Downing Street Says » MPs’ expenses

» Thursday, December 16, 2010

MPs’ expenses

Asked what the Prime Minister thought about IPSA having to improve the job it was doing, the Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) told the assembled press that the Prime Minister recognised that there had been a lot concerns from all parties about the way the system was operating at the present time. The PMS said that MPs from all parties had been expressing the view that they thought it needed to be reformed. The Prime Minister’s concern was that the concerns of MPs were addressed, and addressed reasonably quickly.

On whether the Prime Minister thought that IPSA should be scrapped, the PMS replied that we needed to look at what could be done; there were problems associated with the fact that we had moved to a new system, but they were quite significant problems. MPs across the House had been raising concerns over this.

Put that he wasn’t ruling out scrapping IPSA, the PMS said that he was not ruling anything in or out, but the problems needed to be dealt with. This was primarily a Parliamentary matter for the House, rather than for the Government.

On what the Prime Minister meant when he said the system was anti-family’, the PMS said that he would not get into the detail of what was said in a meeting between Tory MPs.

Asked if the Prime Minister thought that MPs should have two family homes, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister thought there were problems that needed to be sorted out. The PMS added that we were not setting out a Government position. The Prime Minister was expressing the concerns of MPs across the House of Commons.

The PMS said that addressing the problems needed to be done in such a way that retained public confidence in the system. It was important that there were procedures in place that reassured the public that the expenses system was operating in the way it should. People would recall why IPSA was set up in the first instance.

Put that scrapping IPSA was an option, the PMS said that there was not a Government proposal being put forward. This was an issue for Parliament and MPs.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.