Pay is still significantly less than £108,000 salary of Commons standards commissioner

The House of Lords' new sleaze watchdog is to be paid the equivalent of £90,000 a year, it was revealed today.

The post of commissioner for standards in the Lords has been advertised on the parliamentary website, and a recruitment firm is also understood to be identifying candidates.

It is expected that whoever lands the job will work for a minimum of five days a month, and earn around £350 a day.

Although the pro-rata sum of £90,000 is higher than an MP's salary of around £65,000, it is significantly less than the pay of the Commons standards commissioner, John Lyon.

He is currently paid an annual salary of £108,000 for a four-day week.

The ad on the parliament website invites candidates who have "operated at senior level within a complex organisation in the public or private sector, and will bring natural authority to the role".

It goes on: "They must be able to make sound decisions and give objective advice based on best available evidence, and must be able to work in an environment where decisions are subject to intense public and media scrutiny.

"Discretion in handling information of a highly sensitive nature will be critical. The appointee will demonstrate the highest levels of personal integrity, fairness and impartiality."

The House of Lords voted to toughen up its anti-sleaze rules and enforcement last year in the wake of allegations that some peers had been paid to influence legislation.

The new system should be in place by the start of the next parliament.

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

The nation raged at MPs' expenses but most ignore this much bigger issue of unelected influence. And so let's find our level

"There are two kinds of woman," says Harry Burns to Sally Albright, during one of their late-night phone calls in When Harry Met Sally. "High maintenance and low maintenance. You're the worst kind. You're high maintenance but you think you're low maintenance."

Were I lying in bed watching Casablanca, talking on the phone to Lord Ashcroft who was also watching Casablanca somewhere across town – and let's face it, it's only a matter of time – I would make a variation of Harry's remark. "Michael," I'd say as we watched Rick and Ilsa at the airport. "There are two kinds of people. Those who pay tax, and exiles who don't. You're the worst kind. You don't like to pay tax, but you think you can forget the exile bit."

It probably wouldn't be the start of a beautiful friendship. But this is beginning to feel like something of a bum deal. At least Rupert Murdoch sticks to his 91-day allowance, at all other times merely presenting in our dimension in avatar form, in the guise of his many newspapers, satellite television monopoly, and serially abusive hold on Downing Street. And yes, I do see what I've just done there.

Still, we love a tax exile in this country. We let them fund our political parties, and watch as they coincidentally obtain peerages. In the case of Lord Ashcroft, we watch as they become deputy chairman of the Conservative party, amass unquantified power over its leaders, and begin ploughing some of those very millions on which they don't pay tax into intensely targeted campaigns designed to swing elections. David Cameron has honked loud and long about making trust and transparency an election issue, yet he and his lieutenants either misled the public deliberately as to his lordship's status, or were too craven or venal to ask questions. They certainly refused to co-operate with the Electoral Commission's investigation into the matter. Meanwhile, the BBC feel obliged to announce cuts effectively designed to appease that other unelected foreign billionaire, Rupert Murdoch, as though you can appease someone whose goal is your complete destruction.

So on it goes. Many of those bemoaning the axing of 6 Music will have bought a Murdoch newspaper the next day, and I am certainly one of those despondent at the BBC's heartbreakingly ominous strategy review who will nevertheless be watching Sky Sports this weekend. Speak for yourself, some will retort, as well they might – but I fear such bovine hypocrisy speaks for Britain, which traditionally reacts to the ministrations of unelected foreign billionaires with a mixture of stupidity and apathy. Many care passionately, but those who don't win out.

Clearly, David Cameron has always taken a view that Ashcroft's untaxed millions and laser-like targeting of marginal seats is worth the media heat it draws, because the issue is not something being talked about in pubs. He is probably right, which is arguably the most depressing aspect of all these tales of non-dom Lords, be they Tory or Labour (not to mention Murdoch).

Unelected influence simply isn't an issue that gains significant traction – but by crikey, it should. On the doorstep and in the televised election debates, both parties should be made to squirm over it and the revolting contempt it reveals for the taxpaying nurses and estate agents, and all the other worthy and unworthy subjects of a would-be government that is bankrolled by powerful special interests who wouldn't dream of doing anything so schmucky as paying their fair share themselves. Between the likes of Murdoch and Ashcroft, a change of elected government in this country is merely a shuffling of junior personnel.

And so we find our level. As a nation, we might have to accept that a duck house was the kind of issue that could galvanise public anger, but that campaign finance is destined to be greeted by no more significant comment than "all the parties are doing it".

Yet perhaps it would help those who got their knickers in a twist over pool-cleaning and pet food – but declare of campaign finance "this is a non-story" – to imagine what Ashcroft represents as a really, really big duck house. Inhabited by a giant duck. Picture a vast, multistorey duck house, marginally better appointed than the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Picture this duck house as the seat of government, staffed by thousands, where the elected representatives simply act as courtiers, second-guessing the duck by deciding policy in accordance with where it leaves its droppings on the floor.

Do roll out the same analogy for Murdoch. Although given his immense influence, Murdoch wouldn't be a duck. He'd be one of those geese that craps out half its own body weight daily, trailed by forelock-tugging ministers, who treat each deposit with the witless reverence new parents reserve for the latest contents of their offspring's nappy.

Apologies for the image. But while as a general public we might not be able to do psephology or ideology, it would be nice to think we could at least get our heads round scatology. We could then congratulate ourselves with all the misplaced pride of Maureen Lipman. We've got an ology.

• MPs' expenses
• Michael Ashcroft
• Rupert Murdoch
• David Cameron
• Party funding
• Conservatives
• BBC
• 6 Music
• House of Lords
• Tax avoidance

Labour and Tory frontbenchers will not accept the 1.5% rise due to kick in next month

Senior MPs today queued up to renounce a pay rise worth almost £1,000 amid fears of a public backlash.

John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, said he would not take the money because it would be "extremely inappropriate" to accept a 1.5% rise – due to kick in next month – in the aftermath of the expenses scandal.

Downing Street also made it clear that ministers would not take the extra money, due to be added to their pay packet following a recommendation by the Senior Salaries Review Body.

The Conservatives made the same pledge, although one backbencher warned that some MPs would "struggle" without the pay rise.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, and his Treasury spokesman, Vincent Cable, will forego the rise.

Clegg has left it to the discretion of party colleagues to decide whether they follow suit.

The idea of MPs on generous salaries taking a pay rise at a time when mainstream political parties are pressing the case for pay restraint is politically embarrassing, not least because of continuing voter anger over expenses.

The 1.5% increase, revealed by the Guardian yesterday, is arrived at by identifying the median of the pay increases received by 15 groups of public sector workers for 2009, and will see MPs' basic pay rise from £64,766 to £65,737.

A spokesman for Bercow, who became Speaker after Michael Martin stood down over the expenses row last summer, said: "He thought that either the need to be consistent with pay restraint in the rest of the public sector or the aftermath of the expenses debacle would be sound reasons for deeming a salary increase to be extremely inappropriate this year.

"The combination of the two factors made the need for him not to accept any rise an absolute one."

Bercow, the MP for Buckingham, was joint first in a league table of the highest-claiming members of the House of Commons for the financial years 2007-08, 2006-07, 2004-05 and 2002-03.

For the 2003-04 period, he was joint third. However, his total expenses in 2008-09 were among the lowest claimed.

Downing Street said ministers would not take the extra money due to MPs, and had also agreed to freeze their own pay.

"The prime minister is clear that we need to strengthen public confidence in the political system and reduce the cost of politics," a spokeswoman said.

"That is why paid government ministers will not be accepting the pay rise in MP salaries generated by the annual formula and based on the average pay award across the public sector in the previous year."

Like MPs' pay, ministerial pay rises are automatically set each year. They are based on the midpoint of senior civil service pay rises for the same year.

Members of the Conservative party who may soon receive ministerial salaries will have both the ministerial and MP elements of their salaries frozen, a Tory spokeswoman said.

"If we win the election and form the next government, incoming ministers will inherit the ministerial salaries that the government is setting today, including the MP element," she said.

"We will then immediately cut them by 5%, and freeze them for a further five years."

Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for Thanet, said he would donate his own pay rise to charity but warned that some colleagues would struggle to do their jobs without the extra cash because of "eccentric" restrictions on allowances being introduced in the wake of the expenses scandal.

He said: "I have written to the House of Commons department of finance and administration and asked them to pay any increase by which I would benefit to charity through the give-as-you-earn (GAYE) scheme.

"In 1985, when MPs were awarded an inflation-plus increase, I indicated that I would do this and that money has been paid to into GAYE ever since."

But he added: "I do not wish to impose my views on any parliamentary colleague of any party – people's circumstances differ and many MPs, particularly those with young families and including those who will be elected at the forthcoming general election, are going to face very straitened circumstances.

"As a result of the more eccentric of the Kelly [expenses reform] proposals – which in my view have demonstrated a lamentable lack of understanding of the demands placed upon today's members of parliament – a lot of new MPs are going to find it hard to find the resources to do the job in the way that the public have come to expect.

"They will need the entirety of their salaries to subsidise their office, travel and other costs incurred in the course of their work.

"Those of us who are older and whose families are now adult are in a more fortunate position."

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons
• Labour
• Conservatives
• Liberal Democrats

Proposals to increase MPs' £64,766 salaries set to reignite public anger over expenses

MPs' pay will rise by 1.5% in three weeks' time following a recommendation by the review body on senior salaries, it emerged today.

An increase in MPs' basic take-home pay of £64,766 is likely to spark public anger following the debacle over MPs' expenses that has raged for the past nine months.

Public sector unions are also likely to take a dim view of the rise amid commitments made by all three mainstream political parties to impose pay freezes as a means of helping reduce the budget deficit.

Bill Cockburn, the chair of the senior salaries review body, wrote to John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, to recommend the pay rise as part of its annual review of public sector salaries. Last year's recommendation saw MPs' pay rise by 2.33%.

The figure is arrived at by identifying the median of the pay increases received by 15 groups of public sector workers for 2009.

The Speaker's office said the letter was sent to Bercow merely as a formality. The recommended increase has been automatic since 2008, following a resolution passed in the house.One MP said a pay rise for him and colleagues in the current climate was "an absolute cock-up".

With MPs' reputation at an all time low, parliament had sought to reassure the public that control over pay and expenses would be kept at arm's length through a new independent Commons watchdog, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), headed up by Sir Ian Kennedy.

An amendment to this effect has been tabled in the constitutional reform and government bill currently going through parliament and Ipsa will take over responsibility for pay in 2012.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of public sector Unison, contrasted MPs' pay rise to the prospect of pay freezes for public sector workers on much lower pay.

"It does not seem right that MPs can get a 1.5% pay increase, worth £1,000 a year on basic pay, when low paid workers such as teaching assistants, school dinner ladies, social care workers, road sweepers will get nothing, because their pay is being frozen. They might want to contemplate the speeches and seminars calling for lengthy pay restraint in the public sector."

Mainstream parties jostled for position on pay restraint last autumn in a bid to persuade voters that they were serious about reducing the deficit.

The chancellor, Alistair Darling, announced a one-year pay freeze for the most senior civil servants, NHS managers, GPs and chief executives of quangos, while the remainder of the public sector workforce fared little better with proposed pay rises of between 0 and 1%.

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor said a Tory government would impose a one-year pay freeze for the 4 million public servants earning more than £18,000 in 2011 as he vowed to tackle the country's debt crisis.

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrat, also had a pay freeze in his sights as part of the "savage cuts" he believes are needed to reduce the deficit.

The SSRB plans to undertake a review of the structure underpinning MPs' pay in the summer, in line with a Commons resolution passed two years ago.

• House of Commons
• MPs' expenses
• Trade unions
• Public sector careers
• Public sector pay

The Wright committee debate should be taken seriously by MPs, so the Commons can make a fresh start before the election

Today the House of Commons debates the recommendations of the Wright committee. These offer a real opportunity to reinvigorate parliament, and start restoring its reputation. In the closing weeks of this parliament, the Commons can leave a good legacy for its successor. The reforms would also fulfil one of Gordon Brown's very first pledges as prime minister: to strengthen parliament and return it to the centre of political life.

Brown set up the select committee on reform of the House of Commons (chaired by Tony Wright) following the MPs' expenses crisis. It was charged with considering three things: the way select committee members and chairs are chosen, giving MPs more control over the Commons agenda, and increasing public influence in parliament.

The first of these has been a bit of a running sore. Way back in 2001, Labour whips sought to block two "unreliable" select committee chairs from getting back onto their committees. This exposed how party whips (both Labour and Conservative) acted as gatekeepers to these committees. The select committees are increasingly well respected, but this affair damaged their reputation. Worse still, the whole reputation of parliament came to suffer. Robin Cook, then leader of the Commons, sought to reform the system and wrest control from the whips, but his proposals were ironically defeated in the house itself. Whips on both sides "encouraged" MPs, in an ostensibly free vote, to leave the system as it was. This puzzled and disappointed reformers.

The Wright committee proposals would finally sort this out. Select committee chairs would be elected in a secret ballot at the start of each parliament by the house itself, thus raising their status, and the status of their committees. It would democratise the system, and finally start building the "alternative career path" which many reformers have long sought: allowing MPs to pursue high-profile parliamentary careers, rather than just aspiring to executive office. Select committee members would be elected too, in secret ballots by party groups.

The proposals on public involvement have largely now been dealt with, through new arrangements agreed last week for petitioning parliament. This leaves the other big issue: MPs' control over what they can debate.

Again, a recent parliamentary fiasco demonstrates the need for this reform. During the expenses crisis some MPs moved a motion calling on Speaker Martin to resign. He was however forced to admit that the only way to debate this was if the government chose to do so. Even on this most fundamental matter of how the Commons ran itself, MPs were dependent on ministers to grant them debating time, which exposed their powerlessness in a pathetic way.

Problems with MPs' lack of control over agenda are usually more mundane. For example, the Wright committee proposals themselves have awaited debate for weeks, reliant on a government motion. Initially it was touch-and-go whether government would make the time. Similarly ministers decide which topics MPs can discuss during topical or general debates, at times leaving them disappointed. But in a democratic parliament of grown-up politicians, MPs should be free to make these decisions for themselves.

The Wright committee draws a key distinction between management of "backbench" and ministerial business. Government should have no part in scheduling backbench business (eg general debates, debates on procedural matters or select committee reports): this should be a matter for the house. They propose a new backbench business committee, elected by MPs, to do this. Ministerial business (most obviously, government bills) is different: here ministers and shadow ministers will always need to be involved. For this they recommend creation of a house business committee, involving both front and backbenchers. This would bring the Commons into line with many other parliaments, where cross-party committees agree the agenda to put to the house. This would be more transparent than the "usual channels" we have now, but recognise that a core role of parliament is to consider government legislation in good time.

The challenge now lies with MPs. There must be no "funny business" with this free vote, and there is every reason why MPs should embrace these reforms. They will make MPs' jobs more rewarding, by giving them a greater control of their institution. They will ensure parliament does its job better. And crucially, they will help it begin to rise in public esteem again. But the challenge also lies with party leaders, all of whom have said they support these reforms. There is very little time left, but they must take all necessary action to implement the key reforms in time for the next parliament. Only that way does the Commons have a chance to make a fresh start.

• House of Commons
• MPs' expenses
• Constitutional reform
• Commons Speaker

Commons to decide on recommendations that would shift power away from the executive after expenses scandal

In a big test of parliament's willingness to reform itself, MPs will vote tomorrow on whether to let backbenchers take immediate control of most non-ministerial business in parliament, or follow a government call to kick the issue into the long grass.

The reforms were proposed by a committee set up last year by Gordon Brown, chaired by a senior Labour backbencher, Tony Wright, to give parliament greater independence from the executive. They are being sold as a way of restoring parliament's reputation after the expenses scandal.

But the government has tabled the vote for this afternoon in the hope that most MPs will have left for their constituencies.

Harriet Harman, the leader of the house, will propose that a new backbench business committee responsible for organising debates and votes on backbench business should not be set up until after the election, and that the issue should be considered in detail by the procedure committee, which is selected by party whips.

David Cameron's frontbench is also trying to water down the Wright committee plans, proposing that the backbench committee be set up immediately after the election, but only be responsible for allotting 15 days of set-piece debates a year.

The all-party Wright committee proposed three months ago that the new backbench business committee be set up before the election. It would have powers to ensure that backbench motions were not just debated but also voted upon, giving parliament a stronger collective voice independent of the party whips. It would organise the backbench agenda one day a week, tilting the balance in parliament substantially from executive to MPs.

Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat member of the Wright committee, said: "We have had to battle to get this far, and it is vital that reform-minded MPs do not give up now. In the debate on these reforms last week, there was widespread support, so why are the front benches trying to defer them now?"

Senior backbenchers from all the main parties support setting up the new backbench business committee immediately, including Graham Brady, who is likely to be elected chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee. But it is unclear whether enough backbenchers will turn up tomorrow to vote through the reforms immediately.

Advocates of immediate reform point out that there is little that MPs backing the reforms now will be able to do in the next parliament to ensure momentum is not lost, and that once the proposals are reconsidered by a procedure committee they may lose their bite. A Cameron government might not be keen to cede executive powers to parliament, especially if it only had a small majority.

In theory, the vote is free of government whipping, but in practice frontbenches can heavily influence how MPs vote.

There will be greater unanimity on setting up a separate business committee, of backbenchers and whips, to reform scheduling of government business to ensure amendments to bills, including those passed in the Lords, are fully debated by MPs. At present great tranches are passed without debate. The joint committee would meet once a week and agree a parliamentary timetable that could then be put to a vote of all MPs.

MPs are also likely to back election of select committee members and that select committee chairs should be elected by a secret ballot of all MPs,.

An array of other reforms advanced by Wright has been deferred until after the election.

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

Report finds 26% of voters trust politicians – down only one point since 2004

The MPs' expenses scandal has gripped voters more than any other political news over the past year, but has not caused a collapse in trust in politics and politicians, according to a report published today.

The Hansard Society's annual Audit of Political Engagement found that 26% of voters said they trust politicians generally – down just one point from the 27% recorded in 2004. Numbers saying they distrusted politicians rose by only three points over the same period from 70% to 73%.

Almost three quarters (71%) of people questioned said that they had discussed MPs' expenses over the past year, compared to considerably less than half (41%) who said they had discussed politics or political news.

Their answers appear to indicate that many voters do not regard expenses as a "political" issue, and may explain why the scandal has not undermined trust and satisfaction in parliament.

And the Hansard Society suggested that levels of trust were already so low that the furore over expenses may merely have confirmed widely-held scepticism about politicians, rather than changing voters' views.

The survey found an 11-point decline since 2004 in the number of people who see the parliament as relevant to their daily lives, with just 19% ranking it among the top three most influential institutions. But 60% said parliament was "worthwhile", compared to 16% who disagreed.

Public dissatisfaction with how MPs in general do their jobs had risen eight points since 2004, from 36% to 44%. But asked about their own constituency MPs, just 16% said they were dissatisfied, with 38% declaring themselves satisfied.

The survey found that 76% of the electorate believe it is their duty to vote, but just 54% are absolutely certain to do so in the general election.

The Hansard Society identified two groups who might be persuaded to turn out to polling stations in greater numbers:

• The "politically contented", who make up 6% of British adults, mostly middle-class, and are generally fairly positive about politics and trusting of politicians.

• The "disenchanted and mistrustful", who make up 24% of adults, mainly young and working-class, and are distrusting of politicians but not "alienated or hostile".

The audit concluded that if parties target these groups, turn-out overall could be raised by 6%.

The director of the society's parliament and government programme, Ruth Fox, said: "There is no silver bullet to resolve the public's lack of trust in MPs and dissatisfaction with how they do their jobs. The public have long been sceptical about the motives of politicians and the expenses situation has merely confirmed their views.

"But the fact that the public now perceive parliament to be a less relevant institution than previously is a worrying development that the new intake of MPs after the election must address."

• MPs' expenses
• General election 2010
• House of Commons

Take one spreadsheet, some programming and a receipt printer and see what you get

MPs' expenses was the dataset that lauched a thousand visualisations - you may have seen the charts and graphics. Ben O'Steen opted for a unique approach on his Random Hacks blog. He took our Google spreadsheet and ... actually, it is probably better if Ben explains from here:

Talking one night about printing with receipt printers, Dave Challis said that it would be interesting to print out a receipt for the MPs' expenses the next day.

So we did.

We grabbed the [spreadsheet], parsed it up using Python and then spent an hour or so adjusting the look and feel of the receipt itself before starting the print run

Python is a programming language, in case you didn't know. You can see more of Ben's photos of the exercise as a Flickr set.

Ben's next conundrum is what to do with the enormous mountain of receipts he now possesses.

• MPs' expenses

With less bureaucracy and greater personal responsibility, people are more likely to make ethical decisions

What is the right thing to do? Our problem today is that too often, too many people just don't ask that simple question. Instead they ask: "What do I feel like doing?" At the heart of the breakdown of trust in society is a breakdown of personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility is the foundation of an ethical society. Without it we cannot hope for people to ask the right questions of themselves. But people are so used to a world of regulations, targets, contracts, inspections and bureaucracy that their inner voice of moral reasoning has been mute. We saw this most clearly during the MPs' expenses crisis. Time and again we heard: "It was within the rules" and "We were told we could do it". Too few asked: "Was it right for me to use taxpayers' money that way?"

There are many other examples. Poorly performing executives accepting massive payouts because their contracts allow it. The loan shark preying on a vulnerable family; the person who claims benefits fraudulently. The truth is that many of today's big issues come down to questions of responsibility.

In the past, politicians have shied away from these questions, for fear of seeming judgmental. But we're never going to create a stronger, fairer society unless we address them. So it's vital we find a way of talking about these issues without people feeling preached at.

So how can we restore our sense of responsibility? In the Citizen Ethics pamphlet, Philip Pullman describes a "folk traffic-calming" initiative that helped Oxford residents recapture a sense of community. John Milbank appeals against the coarse application of managerialism in the public sector. Michael Sandel points to the gap between the rich and the poor.

I believe that all these insights lead to one conclusion that is central to Conservatism: the more responsibility we give people, the more likely they are to make ethical decisions. That's why the modern Conservative project is at heart an ethical project. Our mission is to rebuild responsibility. And our method is to redistribute power.

Politically, power is badly allocated. In Westminster, and in the big, centralised bureaucracies that affect so much of our daily lives, power is too concentrated. It can easily be abused when those who wield it are not accountable. Outside the political and bureaucratic elite, power is too weak. People have far too little control over, and responsibility for, the things that affect them.

So we need a massive redistribution of political power to individuals and civic institutions. Instead of parents being told what school their children must go to, families should be able to come together and demand new schools. Instead of public sector workers being under the thumb of central government, they could set up employee-owned co-operatives. And when yet another local pub or post office is closed, communities would have the right to buy these institutions and run them themselves.

There is an imbalance of economic power too. In the past, Conservatives thought a rising economic tide would lift all boats. But it's clear that the bottom rungs of the ladder to prosperity are bro­ken. After 13 years of Labour, inequality has grown and the poorest are poorer. In a free society, some will always be richer than others. But extreme inequality erodes ethics as it undermines the idea that we are all in this together.

I know some will be sceptical at the idea that the Conservative party can succeed in addressing poverty and inequality where Labour have failed. But look at our policies: we have pledged to cut the deficit while protecting the poorest, and we have a plan to deal with the causes of poverty as well as the symptoms. School reform; welfare reform; supporting families; dealing with debt, addiction and poor housing. I believe we will make a real difference.

We also need to change our culture. Of course, we need a dynamic economy, but that doesn't mean we should accept uncritically the commercialisation of every aspect of life. The good society is about more than money. We need to focus our attention on the things that make life worth living: family, relationships, the quality of our environment, culture and public space.

So by redistributing political and economic power; by changing our culture – above all by talking about the right thing to do, I do believe we can build a more ethical society. Central to achieving that will be to promote the idea and the ideal of responsibility.

• Read the Citizens Ethics pamphlet in full here

• Ethics
• MPs' expenses
• David Cameron
• Conservatives
• Equality

Report says that disillusioned voters – one in four of population – hold the key in the coming gerneral election

Forget Essex man, Worcester woman and Mondeo man – new research suggests that a generation of Ms Mistrustfuls and Mr Boreds, created by a collapse in political faith after the expenses crisis, hold the key to No 10.

A major survey of political opinion by the Hansard Society will reveal next week that the way to secure a majority in the general election is to win back the disillusioned, uninterested and detached voters who have lost confidence in the democratic system. The annual exercise will reveal the true impact of the expenses scandal on voters' views of politicians and is expected to show the severe damage it caused to the reputation of parliament.

It will confirm that the expenses crisis was the No 1 political talking point of the past year. But the survey of more than 2,000 voters will reveal a quirk in people's reaction to the saga: most did not consider the dodgy expense claims – for duck houses or "flipping" second homes – to be fundamental to their understanding of politics. Many saw it more as a story to gossip about along the lines of the breakdown of Cheryl Cole's marriage or Tiger Woods's affairs.

Extracts from the Hansard Society's Audit of Political Engagement, seen by the Guardian, reveal an analysis of voter profiles which breaks the population down into eight groups ranging from the "politically committed" (one in 10 voters) to the "alienated and hostile" (also one in 10).

The biggest group, the "disengaged/mistrustful" brigade, accounts for one in four voters. They are described as turned off by politics and politicians.

"They are more distrustful of politicians than average … Only 13% can name their own MP, so it is unsurprising that they make almost no distinction between satisfaction with MPs in general and with their own MP," it says.

"This group is mainly young (more than half are aged under 35) and rather more working class than the adult public as a whole, though 44% are ABC1s.

"They are rarely readers of the broadsheet press and more likely than average to read the Sun, Daily Star or Metro."

Members of the "alienated/hostile" group (9% of all voters) are "likely to be extraordinarily difficult to engage and it would be unrealistic to hope that they can be converted to voters". The "bored/apathetic" group would be "particularly difficult to motivate" to vote.

Ruth Fox, director of the parliament and government programme at the Hansard Society, said: "There is no silver bullet to winning people's trust. The problem has been around longer than the expenses row.

"They can't be solved overnight but you could have a reasonable expectation that five years down the line at the next election you might have won some round."

The report also confirms what many suspect: that Labour has the most to gain from getting young, disillusioned voters out to the polling booths.

"In an age of lower turnout that could make a very big difference indeed and in the context of a possible hung parliament it could be vital," it says.

"Of those members of the public comprising group seven [disengaged/mistrustful], 30% express a voting preference for the Conservative party and 40% for Labour.

"If accurate, a 6% increase in turnout would therefore most likely disproportionately favour the Labour party."

• General election 2010
• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons
• Labour
• Conservatives
• Liberal Democrats

The TV drama On Expenses portrayed the former Speaker as the villain. But he didn't create the system MPs abused. They did

I don't know if I'm fit to judge, but Brian Cox's portrayal of former Commons Speaker Michael Martin in On Expenses seemed a wonderful piece of acting to me. He brought his character fully to life. There was pathos, anger, humour and even sympathy. But that's the thing: it was a character. Or to be more precise, it was a scapegoat.

For the story the programme tried to tell about the great expenses scandal was the same fiction MPs tried to tell last year: that it was Martin's fault. When he was dethroned, it was a ruse – an attempt to say that something had been done, and now, with a new Speaker in place, still more would be done. Sadly, for all the skill of the actors involved, this was a fiction.

At the beginning of On Expenses, the message, "some of this scenes have been imagined" appeared. I've just published a short book on the scandal, A Crisis of Trust, and as I wrote it, what struck me was how hard to imagine most of the claims were. I don't mean how hard it was to believe that they had been accepted. Or even that they had been permissible. What astonished me, in so many cases, was that they had been made in the first place.

How did literally hundreds of extremely talented men and women, many of whom quite rightly earned substantial private incomes on top of their already considerable parliamentary salaries, ever come to think that the allowances regime was for them? It was explicitly introduced in 1971 as an overnight, subsistence payment, directly modelled on the low rates civil servants working away from home overnight received.

To take just one example, why did Francis Maude, a highly distinguished merchant banker outside politics, need to claim for quite so much in his capacity as an MP? Never mind the petty details, or the loose rules prevailing at the time. Just reflect on the fact that all MPs, including Maude, now say those rules should never have applied. If this insight is so genuinely felt and blindingly obvious, why did they not realise it when they were making their claims? Maude is currently "preparing the Conservatives for government". I cannot say I find this entirely comforting.

Yet I keep coming back to the way Michael Martin was treated. He may well have made all the boorish remarks the programme attributed to him. Without doubt he was foolishly obstinate in wasting so much public money in appealing against Heather Brooke's freedom of information requests. But beyond this, how much was he really responsible for? This is a key thing to understand: the Speaker is supreme inside the chamber, his rulings are final, but step outside the small cockpit of the House of Commons and very rapidly he becomes merely one member among 600.

Martin didn't establish the system MPs used and abused. They did that themselves. They created it, they manipulated it, and their votes sought to cover up their actions. When David Maclean sought to exempt parliament from the Freedom of Information Act, it was outrageous. It was contemptible that on a Friday sitting, 90 MPs silently presented themselves to support Maclean's effort to spare them a law they apply to the rest of us.

But that's the thing: Martin wasn't even in the chair. Sadly, this was the honest voice of a discredited House of Commons. This was what MPs themselves wanted. It was a majority as good any other. And that's why we need to avoid the trap On Expenses has fallen into: Martin was not the villain of the scandal, he was the fall guy.

Very tellingly, the programme's writers skipped over completely what should have been their final act. We weren't shown a dramatic retelling of how Martin actually fell as Speaker. If they had done this, the story they would have to tell was that he was cast aside because it was expedient to the prime minister's party political interests to do so.

And if On Expenses had presented the real history of how the scandal came about, it would shown how it has been expedient for all three parties to keep "their" MPs pampered and dependent. This is the true lesson to learn: if MPs are to clean up their act, they have to be freed of the party leaders who were quite happy to keep them rolling in it.

• Michael Martin
• Television
• Francis Maude
• Commons Speaker
• House of Commons
• MPs' expenses
• Freedom of information

Outstanding balance thought to be at least £100,000

MPs have until 6 o'clock tonight to pay back the expenses they were ordered to return by the official inquiry into the now discredited Commons system or they could face having their pay docked.

As of Friday around 10 current and former MPs had not made the repayments with the outstanding balance thought to total at least £100,000.

Some are expected to write their cheques today after returning from recess and Commons officials are making strenuous efforts to track down each one right up until the deadline to secure the repayment. Those who don't have the funds are being asked to sign agreements detailing how they will pay the money back.

Those who refuse to return the funds are likely to be forced to repay them, with the Commons poised to vote to sanction the docking of pay or the resettlement funds paid when an MP steps down.

But there are concerns that one former MP has refused to engage in any contact with the Commons authorities in order to repay his expenses bills.

Some 392 former and current MPs were ordered to pay back £1.12m after an inquiry by the former senior civil servant Sir Thomas Legg earlier this month, which examined the last five years of MPs' personal expenses.

Legg condemned MPs and the "deeply flawed" and "vague" system they operated in, accusing the fees office, which administrated the system, of operating within a "culture of deference".

By Friday the Commons authorities overseeing MPs' repayments had still not had any contact with the former Ministry of Defence minister Ivor Caplin. The Labour MP left parliament in 2005 and has since gone into business as a political lobbyist.

He was ordered by Legg to repay £17,865.33 he owed for failing to submit receipts for interest payments on his mortgage. Legg's report, published on 4 February, said: "No reply has been received from Mr Caplin to a number of letters sent to the address held by the house authorities."

In a issued statement issued on Friday, Caplin said he had received no communication from Legg and said he had written to him and was "awaiting a reply".

At the end of last year the Commons members' estimate committee (MEC), chaired by the Speaker, John Bercow, announced there would be a vote in the Commons to sanction officials to reclaim expenses from MPs' pay or resettlement grants if they refused to return it voluntarily. But this still leaves questions about the former MPs, who no longer have links with parliament.

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

Her crusade to expose MPs' expenses made her famous. Now the BBC has turned Heather Brooke's story into a film

Heather Brooke is a journalist. She spent five years pushing to see ­details of MPs' expenses, before they were eventually exposed. A film has now been made of her crusade.

It is quite surreal having a film made about your life. The whole process of turning real life into drama is interesting in itself, but even more so when it is your own life being put into the narrative forge.

In On Expenses I am played by the twice Bafta-winning Anna Maxwell Martin. I went along to two shoots. My first visit was to the Royal Courts of Justice, where Maxwell Martin was acting a scene set in the House of Commons. Sadly, the BBC was refused access to the parliamentary building, so it made do with the lobby of the court. For some reason, the authorities were none too keen to let in the crew for a film that was originally called The Heather Brooke Story.

Some actors are funny about playing living people, but it did not seem to bother Anna. She came to my flat and we spoke for an hour or so. I kept checking to see if she was examining my gestures but, if so, she did it very subtly. I read a few scenes for her and, somehow, from these rudiments she crafted a facsimile of my personality, my accent and my "look". I have never had such admiration for acting as I do now. I have no idea how she did it.

"They've got your character off pat," my husband remarked wryly after we watched a preview together. He has picked up a line from the film: "Without doubt, the most determined, mule-headed, stubborn, bloody-minded person I have ever met", and now uses this routinely whenever I have the temerity to disagree with him. It seems that there are disadvantages to being dramatised.

The film's costume designer, Emma Fryer, came to my house one afternoon to study my wardrobe. She had also looked at all the news photographs of me, and pronounced that I had a very distinctive fashion style. I'm a bit of a fashion diva, you see, cultivating a mix of nostalgic styles from the 1930s to 50s. Hammering away at the rockface of freedom of information and parliamentary transparency need not be without glamour. Fryer took photos of my shoes, jewellery and clothes and then went off to recreate all this.

If you watch the film carefully, you may spot my second visit on set, to a mock-up of the House of Commons. This time I'm an extra in a dowdy black suit, taking my place among other "MPs". In this scene, we are jubilant as our man Michael Martin has just been selected as the new Speaker. It is not without some irony, I think, that I'm cast as an MP cheering on the appointment of the man who did the most to stymie my campaign to open up parliament to the people.

• On Expenses is on BBC4 at 9pm, Tuesday 23 February.

• MPs' expenses
• BBC

The Jurassic theatrics of first-class MPs such as Sir Nick Winterton aren't the Tory leader's big worry. His furtive colleagues are

Like the Dutch football team or the Mossad, you can never be sure which Tory party is going to turn up. You might get darts-loving hipster David Cameron, just as you might get an electrifying display against the World Cup-holders or a devastatingly efficient assassination using the target's own phone. Then again, you might get Sir Nicholas Winterton – just as you might get an absolute shocker against Russia, or those bungling secret agents who bumped off a Moroccan waiter walking with his pregnant wife in Lillehammer in the mistaken belief he was a leader of the Black September.

This week, David Cameron was mostly being just like you, even though you'd never dream of drinking canned Guinness and think crawling to ­Murdoch by describing Sky+ as "one of the great inventions of our time" is desperately common. Indeed, there will be those among you who regard people who sit around drinking cans of beer in front of the darts and sponging off the state for their wisteria-trimming are everything that is broken about Britain. But you might just concede that Cameron has made progress in acting normal since that cringe-making Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West) selection on Desert Island Discs.

It may therefore be regarded as unfortunate that Sir Nicholas should choose the very day of this charm offensive to deliver his lecture on the proles. The member for Macclesfield is "infuriated" that MPs might soon have to travel standard class on the rail network, where passengers are "a totally different type of people" and – almost unbearably – "we are supposed to stand when there are no seats". Isn't Sir Nick a card? It's not just his total failure to connect his own party's privatisation of the service with the iniquitous overcrowding that, as one commentator remarked this week, would never happen on the train from Delhi to Haridwar.

No, the case of the Wintertons – for her ladyship is also an MP – is far more emblematic than that. I think quite seriously that the couple should be scientifically preserved in some way to remind people what it was like until, well, about eight months ago. A husband and wife team of such luminous repugnance, the most reasonable assumption is that the Wintertons were hatched in an al-Qaida-underwritten research facility, created with the sole aim of destroying all ­British trust in authority from within.

There was the business of the mortgage-free home they transferred to a family trust, into which they paid £20,000 a year of taxpayers' money as rent. Then there was Nick's habit of slapping women MPs' arses. Then there was Ann's racist joke at a rugby club dinner in 2001, which she followed in 2004 with a gag about the dead Chinese cockle-pickers, made – with exquisite judgment – at a diplomatic dinner. Outside Westminster, the whole demeanour of the Wintertons might have been grounds for professional concern and possibly a visit from Her Majesty's Constabulary, but in 2002, Nicholas was rewarded with a knighthood for – and I can scarcely believe I'm typing this – services to parliament. To repeat, this happened in 2002 – post the dawn of the new millennium, post-9/11, post any number of things that should have made the likes of the Wintertons appear as the most mesmerisingly hideous anachronisms to anyone normal.

Fast forward to this week's torpedoing of Operation Normal, and a Tory spokesman dismissed Sir Nick's views as not reflecting the Conservative party. Naturally, one hopes that's true. The next election will bring a partial clear-out of horrors in both major parties, and Cameron has certainly been more successful in conveying a modernised image than super-fly William Hague's back-to-front baseball cap.

But playing on my mind is a vignette starring Liam Fox. We lay our scene at a party in the year 2000, where the former GP was holding forth to guests, including some journalists. "Have you heard my new joke?" he demanded delightedly of them. No one had had the pleasure. "What do you call three dogs and a blackbird?" he inquired. Go on, tell us. "The Spice Girls!" The embarrassed silence that greeted this punchline was mistaken by Dr Fox for slow-wittedness on his audience's part, so he told the joke again. When the story appeared in print, the then shadow health spokesman offered the classic non-apology apology, saying he was sorry "if anyone was offended". "One thing is for sure," countered a spokesperson for the Spice Girls, "no one has ever heard of Liam Fox so no one would bother making offensive jokes about him."

Yet for all the period charm of this putdown, Scary and Sporty and Co have since faded away with their fortunes, while erstwhile nobody Liam Fox now seeks to assume the vaguely important role of secretary of state for defence in a Cameron government.

While pantomime dinosaurs like the retiring Winterton are a useful lightning rod, then, it might be wise not to discount the possibility that there may be stealth dinosaurs still abroad, wearing open-necked shirts and tweeting about social policy. The mystery is not simply when exactly it was that young-ish, educated politicians with professional backgrounds had Damascene conversions to realising that racist jokes and distaste for the electorate and the like are bad, but whether they have all really had them. Which Tories are "normal", as the politicians would have it, and which ones are merely pretending?

• Conservatives
• David Cameron
• Liam Fox
• MPs' expenses
• General election 2010

Tory MP Nicholas Winterton has been pilloried for his comments about second-class train carriages – but he has a point

Right now, I'm trying to do what at least one Tory MP believes is impossible: get some work done in the standard class carriage of a British train. According to Sir Nicholas Winterton: "If I was in standard class I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulder the whole time, there would be noise, there would be distraction."

The right honourable member for Macclesfield has been widely pilloried for his remarks, but as anyone who has been in the same position as I am right now knows, he has a point.

The 12.30 from Bristol Temple Meads to Durham is, like many trains these days, packed. If I did not have a seat reservation – which I could not have if I needed to be at all flexible – I might well be standing right now. On many trains out of Paddington, which I take quite regularly, having to stand half an hour or more until Reading or Didcot is normal.

As it is I've got an airline-style seat with a small flip-down table which is too small to accommodate both my tiny netbook computer and a cup of coffee, let alone the papers I'm trying to refer to. I'm balancing the computer on the table's edge, hoping it doesn't slip, spilling my coffee all over the woman in the seat that's so close to me that I have to type with elbows tucked in. It's an ergonomic nightmare. My neck is stiff already. If I did this every day I'd be incapacitated in weeks.

As for noise and distraction, I'm in what is laughably known as the Quiet Carriage, in reality the not-quite-as-noisy-as-the-others carriage. However, the expectation that it should be quiet actually makes what noise there is even more annoying. Adults are chatting and an infant is making that high-pitched-noise-I-make-because-I-can that children of that age take particular delight in.

As Winterton pointed out, people tend to have different attitudes in standard and first class. Lots of people in standard are leisure travellers, relaxing and enjoying themselves. In first, it's understood that the carriage is a workspace, helped by the fact that you do actually have space to work. Winterton's hamfisted attempt to explain this led him to talk about people "from different walks of life", a phrase that sounded as though it had come straight down his nose. But his key point is spot on: if you want a working environment, you can only be sure of getting it in first class.

I use the trains quite a lot and often work. When I can book in advance and get first class for a similar price to standard, I do, but it's rare that I can. Even if I could afford it, I'd be loth to pay the huge prices for standard open first seats. Is it worth paying that difference for MPs? Of course. We keep telling them they have to buckle down and do a good job. We should not make it harder than necessary for them to do so. Certainly they should be careful with our money, book cheaper fares in advance if they can and travel standard if they're not intending to get any work done – which I imagine is rare. But we can't demand that they work efficiently for us and then deprive them of the means to do so.

But hang on. Despite my complaints, I've got this article written in standard class, where I have already said I usually work. If I can do it, why can't they? They can, but can doesn't mean should. It's possible to get work done in standard class, for sure, but then again it's possible to work without proper breaks, in rooms that are too cold, or with poor equipment. The idea that MPs should be regularly made to work in the kinds of conditions I've been writing in seem to be based not on noble ideals of justice, but on a cruel desire to make life hard for them. Not wanting to travel standard class is a sign of snobbery; not wanting to work in it is a sign of pure common sense.

And with that, the baby starts crying again.

• Conservatives
• MPs' expenses
• Rail transport

Former minister has been ordered to pay £18,000 of allowances back

A former Labour minister who was ordered to hand over almost £18,000 by Sir Thomas Legg's audit of MPs' expenses today protested that he had never been contacted by the watchdog's inquiry.

Ivor Caplin, who served as MP for Hove from 1997 to 2005 and was a junior defence minister, said he had written to Legg but received no reply.

His comment comes just three days before Monday's deadline for more than 300 MPs and former MPs to repay more than £1m in overpaid expenses from the past five years.

Harriet Harman, the leader of the Commons, today confirmed that she would bring forward a motion to allow house authorities to deduct money from serving members' salary, allowances or resettlement grants if they do not pay up by the deadline on 22 February.

In his report published earlier this month, Legg said: "No reply has been received from Mr Caplin to a number of letters sent to the address held by house authorities.

"In default of evidence to support payments for mortgage interest of £17,865.33 for 2004-05 and April 2005, I must regard these payments as having been invalid. Accordingly, my recommendation is that Mr Caplin should repay the whole of this sum."

But in a statement issued today, Caplin said: "I have received no communication from or on behalf of Sir Thomas Legg at any stage during his inquiry. As soon as I became aware that he had been trying to contact me, I wrote to Sir Thomas and I am awaiting a reply."

Legg's report heaped blame on both MPs and the Commons fees office as 390 politicians were found to have been in breach of allowances rules and were ordered to repay a total of £1.3m. Some £800,000 had already been repaid when the report was published on 4 February.

Harman said at the time of publication that the document was an "important step on the path to restoring public trust and confidence".

A spokesman for Harman said: "The leader of the house twice met Sir Thomas Legg about his inquiry. She fully supports the review of past expenses to ensure that any sums overclaimed are identified and paid back. She fully supports payback and will bring forward a motion on behalf of the House to allow them to deduct the money from members' salary, allowances or resettlement grant if not paid by the deadline of February 22."

Today, The London Evening Standard claimed that Harman persuaded Legg not to publish any references to expenses claims that were turned down by the Commons fees office. Legg had wanted to publicise claims that were rejected, but a freedom of information document seen by the Standard showed that Harman queried whether such a move would be "appropriate".

It emerged today that Huw Irranca-Davies, the Labour MP for Ogmore and the minister for natural environment, received a formal apology from Legg's inquiry after officials on the investigating team admitted they mistakenly accused him of still owing £257.92.

After Irranca-Davies made representations to the inquiry team pointing out that he repaid everything he was told he owed, Legg's team issued an apology, saying they "double-counted" one claim for the same amount, meaning an outstanding balance showed up.

• MPs' expenses
• Labour
• House of Commons

Veteran Conservative Sir Nicholas Winterton says standard coaches are for 'a totally different type of people'

The veteran Tory MP Sir Nicholas Winterton was under fire tonight after arguing that MPs should be allowed to claim expenses for first-class tickets because standard coaches are for "a totally different type of people".

After declaring himself "infuriated" with proposals from the new expenses watchdog to ban payments for first-class tickets during a magazine interview, the MP for Macclesfield told a radio interviewer that people travelling on standard tickets were "in a different walk of life" and their children might disturb an MP's work.

A Tory party spokesman sought to play down the comments, saying they should not be treated as representative of either David Cameron or the party's views.

At the height of the expenses row last year, Winterton and his wife Lady Ann, MP for Congleton, announced they were standing down at the next election. He had been ordered to pay back £850.81.

Speaking today on 5 Live, Winterton said MPs needed to be able to work in peace when travelling.

He said: "If I was in standard class I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulder the entire time, there would be noise, there would be distraction."

He said of standard-class passengers: "They are a totally different type of people. There's lots of children, there's noise, there's activity."

Winterton denied he was saying MPs were better than ordinary people. "I didn't say they weren't as good, but they are in a different walk of life. They are doing different things. Very often they are there with children."

He added that first class was "very valuable for business people and I include in that category MPs".

In the interview with Total Politics magazine, he said: "They want to stop members of parliament travelling first class. That puts us below local councillors and officers of local government. They all travel first class … So we are supposed to stand when there are no seats … I'm sorry, it infuriates me."

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is to issue new guidance on expenses. Sir Christopher Kelly, the standards watchdog, has suggested scrapping payments for first-class travel for MPs.

A Conservative spokesman said Winterton's remarks were "the out-of-touch views of a soon-to-retire backbench MP".

• MPs' expenses
• Rail transport
• Conservatives

Monday's deadline extended for those struggling to pay

MPs still have to repay more than £100,000 of their £1.12m expenses bill four days ahead of the official deadline.

They have until 6pm on Monday to give back the money they were judged to have unfairly claimed. But as of tonight 10% had not been returned and Commons sources said some MPs would be allowed to extend the deadline.

A number of MPs who have said they were struggling to come up with the cash have been given more time to pay. Some have been offered personal repayment packages, including schedules of smaller payments or salary reductions over longer periods. The deals are being struck with the resources department, the same office that oversaw the now discredited expenses scheme.

A senior Commons source insisted the delay in repayments was not the result of a "gang of refuseniks", passing up the chance to repay the money on principle. Many would pay the money back before the deadline on Monday when parliament returns after recess.

"Around 90% of the money has been returned. We expect to get more on Monday," the source said.

Sir Thomas Legg, a former senior civil servant, gave his verdict on the MPs expenses scandal two weeks ago in a retrospective review of five years of payments allowed by the Commons authorities. He demanded that 392 former and current MPs repaid £1.12m. His report condemned MPs and the "deeply flawed" and "vague" system they operated in. Some £800,000 was already paid up when Legg reported.

The outstanding money is understood to include two large payments from MPs who are agreeing a longer term repayment package. Officials are working with more MPs to agree similar deals.

Most of the former MPs who had been avoiding contact with Legg's team have also paid-up. A handful are understood to have ignored all contact from the inquiry, up until it reported earlier this month.

As of Wednesday evening Ivor Caplin, the former Labour MP for Hove and defence minister, had not had any contact with the inquiry or Commons officials to pay off the £17,865.33 he was judged to have owed for failing to submit receipts for interest payments on his mortgage.

Legg's report into MPs expenses said: "No reply has been received from Mr Caplin to a number of letters sent to the address held by the house authorities."

Caplin is now a senior consultant for Foresight Consulting, a political lobbying business. Calls to his office to enquire whether he had repaid the debt since Wednesday – or intended to – were not returned.

Some 13 MPs have also been allowed to appeal against the repayment after their letters from Legg came too late to be included in the initial round of appeals.

The members' estimate committee will support a resolution to authorise the automatic recovery of any outstanding amounts from MPs' salaries and other allowance payments after Monday.

Separately, all MPs have received written warnings from the tax office revealing common mistakes individuals have previously made in their annual returns. The letter, sent last month, warns they may face "penalties" if they overclaim on their tax-free expenses or understate their income.

In particular, the letter warns against MPs claiming deductions on accountancy fees, newspaper cuttings services and wrongly claiming for computers.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) is working on guidance for the expenses system after receiving hundreds of responses to its consultation – including many from individual MPs. It is expected to publish a final draft later this month in order to have the new expenses regime in place immediately after the general election.

• MPs' expenses
• House of Commons

Labour MP Huw Irranca-Davies mistakenly accused of not repaying mortgage interest overpayment

An MP has received a formal apology from Sir Thomas Legg's expenses inquiry after officials on the investigating team admitted they mistakenly accused him of still owing £257.92.

Huw Irranca-Davies, the Labour MP for Ogmore and the minister for natural environment, was labelled a "refusenik" after the Legg report, published this month, said he had yet to repay the money.

But after he made representations to the inquiry team pointing out that he repaid everything he was told he owed, Legg's team issued an apology, saying they "double-counted" one claim for the same amount, meaning an outstanding balance showed up.

Legg's report last month concluded that 392 former and current MPs should repay expenses claimed under the now discredited system. But the report and the inquiry behind it received intense criticism from MPs, some disgruntled about payments they were told to make. More than half of the 80 MPs who lodged appeals against his verdict were successful.

Irranca-Davies, who had already repaid £1,750.27 of overpayments for mortgage interest, said: "I was called a refusenik when I had clearly paid it all off. I was annoyed because I have been hugely supportive of the Legg process, set up to identify errors accurately – accurately being the important word. To find mistakes were made again after the fees office and MPs – myself included – had acted wrongly was disappointing."

The letter to Irranca-Davies said: "I am sorry that you were given incorrect advice by a member of the review team."

• MPs' expenses
• Labour
• House of Commons

Tory MP says politicians are not better than ordinary people, but they are from a different walk of life

A veteran Conservative MP hit out at the new expenses culture at the House of Commons today, saying he was "infuriated" that MPs might no longer be able to claim for first-class train travel and complaining about the "totally different type of people" in standard class.

Sir Nicholas Winterton provoked outrage when he said MPs would not be able to get enough work done in standard class because of the noise and disturbance from children.

The Tory party moved to distance itself from Winterton, the MP from Macclesfield, who repaid £850 after the Commons expenses inquiry found he had been overpaid for council tax bills on his second home. A spokesman said he was "out of touch".

Winterton had previously faced criticism for claiming parliamentary allowances with his wife Ann, who is also an MP, for rent of £20,000 a year on a flat they transferred to a family trust after paying off the mortgage.

In an interview with Total Politics magazine, Winterton said the reforms of the Commons being introduced in the wake of the expenses scandal would "make things much worse".

"They want to stop members of parliament travelling first class," he said. "That puts us below local councillors and officers of local government. They all travel first class. Majors in the army travel first class.

"So we are supposed to stand when there are no seats ... I'm sorry, it infuriates me."

Speaking today on Radio 5 Live, Winterton said MPs needed to be able to work in peace when travelling between parliament and their constituencies. "If I was in standard class I would not do work because people would be looking over your shoulder the entire time, there would be noise, there would be distraction."

He said of standard-class passengers: "They are a totally different type of people. There's lots of children, there's noise, there's activity. I like to have peace and quiet when I'm travelling."

Winterton denied he was saying MPs were better than ordinary people. "I didn't say they weren't as good, but they are in a different walk of life. They are doing different things. Very often they are there with children.

"I believe that the facilities extended by the rail companies to travel first class are very valuable for businesspeople and I include in that category MPs."

Sir Christopher Kelly's report into MPs' expenses last year recommended that, instead of routinely claiming for first-class travel, "MPs should always consider value for money in purchasing tickets. They may still be able to claim for first-class rail travel where they can justify it, but can only claim for economy-class travel on flights within the UK or Europe."

Sir Ian Kennedy, the chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, has yet to decide which of Kelly's reforms to implement.

Winterton's comments prompted a strong online reaction. By mid-afternoon there were hundreds of comments on the BBC website. "Live in the real world like the rest of us," said one. "I regularly travel from London to Liverpool and am also expected to work on the train. I go standard class and manage fine." Others pointed out that there are "quiet carriages" in standard class. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said on Twitter: "Sadly some MPs still just don't get it."

A spokesman for the Conservative party said Winterton's remarks were "the out-of-touch views of a soon-to-retire backbench MP". He added: "They do not in any way represent the views of David Cameron or that of the Conservative party and should be treated as such."

Winterton, who has been in the Commons for 39 years, told Total Politics magazine that he was now "looking forward" to standing down as an MP at the coming election. Ann Winterton is also standing down.

Winterton said that in previous years MPs were told they did not have to account for how they spent their allowances.

"When I came in in 1971, the head of the fees office, as it was known then, said to me: 'Mr Winterton, these are your expenses and allowances,'" he recalled.

He said: 'This is the figure. If you spend a pound over it, you won't get that pound back, but you can spend that allowance how you like. It is there for you to spend at your discretion.'

"Now, retrospectively, they are seeking to justify members providing a full explanation going back five years. I can't go back 12 months, let alone five years."

Winterton challenged the £1.1m cost of an audit of MPs' expenses by Sir Thomas Legg, describing the former mandarin's salary for chairing the review as "megabucks". He added: "The man is raking it in. Do you know how much he has earned for chairing the review? He has earned so far £142,000. And the actual cost of the review is currently over £1.1m. These are megabucks."

The increased scrutiny of MPs would produce a Commons packed with career politicians with little experience of normal life, he warned.

"Parliament is going to become a house of career politicians. They are anything but professional," said Winterton, 71.

"The people who increasingly dominate this House are people who are intelligent, but they go from school to university, university to researcher, researcher to adviser, then to candidate.

"They have no experience of life outside. Have they ever paid wages at the end of the week? Have they ever been through negotiations over a business deal? Have they been in the law? No."

• MPs' expenses
• Conservatives
• House of Commons