Westminster by train, paying £9.20 for a reduced price ticket to London or to London's zone six. My freedom pass would cover the rest of the journey. The National Rail website shows a return fare of £24.10 on a day return to arrive in time for the meeting.
How, in the system, do I deal with that? Should I pretend I drove to Worthing and back? Should I pretend I went down and back to Worthing by train from London? Should I be able to ring someone in IPSA to ask rather than sit here tapping at keys?
The money does not matter. The process does rather more (most times I go directly or, if on a detour, make it by road and so can claim as if direct).
In the Commons, every cabinet minister, every minister and whip, every shadow minister, has to give time to the system. The calculations of cost leave out their time. I suggest that, when you or someone else reviews this set of procedures, you do a sample survey of what MPs could claim for but now choose not to claim for.
Few things make me as disappointed as all this. There are so many more things I should like to be doing for the constituents I serve, for the national interests I care about and for the international causes that matter. The time demanded by IPSA has an opportunity cost. Queuing on a telephone and deciding to give up claiming for many things are two of the consequences.
I can afford it now. I could not when our children were younger and there was one main household income. Other MPs are under severe money pressure.

Before going into print with this letter, I traced Bottomley to his annual family clan holiday on the Isle of Wight – anything up to 100 of them – to see whether he had received a detailed reply Not that I am aware of, he cautiously replied.

It is August, after all. But the MP persists in asserting that "for whatever reason, they have created a monster".

Too much haste to appease press and public would be my guess. But Bottomley adds that his pregnant secretary, whose maternity leave must now be paid out of a different budget, was asked by Ipsa "to explain why the pregnancy was unavoidable".

Hers is not the only such case. Here's another irate perspective from the Labour MP Tom Harris. Anyone who claims out of pocket expenses (I do myself) will know there are often complications, such as that Worthing train fare, which "modern" online expense procedures lack the flexibility and common sense to cope with (even on liberal newspapers) very well.

It's part of a trend to cut costs, eliminate abuse and, incidentally, waste a lot of time. But Ipsa's system sounds a really bad one.

What Bottomley says is: "I would love Sir Ian Kennedy to sit with me while I try to log on and make an inquiry and to stay with me while I await a reply. He may have to take a holiday."

Over to you, Sir Ian.

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

Workers at Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority were verbally abused by ministers over tough new rules

Staff running parliament's new expenses system have been verbally abused and reduced to tears by MPs frustrated by the tough new rules, documents show.

A detailed account of encounters between MPs and staff from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) reveals how MPs repeatedly swore as the expenses system was explained to them. One MP described it as a "fucking abortion", another described an Ipsa member of staff as a "monkey" and "nutty".

The feud between MPs and Ipsa intensified tonight when a senior MP accused the body of misleading MPs and giving damaging briefings to the press.

Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister, said: "It is rather disturbing that if secret files are being kept [on] MPs that we are not seeing them and then they can be released to the press in a very biased, malicious, one-sided manner."

The row began after Ipsa published accounts of nine incidents with MPs on its website in response to a freedom of information request. The accounts were similar to a detailed report in the Mail on Sunday on 8 August that named a number of senior MPs, including the home secretary, Theresa May, and the business secretary, Vince Cable, who have been involved in difficult encounters with Ipsa.

The accounts released today do not name the MPs and there was no suggestion that May and Cable were among the MPs who swore at Ipsa staff.

The papers released today show:

• On 26 July an MP told an Ipsa member of staff: "This system is a fucking abortion," adding that the system was so complicated that the only "rich people and losers" would become MPs.

• An MP stormed out of an induction system and blocked the reception desk, demanding answers to questions about the new system. "Walked out on a staff member in the middle of her explanation, branding all the trainers and staff 'monkey'," the report said.

• On 12 May, six days after the general election, one MP showed a "complete unwillingness" to engage with an Ipsa volunteer. The report added that the MP "used the word 'f*ck' and other violent language (eg, 'I'm going to murder someone today')".

• On 11 May a volunteer had an encounter with an MP who was described as "very difficult ... disruptive [and] angry" during an induction session. The report said: "At the 10 minute mark the volunteer burst into tears and a staff member [from Ipsa] attempted to intervene. When the staff member offered to help, the MP dismissed him as "condescending", at which point another staff member pulled the volunteer (still in tears) out of the session."

The MP immediately apologised and the Ipsa staff member took over the induction. But the report added: "The MP continued to be difficult, claiming that the system reduced him to a cipher and that it made him 'not want to represent his country as an MP'." He later returned with a box of chocolates and a note for the volunteer.

MacShane tonight admitted that he was the MP who bought the chocolates. But he launched a strong attack on Ipsa for drawing up what he described as a secret and highly partial account.

"This story was in the Mail on Sunday two weeks ago," he told Radio 4's PM programme. "Ipsa have been briefing the press. What we didn't know – this all stems from the very hectic, tense, exhaustive period just after the election – [is] they have been keeping secret records on MPs and have put out a very partial one-sided account of my own case. Now they are officially giving this information of these secret records to the press. It is a bit surprising that they keep secret records on MPs to begin with and then release them to the press without letting us even have sight of them."

MacShane added that Ipsa was to blame for his difficult induction session because it relied on a volunteer to explain the new rules. "We went into a melee of people and some very nice young ladies, volunteers from a civil service department, were told to teach us this computer training course which has defeated every MP. After 10 minutes I was getting upset and saying: 'Look I want to be an MP, I don't want to have to grapple with this bureaucracy.' She got upset, there were tears in my ears. I just stopped, ran out and got the biggest box of chocolates I could find. All the Ipsa brass were standing round and putting these young ladies in the frontline."

A spokesman for Ipsa said: "These instances relate to the early days of operation. Ipsa is focusing on getting on with its job. Last week, for example, Ipsa handled 4,000 claims and paid £650,000 to MPs."

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

Former Tory peer alleged to have dishonestly claimed more than £24,300 in overnight subsistence and mileage claims

A peer today appeared in court accused of false accounting after being questioned over the parliamentary expenses scandal.

Lord Taylor of Warwick, a former Tory, is alleged to have dishonestly claimed more than £24,300 in overnight subsistence and mileage claims and was summoned to face six charges at City of Westminster magistrates court.

The first charge alleges that, on or about 31 March 2006, Taylor dishonestly submitted claims for overnight subsistence and car mileage, stating that his main place of residence was outside London when he did not reside at the address he had given and lived in the capital.

The subsequent charges allege similar claims were made on 3 July 2006, 31 October 2006, 5 April 2007, 2 July 2007 and 31 October 2007.

Taylor stood in the dock and spoke only to confirm his address and date of birth.

His defence counsel, Eddie Tang, gave an indication of his not guilty plea to the charges.

The district judge, Jeremy Coleman, granted him unconditional bail and ordered him to appear for a plea and case management hearing at Southwark crown court on 17 September.

Simon Clements, prosecuting, said the six summonses were related to 16 claims, between March 2006 and October 2007, totalling £24,300.

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, and the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, set up a panel of senior officers and solicitors in May 2009 to consider political expenses cases.

Taylor, 57 – whose full name is John David Beckett Taylor – became the first black Conservative peer four years after unsuccessfully fighting the 1992 general election in Cheltenham.

He has been a practising barrister, an adviser to cabinet ministers and a television presenter.

Lord Tebbit once predicted he would eventually become a cabinet minister, but others subjected him to racial abuse.

Taylor had the Tory whip removed after being charged.

He was born in Birmingham, the son of a professional cricketer and a nurse, both from Jamaica. His father played for Warwickshire and the West Indies.

Taylor was called to the bar in 1978, joining the same chambers as Kenneth Clarke, the Tory cabinet minister. He later worked as an adviser to Home Office ministers.

• MPs' expenses
• Conservatives

Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust
thinks we are heading for more "data journalism" and poses some questions in How news organisations should prepare for data dumps.

I'll overlook the naive bit about internal newspaper office secrecy. (It's not ironic, Martin, it's part of a long tradition stemming from the contradiction between journalists being born gossipers with the countervailing journalistic desire to land a scoop in a fiercely competitive environment).

His substantive point, based on his belief that massive data releases are likely to accelerate, is that news outlets need to work out how best to deal with them in future in order to maximize the benefits to them and the public.

Here, in brief, are his questions, with reasoning and tentative answers:

1. How do we harness public intelligence to generate a long tail of stories? Though the Daily Telegraph succeeded in unearthing dozens of stories from the MPs' expenses data, the handful of reporters in its bunker could never trawl through each of the millions of receipts contained on the computer disks. It was The Guardian that first worked out how to deal with this; it not only made the receipts available online but provided tools to search through them and tag them (see Investigate your MP's expenses).

2. How do we make it personal? He praises those sites that made it possible to uncover the details with the Afghan Logs by putting together an app that allowed easy (well, easier) navigation (see here).

3. How can we use the data to increase trust? By tagging, referencing and linking to documents. This cements the credibility of the journalism and gives the reader the opportunity to explore the context within the original source material.

4. How do we best - and quickly - filter the data (and work out what, and what not, to publish)? A mixture of human skills and human ingenuity (to develop computer-based short-cuts, ie algorithms). He thinks The Guardian, the New York Times, and the BBC are leading the way.

5. How can we ensure future whistleblowers bring their data to us? Organisations that become known for handling big data sets will have more whistleblowers coming to them.

This all strikes me as straightforward enough, even a little obvious. But it's none the worse for that. We journalists tend to prefer instinct to structure. And that, incidentally, is the value of journalism teaching too.

Source: PBS Mediashift Ideas

• WikiLeaks
• MPs' expenses
• Daily Telegraph
• The Guardian
• New York Times
• BBC
• Newspapers

Three former Labour MPs and a Tory peer accused of fraudulent claims face criminal trial after appeal court ruling

Three former Labour MPs and a Tory peer accused of fiddling their expenses face criminal trials after the court of appeal ruled that parliamentary privilege did not protect them from prosecution.

Lord Judge, the lord chief justice, and two other judges rejected the argument by David Chaytor, Elliot Morley, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield that their fate "should lie within the hands of parliament".

Judge said: "In our judgment no question of privilege arises and the ordinary process of the criminal justice system should take its normal course, unaffected by any groundless anxiety that they might constitute an infringement of the principles of parliamentary privilege." He went on: "The stark reality is that the defendants are alleged to have taken advantage of the allowances scheme designed to enable them to perform their important public duties as members of parliament to commit crimes of dishonesty to which parliamentary immunity or privilege does not, has never, and, we believe, never would attach."

The judges were told, at a hearing in June, that the challenge was not an attempt to "take them above the law", but to ensure they were adjudicated by the "correct law and the correct body". It was said by the defendants that submitting an expenses form was part of the proceedings of parliament, and therefore protected by parliamentary privilege.

The decision – by Lord Judge, master of the rolls Lord Neuberger and Sir Anthony May – upheld an earlier ruling by a judge at Southwark crown court in central London that they were not protected by parliamentary privilege.

In a judgment citing cases from as far back as 1629, Lord Judge said: "It can confidently be stated that parliamentary privilege or immunity from criminal prosecution has never, ever attached to ordinary criminal activities by members of parliament."

With the exception of the exercise of freedom of speech, he said, "it is difficult to envisage circumstances in which the performance of the core responsibilities of a member of parliament might require or permit him or her to commit crime".

The court, he added, could not "discern from principle or authority that privilege or immunity in relation to such conduct may arise merely because the allegations are based on activities which have taken place 'within the walls' of parliament".

Lord Judge said: "If the allegations are proved, and we emphasise, if they are proved, then those against whom they are proved will have committed ordinary crimes.

"Even stretching language to its limits, we are unable to envisage how dishonest claims by members of parliament for their expenses or allowances begin to involve the legislative or core functions of the relevant House, or the proper performance of their important public duties."

Former Bury North MP Chaytor, 60, of Todmorden, West Yorkshire; ex-Scunthorpe MP Morley, 58, of Winterton, north Lincolnshire; Devine, 57, of Bathgate, West Lothian, formerly MP for Livingston; and former Essex county council leader Hanningfield, who is also known as Paul White, 69, of West Hanningfield, Essex, are all on unconditional bail and due to stand separate trials at Southwark crown court.

The four men, who all deny theft by false accounting, can still take their cases to the supreme court for a further challenge.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of seven years' imprisonment.

Lord Judge also warned that while the issue of parliamentary expenses had "excited huge public interest and, certainly on occasions, profound concern", the law had yet to take its course.

"Just because of the publicity which the cases have attracted, it remains to be emphasised that none has been convicted, each is presumed to be innocent, and the evidence in support of the allegations made against them has not yet been tested, evaluated and judged by a jury," he said.

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons
• House of Lords

David Chaytor, Elliot Morley, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield are not protected from prosecution by parliamentary privilege

Three former Labour MPs and a Tory peer today lost appeals against a ruling that they are not protected from prosecution by parliamentary privilege over allegations of theft by false accounting.

Court of appeal judges rejected challenges by David Chaytor, Elliot Morley, Jim Devine and Lord Hanningfield, who deny the allegations.

The four appealed against a ruling made in June by Mr Justice Saunders, sitting at Southwark crown court. He rejected arguments claiming they were protected by parliamentary privilege and should be dealt with by parliament alone.

Today, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, sitting with Lord Neuberger and Sir Anthony May, backed the earlier ruling.

He said: "The stark reality is that the defendants are alleged to have taken advantage of the allowances scheme ... to commit crimes of dishonesty to which parliamentary immunity or privilege does not, has never, and, we believe, never would attach."

Each of the four defendants – all of whom who are on unconditional bail – now face separate criminal trials, although it is open to them to seek to take their case to the supreme court for a further challenge.

The former Bury North MP Chaytor, 60, of Todmorden, Lancashire, is accused of falsely claiming rent on a London flat he owned, falsely filing invoices for IT work and renting a property from his mother, against regulations.

Ex-Scunthorpe MP Morley, 58, of Winterton, north Lincolnshire, is charged with falsely claiming £30,428 in interest payments between 2004 and 2007 towards a mortgage on his home which he had already paid off.

Devine, 57, of Bathgate, West Lothian, formerly the MP for Livingston, is accused of wrongly submitting two invoices worth a total of £5,505 for services provided by Armstrong Printing Ltd.

He also faces a second charge alleging that he dishonestly claimed cleaning and maintenance costs of £3,240 by submitting false invoices from Tom O'Donnell Hygiene and Cleaning Services.

Former Essex county council leader Hanningfield, also known as Paul White, 69, of West Hanningfield, near Chelmsford, Essex, faces six charges of making dishonest claims for travelling allowances.

Judge said: "It can confidently be stated that parliamentary privilege or immunity from criminal prosecution has never, ever attached to ordinary criminal activities by members of parliament."

"If the allegations are proved – and we emphasise, if they are proved – then those against whom they are proved will have committed ordinary crimes."

He said the court believed the "ordinary process of the criminal justice system should take its normal course".

The judge added that the issue of parliamentary expenses had "excited huge public interest" and "profound concern".

He stressed that none of the four men had been convicted, and the evidence against them had yet to be tested.

The appeals raised "important questions of public interest about the nature and ambit of parliamentary privilege" and had required examination in depth, he added.

• MPs' expenses
• Labour
• Conservatives

But Westminster's new spirit may be stifled if the alternative vote, at core a top-down compromise, ever comes to pass

How to begin to describe the revitalisation of the Commons? How to find a metaphor for metamorphosis? The dragonfly of the new parliament crawling from the grub of the old? That's an overstatement. I thought about comparing the present coming alive of Westminster to a wonderful animated film, Spirited Away, in which a little girl stumbles on what appears to be a derelict theme park, only to see the structures light up as darkness falls. Lithe spirits dart around bulbous monstrosities, driven by rituals that only inhabitants understand…

But that's too exotic. Parliament lacks the magic realist touch. So, prosaically: since the election, the Commons has begun to function better. There are reasons to hope the improvement will continue. The government's official programme of constitutional reform, however, has little to do with it. It's the spirit of the place that counts.

After every winter of depression, there's an automatic rebound. It's true of the economy and of the Commons, post-expenses, for all the misery among MPs about the way the rules are applied. New MPs, a new government and a new way of doing government have added a superficial glamour. You sense it in the chamber, where business is more topical and quicker. The late sittings engineered by Labour, and even the recent embarrassed drunks on the terrace, are signs of something stirring. There is a buzz, a sense that the place is starting to matter again, that maybe voters are noticing.

In no particular order, this is because: the new Speaker is doing well; no party has a majority and the coalition has opened minds; the 2010 intake is large and talented; reforms have perked up select committees and backbench debates; and most of all because of the budget. There's no need to fake outrage when the government is asking for suggestions on 40% cuts. This battle is real. Ed Balls is doing well, ripping into Michael Gove and VAT. Conservative theories as to which Labour leader would cause them most trouble have been revised as a result.

John Bercow is allowing urgent questions that bring ministers to the despatch box and interrupting planted questions. What he says is sensible; the manner grates, but pomposity is more forgivable than incompetence. And he has decent material to work with in a chamber where more than a third of MPs are new and in so many cases an improvement on the outgoing ones. Their maiden speeches, some of them, have been excellent. Many want to make their mark fast and coalition means not all expect to become ministers. Though bold talk among the new intake of never voting on a bill they had not read has collapsed in the face of three-line whips, the best are using their status as an MP to lead projects in their communities – such as today's Big Society launches.

But the paradox is how little has to do with the government. And this is where things could veer off track. Nick Clegg is promoting changes to the way the Commons is elected not because anyone really, really wants his particular plan, but because it looks like the right thing to do, and he hopes no one will dislike the idea too much. Lib Dems may come to terms with AV because it involves voting by numbers and because at least it breaks the ice; Conservatives may tolerate it because it retains single-seat MPs. But neither side is enthusiastic.

The number of constituencies is to be reduced, arbitrarily, by 50, with all but three containing roughly the same number of voters. This means that, for some years to come, scores of sitting MPs will be in fear of their political lives at the hands not of the electorate but of the constitutional process. The point was put recently to a Commons whip: won't all this rejigging make for a sense of insecurity? "Hm," he replied, "that's an advantage I hadn't thought of."

The exemptions are in Scotland: two because they contain remote islands and the third, Charles Kennedy's seat, because it is many miles across and anyway there's no need to rub salt into the wound – Clegg's predecessor-but-one is prone to get cross with the new generation of leadership and at times disappear altogether into the mists of Lochaber.

The serious challenge is to sell as reform a programme of changes which is to its core a top-down compromise. The intention is to increase public influence over parliament and mollify voters after expenses, and Clegg is right that this needs to be done. But at some point this may clash with a Commons which is resurrecting itself, and will become resistant to imposition from outside. Listening to Clegg before his select committee last week, it was easy to take his side against Commons recalcitrance; but less straightforward was trying to work out what good he thinks his reforms will do. Achieving a more inclusive democracy is not the same as wanting a more independent parliament. Indeed the attempt at reform-by-process could kindle a new spirit of bloody-mindedness in MPs.

And if it did that, it would have achieved the only reform that matters. We are asking two things of our 2010 Commons: first, that it behaves; and second that it stands up for itself. There is a huge inherent contradiction here.

• John Bercow
• Constitutional reform
• MPs' expenses
• Nick Clegg
• Ed Balls
• Michael Gove

Former barrister and first black Tory peer charged in relation to allegedly dishonest claims of £11,000 in subsistence costs

A Conservative peer is to face prosecution after alleged misconduct over expenses, the Crown Prosecution Service has said.

Lord Taylor of Warwick will face six charges of false accounting after being questioned over his part in the expenses controversy that engulfed the Commons last year. Taylor is due to appear before City of Westminster magistrates on 13 August.

Taylor, a former barrister who was made the first black Tory peer and has worked as an adviser to Home Office ministers, has been charged in relation to allegedly dishonest claims he made for £11,000 in subsistence costs over a period of a year and a half from around March 2006 to October 2007.

Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, said: "Having thoroughly reviewed the eighth file of evidence we have received from the Metropolitan police in relation to parliamentary expenses, we concluded that there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to bring criminal charges against Lord Taylor.

"The first charge alleges that, on or about 31 March 2006, Lord Taylor dishonestly submitted claims for overnight subsistence and car mileage stating that his main place of residence was outside London when he did not reside at the address he had given but actually resided in London.

"In total the charges allege a sum in excess of £11,000 was dishonestly claimed over this period."

The Conservative party has revealed that Taylor has since resigned from his role as Tory whip.

Taylor is the sixth parliamentarian accused of acting illegally over expenses during a long police investigation into the scandal.

Last month three former Labour MPs, David Chaytor, 60, Elliot Morley, 57, and Jim Devine, 57, challenged a ruling in the court of appeal that they were not protected from prosecution by parliamentary privilege. Appearing alongside the Tory peer Lord Hanningfield, 69, the three presented legal precedents, some dating back to the 17th century, to argue they should be tried by parliament rather than the courts. All four deny theft by false accounting and a decision is expected later this month. Another Labour MP, Eric Illsley, has been accused of dishonestly claiming more £20,000 in expenses for his London home.

Two other people investigated by police have faced no further action.

The fallout from the expenses scandal, which led to many MPs repaying money they should not have claimed, reverberated in the civil service. In February Andrew Gibson, a top official in the parliamentary fees office that oversaw MPs expenses, quit after being arrested over fraud allegations.

• MPs' expenses
• Conservatives

Scotland's only Conservative MP allegedly breached election expenses rules

Police have confirmed they are investigating a complaint of an alleged breach of election expenses rules by Scotland's only Tory MP, David Mundell.

It follows a weekend report in the Sunday Herald that a bill for £700 had been omitted for Mundell's campaign costs.

Dumfries and Galloway constabulary said it had been asked to investigate.

Mundell, a junior Scottish minister, said a mistake had been made in completing expense forms but this was due "solely to human error" and was "not any attempt to mislead".

"Such mistakes are not uncommon in election returns and there are established procedures for dealing with them," he said.

"Obviously, as soon as it was drawn to my attention, I informed the electoral commission who have an interest in such matters."

A statement from Dumfries and Galloway constabulary confirmed it was investigating the situation.

The force said it had received a formal complaint in relation to an alleged breach of the Representation of the People Act in the run-up to the election by Mundell.

The Sunday Herald reported at the weekend that the MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale was facing a possible inquiry over payment for a newspaper advert.

Like every candidate in the election, Mundell's spending was split into two parts. The first part, known officially as the "long campaign" period, ran from January 1 until the dissolution of parliament on 12 April.

Mundell spent £29,148 out of the maximum £29,664 allowed for his constituency, the Herald reported.

In the second "short" campaign period, between April 13 and polling day on 6 May, he spent another £11,599 out of a maximum £11,814.

The cost, nearly £700, would have taken his expenses over the permissible limit.

The newspaper said it appeared the money had been counted, but was attributed to an earlier stage in the campaign. According to electoral commission rules, no candidate is allowed to spend more than the cap in either the long or short period, and spending in one period cannot be swapped to the other to stay within the limits.

The cost, nearly £700, would have taken his expenses over the permissible limit.

The newspaper said it appeared the money had been counted, but was attributed to an earlier stage in the campaign.

The electoral commission confirmed Mundell was in touch at the beginning of the week to "alert us there may be a problem", though it added that the weekend reports had already triggered an initial assessment of the matter, which will conclude on Monday.

• MPs' expenses
• Scottish politics
• Conservatives
• Scotland

Outer London MPs spent Tuesday night working out where they could sleep when parliament had its longest sitting since the election

The summer holidays are just about in sight and exhausted MPs, who have not recovered from the general election, are dreaming of Greek beaches.

But one topic is dominating conversations in the bars and tearooms of Westminster above holiday fantasies: the hated Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) which monitors MPs' expenses.

A startling figure is doing the rounds at Westminster. Senior figures are saying that around 200 MPs are not bothering to make expenses claims because the rules are so complicated and take up too much of their time.

Some of these MPs have tried to make claims but have now given up. Others have not even bothered.

MPs know they have to be careful in criticising IPSA which was established after a collective loss of confidence at the height of the expenses scandal last year. MPs on the Speaker's committee have been criticised after a series of tense exchanges with senior IPSA figures at a hearing last month.

But MPs, who were greeted with a written message saying IPSA will not tolerate threatening or abusive behaviour in their first encounter with the body, are voicing these complaints:

• IPSA has no understanding of what MPs do. They say this is as much the fault of parliament as it is of IPSA. But there are complaints that no memorandum of understanding has been drawn up setting out the duties of MPs, pointing out how they need to be in Westminster and in their constituencies.

Last night provided a telling example of the difficulties. The House of Commons did not rise until shortly before 3.00am this morning after a nine and a half hour debate on the Finance Bill.

MPs with outer London constituencies, who are not allowed to claim accommodation or travel expenses until Parliament sits past 11.00pm, were frantically working out in the early evening yesterday what to do. They knew parliament would be sitting late but they did not exactly when the commons would rise. If they booked a hotel and parliament rose early they would not be able to make a claim and would be out of pocket.

• There is no point in raising any concerns with IPSA. These can only be done by email. These will be subject to freedom of information requests. "Something innocent could easily be misconstrued," one MP said.

MPs are saying there is one ray of hope. They think that Sir Ian Kennedy, the IPSA chair, understands the depth of the problem.

One MP says:

IPSA is simply not working. It is going to have to be completely overhauled. But that does mean that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are going to have to call in Harriet Harman and admit the whole thing is a farce. But that will involve cross-party agreement. But the complete failure to achieve consensus over the past year explains why we are in this mess.

• House of Commons
• MPs' expenses

The question of parliamentary privilege and MPs' expenses was dealt with last year when the Legg commission, which obliged MPs to pay back thousands of pounds, was itself covered by parliamentary privilege (Report, June 30). MPs were not allowed legal representation to challenge Thomas Legg's unilateral retrospective decision on what was and what was not permitted expenditure. The argument advanced in a resolution of the house was that a private appeal might be allowed to a retired judge, Paul Kennedy, and the Commons agreed "This process is designed to reflect the opportunity an individual would have in legal proceedings to show why he or she should not be required to make restitution. That opportunity is not available to members in this case because of parliamentary privilege." So parliamentary privilege was invoked to prevent MPs using lawyers to defend themselves against the quite arbitrary decisions of a retired mandarin.

The press quite understandably has enjoyed a year of MP-baiting and we have a new system which allows any anonymous complaint to be investigated and MPs fined if an official of the new Ipsa quango so decides. The idea that the election would draw a line under this business is now proving far-fetched. I make no defence of my own or fellow MPs' behaviour. But I fear that our courts and lawyers will have an increasing amount of work on their hands as the media maintain their hate campaign against MPs, and some MPs turn to lawyers as there is no one in the Commons able to defend their right to serve their constituents and work as national parliamentarians.

Denis MacShane MP

Lab, Rotherham

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

MPs say Ipsa has failed to prove it is good value for money

MPs yesterday threatened to refuse to sign off the budget of the new expenses watchdog after accusing the independent body of failing to prove that it was providing good value for money.

If the MPs on the Speaker's committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) revolt and veto the budget, it would create a constitutional stand-off between the MPs and the expenses watchdog, threatening to undermine its independence.

Ipsa has proved deeply unpopular with many MPs, who say it is too bureaucratic and claim they have been left penniless while they wait for reimbursements.

Several, including the former minister Phil Woolas and the Labour MP Sharon Hodgson, sat in the audience of yesterday's committee meeting heckling the three most senior Ipsa figures.

Amid a series of tense exchanges, MPs including the Speaker, John Bercow, indicated that they were so far unsure about whether they could approve Ipsa's request for £6.46m of public funding for 2010-11.

Papers released at the committee showed the Treasury has only agreed to sign off the budget on the proviso that Ipsa's spending is reduced next year.

The Conservative MP Charles Walker said: "We are not convinced on this committee that, at £6.5m, you are delivering value for money, because the House of Commons has presented a paper saying they delivered the functions you are delivering for £2m.

"They accept that it is not a comparable service. However, you say that, on a like-for-like basis, you need to do it at a lower cost than the House of Commons.

"So do you have the data that allows you to demonstrate to us that you are administering this in a more cost-effective way than the House of Commons? Because if you don't, I can't see how we can agree with these estimates, because we cannot ascertain whether you are delivering value for money for the taxpayer."

Committee members complained about a lack of detail in the estimates for this year and separately questioned the use of public money to appoint three communications staff – including a director on an £85,000 salary – as well as a compliance officer on £90,000 who they claimed would be redundant as MPs were so tightly controlled under the new system.

Sir Ian Kennedy, the Ipsa chair, who appeared alongside the interim chief executive, Andrew McDonald, and the director of corporate services, Philip Lloyd, insisted the organisation could boast huge achievements in the short time it had existed, including paying every MP and processing 2,385 expenses claims from 228 MPs at the value of £277,000.

But he also repeatedly promised to learn from any mistakes and agreed to hold more regular meetings with Sir George Young, the leader of the house, to hear of MPs' concerns.

Ipsa was created to administer MPs' expenses independently in the wake of last year's scandal when dozens of MPs were found to have made inappropriate expenses claims.

It was celebrated as the end of self-regulation by parliament, but a specially convened speaker's committee continues to approve Ipsa's annual estimated budget for the year, raising questions about how independent the watchdog can be. Yesterday's meeting was the first test of that.

Bercow asked Ipsa to provide additional clarification on its spending "as soon as possible".

"We will be wanting to look at that because it is fundamental to discharging our duty to consider whether we can legitimately, and with good conscience, approve the estimate," he said.

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

Institute for Government warns public money used to subsidise MPs' food and lobbyists allowed to fund MPs' overseas research trips

The Commons has failed to modernise in the wake of last year's expenses scandal and is refusing to become fully accountable, risking another crisis in public faith, a report warns.

The Institute for Government – an influential research group whose members include senior Whitehall figures – says the Commons could be hit by a further expenses-style scandal as it continues to use public money to subsidise MPs' food and allows lobbyists to fund MPs' overseas research trips.

The report, entitled Firm Foundations for a New Politics?, describes a new five-year strategy for the Commons as "very encouraging", but adds: "We are also surprised, however, by the weaknesses that remain in the governance of the house administration and by the lack of urgency in tackling remaining risks to the reputation of the Commons."

The house does not meet "generally accepted standards of good governance", it says, adding that to meet the new government's emphasis on "transparent, clean" politics, it needs urgent reform. The report calls for the National Audit Office to be given full scrutiny of the Commons's £219m annual spending budget.

An institute source said: "There is a risk that this government is supposed to be about a new politics and transparency and the House of Commons isn't living up to that. The heart of the political system isn't open and transparent.

"They won't improve unless they have scrutiny. It holds itself apart and believes that the standards that apply to other organisations don't apply to itself."

She added: "The lesson of the last 18 months is that while they are making efforts to improve it can't be an insular organisation where MPs run things and hold themselves to account. They need to be much more open."

She added: "The Commons has a £219m budget this year. That gets no external challenge at all and it's completely MPs running their own show. They won't improve unless they have scrutiny. It holds itself apart and believes that the standards that apply to other organisations don't apply to itself."

The report was written by a senior civil servant, Vanessa Nicholls, a former director at the Home Office.

The report highlights the Commons catering arrangements. Around £500,000 was recently removed from the catering budget and prices are increasing but there is still thought to be a £6.5m public subsidy in place.

The report also warns that the sponsoring of all-party parliamentary groups and their overseas trips by organisations "with a political agenda" could raise questions about propriety.

A spokesman for John Bercow, Speaker of the Commons, said that the report was "well-balanced" but added that some of the recommendations, such as increasing staffing levels, would be difficult to implement with budgets being cut.

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

Three former Labour MPs accused of fiddling expenses argue in Court of Appeal that the courts could be trespassing in Commons business

Three former Labour MPs accused of fiddling expenses argued today that privilege and precedents, some dating back to the 17th century, meant that parliament, and not the courts, should try them.

David Chaytor, 60, Elliot Morley, 57, and Jim Devine, 57, went to the court of appeal to challenge a ruling earlier this month that they are not protected from prosecution by parliamentary privilege.

It would be, said Nigel Pleming QC, for Chaytor, "the first criminal prosecution of members of the House of Commons in relation to their conduct in parliament" since Sir John Eliot, the 17th century statesman who assaulted the Speaker and was sent to the Tower in 1629. His conviction was overturned due to parliamentary privilege in 1668, 36 years after his death.

The three, appealing alongside Tory peer Lord Hanningfield, 69, presented legal precedents to illustrate the longstanding complexities of the relationship between parliament and the courts. All four deny theft by false accounting.

Thus the country's top judges – lord chief justice Lord Judge, master of the rolls Lord Neuberger, and Sir Anthony May – were directed to cases as diverse as that of the Sinn Fein MP Martin McGuinness refusing to take the oath of allegiance, and former Tory MP Neil Hamilton suing Mohamed Fayed for defamation.

The judges lifted statutory reporting restrictions because the appeal was "an issue of constitutional importance". It was not an attempt to "take them above the law", said Pleming.

The appellants "did not suggest that MPs are immune from the criminal law by reason of their status as MPs", said Pleming. Rather, it was to "ensure they, and indeed other members in a similar position, are adjudicated by the correct law and the correct body".

It was also to guard against the "danger" of allowing police and the judiciary to interfere in parliament.

"There is a danger in the exercise of subjecting parliament to a criminal prosecution for alleged conduct of this kind. It is the danger of permitting intrusion by the police and the executive into the everyday affairs of parliament, and adjudication by the courts on the conduct of parliamentarians in parliament," he said.

Central to their case is the assertion that submitting their expenses was part of the proceedings of parliament and therefore protected by privilege – an argument rejected by Mr Justice Saunders when he ruled last month the four must face trial.

The Commons was itself a court of justice, said Pleming, "with all the necessary powers to protect itself from abuse of its rules". But MPs could not waive privilege because "it is parliament's privilege," he said.

And if there should be a criminal trial, he argued, it could involve a debate about the meaning and interpretation of the Green Book, which sets out the Commons rules and regulations on expenses. Such "impeaching or questioning" these proceedings could lead a court to "trespass into a forbidden area", he said.

"If this trial is to continue, the MPs will want to investigate why they have been singled out for criminal investigation and prosecution, when compared with those MPs (including former ministers, including at Cabinet level) who have been permitted to repay impugned expense payments, and (in some cases) called on merely to apologise to the House". That would "offend against the principle of the separation of powers", he said.

Citing the McGuinness case, where the MP sought a judicial review of the legality of the oath of allegiance, he quoted the judgment which said: "Control of its own internal arrangements has long been recognised as falling uniquely within parliament's domain and superintendence from which the court's intervention is excluded."

The Hamilton v Al Fayed judgment concluded: "For the courts to entertain a question whether parliament has been deliberately misled would be for the courts to trespass with the area in which parliament has exclusive jurisdiction," he said.

Alun Jones QC, representing Lord Hanningfield, told the court the central issue at his trial would be: "Did Lord Hanningfield believe he was entitled to claim for the sums of money he did? If he did, by virtue of section 2(1) of the Theft Act 1968, he would have been acting honestly and thus entitled to an acquittal."

Lord Pannick QC, for the Crown, will argue there are "strong reasons" why parliamentary privilege should be "confined to core parliamentary activities" and that the submission of expenses was not a core function.

In written submissions to the court, Lord Pannick states: "The Crown does not suggest that the defendants are making 'wild and extravagant' claims to privilege. But, he adds the court needed to ensure "privilege is confined in a reasonable and proportionate manner so as to avoid damaging the reputation of parliament".

Former Bury North MP Chaytor, of Todmorden, Lancashire, is accused of falsely claiming rent on a London flat he owned, and renting property from his mother.

Former Scunthorpe MP Morley, of Winterton, Lincs, is charged with falsely claiming £30,428 in mortgage interest on a mortgage he had already paid off.

Former Livingston MP Devine, of Bathgate, West Lothian, is accused of wrongly submitting invoices for printing services worth £5,505 and for cleaning and maintenance costs of £3,240.

Former Essex council leader Lord Hanningfield faces six charges of making dishonest claims for travelling allowances.

The appeal continues.

In an effort to prevent a debate in 1629, Charles I ordered an adjournment but angry MPs held down the Speaker As Finch was forcibly held in his chair allowing Sir John Eliot, left, to give a speech against illegal taxation. Hauled before the King's Bench, Eliot claimed parliamentary privilege but was fined £2,000 and imprisoned. The Lords reversed his conviction, ruling in 1668 that it was "an illegal judgment and against the freedom and privilege of parliament".

• MPs' expenses

Flat rate should cut peers' expenses bills by 15%

Peers will get a £300 allowance for each day they "clock in" at the House of Lords under a system designed to cut their expenses bills by 10%, it was announced today.

The flat-rate payment – to cover their accommodation, staffing and administration costs – means they will be able to claim a maximum of £45,000 a year compared with £53,000 a year under the current system.

The controversial £174 daily payment for "overnight subsistence", which had been abused by some members of the house of Lords, will be scrapped.

Under the plans there would be a tiered system of payments with £150 for a half day and £300 for a full day. Travel expenses will be reimbursed separately.

Attendance would continue to be registered under the current system whereby the officials in the Lords record each members' appearance in the chamber and committees.

Lord Strathclyde, the leader of the Lords, said: "Axing through the complex current structure of allowances would represent radical change. But I believe that would be right. It would be cheaper to run, less bureaucratic to comply with, simpler to police and far, far harder to abuse.

"We would sweep away the controversial rules on so-called 'second homes', which in my judgment have no logic in a House that is not elected. There will be no more addresses of convenience. No more juggling of utility bills and claims forms.

"If you come to Westminster and work in parliament, you will be able to claim the allowance. If you do not, you will not."

He added: "The existing expenses regime is discredited. It lacks credibility and the public has no confidence in it. This new plan means the end of the second homes fiasco.

"It means the end of the old expenses regime. It means a new system that is direct, transparent and accountable. It means we are making a significant step towards winning the public's confidence again."

The government has rejected replicating the new expenses regime for the Commons in the Lords and vetoed giving the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority a role in the Lords. Ipsa has had a rocky beginning to the Commons expenses regime with a Commons revolt and MPs claiming they have been left out of pocket.

There are concerns that its system of publishing every single receipt for expenses, brought in to counter the abuses of the previous regime, is too bureaucratic. Some MPs have called for an allowance system to cover their costs, in line with the plans for the Lords.

The proposed changes, drafted by a backbench group chaired by Tory former cabinet minister Lord Wakeham, come in the wake of a series of scandals over peers' claims for overnight allowances.

The worst controversies in the Lords expenses system have focused on the £174 overnight subsistence payment, ostensibly paid to peers whose main homes are out of London.

But there was no definition of the term "main home", leading some to some controversial claims. Under the current system, peers also get an £86.50 daily subsistence allowance to cover meals and taxis and £75 a- ay for office costs. These could all be replaced by the £300 full day flat-rate.

The Lords will be asked to vote on the reforms in time to implement them in the next parliamentary session. The Labour leadership in the Lords indicated that they would support the proposals.

• House of Lords
• MPs' expenses

Despite the best efforts of the House of Commons, we've managed to extract every MP expenses claim as a spreadsheet. See how the numbers add up
• Get the data
• MP travel claims, Oct-Dec 2009

Yesterday the House of Commons published the latest set of MPs' expenses. As I wrote then, they were published in a new searchable database, which actually makes the data harder to compile and extract. (Compare this to Simon Willison's work on MPs' expenses crowdsourcing).

Well, thanks to the work of Guardian developers Daniel Vydra and Roberto Tyley, we've managed to scrape the entire lot out of the Commons website for you as a downloadable spreadsheet. You cannot get this anywhere else.

Previously, we could give you totals claimed by MP: here's last year's. Because this is not a year's complete data, the Commons authorities are not keen on giving out totals - here's what they told me yesterday:

Please note that overall totals for each individual MP's overall expenditure are not published at this time of year. This is because MPs do not all submit claims on the same timescale: for example some submit claims at the end of the month and others do so less frequently, or even at the end of the year. Thus comparisons between individual total expenditure would be misleading.

It's a pretty reasonable reason, but that doesn't stop us working out totals from the data - with the enormous caveats above.

Here's how the totals look for just those two quarters, thanks to the genius of Many Eyes (I know we've been using Many Eyes a lot recently, but if you want to produce a quick visualisation, then it really can't be beaten at the moment).

The spreadsheet is just the raw numbers - with details of each claim for each MP. To get the exact details, you need to see the claim form on the commons site.

This is just a start - what can you do with the data?

• DATA: download the full datasheet

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• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons
• Government data

Former standards watchdog says reduction shows openness brought about by expenses furore has been beneficial

MPs reduced their claims for second homes by a third in the second half of last year, suggesting the furore over parliamentary expenses has persuaded the political class to adopt a more frugal approach.

The latest breakdown of MPs' allowances for the final six months of last year shows that they claimed just over £10m for accommodation, office, communications and incidental expenses.

Claims for additional costs allowance (ACA) to fund second homes – the major source of grief during the scandal – came to £3.1m – more than £2m less than the £5m claimed for the equivalent period in 2008. The taxpayer will be saved even more because the figures do not include the £1.1m MPs were ordered to pay back in the wake of a review by the retired Whitehall permanent secretary Sir Thomas Legg.

Parliament was shaken last year when the Daily Telegraph published leaked details of MPs' expenses which showed that many had "flipped" the designation of their homes to benefit from the £24,000 ACA. MPs voted to change the system after a public backlash against their claims. The independent parliamentary standards authority is now in charge of expenses for MPs who will no longer be entitled to make claims for second home.

Sir Alistair Graham, the former standards watchdog, saidtonight that the reduced claims on second homes showed that openness had been beneficial. "MPs thought: 'If this becomes public can I justify these claims?' Transparency causes people to think seriously about whether their claims can be justified.

"There was a most unfortunate culture in which people thought it was perfectly reasonable because they had complaints about their pay levels to maximise claims under the second homes allowance. As we well know, politicians in public standing paid a heavy price for that."

John Mann, the Labour MP who has campaigned against the level of expenses, said: "Transparency puts a downward pressure on, because if in doubt, people will opt for caution."

• MPs' expenses

Latest figures show expenses payments of £10m, well down on more than £11.7m for same period in previous year

MPs significantly trimmed their expenses after the scandal over their claims broke in May last year, House of Commons figures revealed today.

The latest itemised breakdown of payments for July to December last year totalled £10.05m, well down on the £11.77m for the same period the previous year.

Claims for second home expenses, one of the most controversial allowances, dropped from more than £5m in the last part of 2008 to just over £3.1m.

Revelations in the Daily Telegraph caused a public outcry and huge changes in the system that is now the responsibility of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.

Today's figures, however, were released by the Commons authorities who ran the show at the time, and cover MPs' costs for living away from home and running offices , non-salary expenses of their staff and money allowed for communications, including advertising, newsletters and websites.

David Cameron, then opposition leader, claimed £12,978.88, including more than £8,200 for running his constituency home in Witney.

His monthly council tax bill was around £208 and his monthly mortgage interest bill went down from £1,081 to £822. His home insurance cost the tax payer £71 a month, considerably less than that of Michael Spicer, then Tory MP for West Worcestershire and chairman of the 1922 committee. He was paid £2,356.18 for his annual insurance bill for 2009/10.

The then prime minister Gordon Brown had a bill of £15,147.84 for rent and running costs for the office supporting his duties as MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.

He stopped claiming for personal accommodation last July after complaints that he was living rent-free in Downing Street, and so did not need a second home.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, now deputy prime minister, claimed £13,639 over the period, of which £2,187.94 was for accommodation, including monthly mortgage payments of £155 and a council tax bill of £177.

George Osborne, who as chancellor is now wielding the government spending axe, claimed £5,990.85 for living away from home. Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem MP who is now his deputy, claimed £7,806.25.

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons
• Gordon Brown
• George Osborne
• Danny Alexander
• David Cameron