IPSA-an expensive flop

IPSA was mis-conceived in panic and fear.

All parties sought a lifeline to escape from the nightmare of the expenses scandal. IPSA was the wrong solution. This is the opportunity to re-shape its future.

The previous lax rules of the Fees Office invited abuse and were rightly abolished. The most efficient best value alternative would have been to replace expenses at reduced total cost withan automatic allowance.

The pendulum swung from permissiveness to minute control of claims large and small. IPSA is a bureaucratic ornament.

 

It was  designed to

 

Be a bulwark against new fraud.

Restore the public’s confidence in MPs.

Create an independent body remote from MPs control, absolving Parliament from accusations of manipulation of finances in our self-interest.

 

 

It has failed in all three ambitions.  Our reputation has sunk from rock bottom to subterranean. Financial scandals have continued in both Houses with toe-curling regularity. The public are still convinced that MPs use the system for own ends.

There is a better solution. The   previous   simple   five   part   expenses   system   was   atomized   into   a   hundred headings and sub-headings. A monthly 30 minute chore was complicated by IPSA into hours of tedious frustrating trawling through a bureaucratic morass of rules that are complex and tedious. IPSA robs MPs and our staff of much of their most   precious   possession-time.   

There   is  continuing   resentment  against unnecessary chores that diminish MPs ability to do their numberless essential tasks.

MPs would embrace a new system without claims or the expensive IPSA. It could be based on an allowance calculated on  average expenses based on distance  from

Westminster and paid automatically. It would be acceptable even if it meant reduction in  the  amounts   that   MPs   receive because   of   the   liberation from   the tentacles  of tedious bureaucracy. MPs  would gain  time, Parliament’s reputation would   be   protected   and   IPSA's   annual   running   costs    excess   of £6million would disappear.

 

Cruelty on a plate

Few groups are more tedious than the animal-baiting rural lobby.

They are now aroused to defend their courageous pastime of shooting defenceless birds. It’s all part of the rich tapestry of rural barbarism, that we inherit. The threat to take the guns from the boys and deny their perverse pleasure in killing living creatures stirs the rural resistance warriors.

They are many sports that do not involve the use of living sentient creatures as quarries or targets. The shooters have been conditioned to accept as normal activities that are cruel. They find it difficult to  escape from their pointless tortuous justifications of an activity that degrades human beings by abusing animals for their own amusement. It was a step forward in the civilising process when cock-fighting & bear-baiting disappeared. 

Shooting birds is an inefficient expensive way of preparing their lead-shot bodies for the food trade. The only reason the practices continues is that some people are thrilled to use guns against living creatures rather than inanimate targets and they gain a perverse pleasure from it it. What was acceptable yesterday is less acceptable today.     The future will dump these barbaric pastimes. 

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The Gamebird industry tries continuously to mask Britain's dirty little animal cruelty secret.

The following EDM was proposed in Parliament in 2011:

"That this House welcomes the Game to Eat Campaign initiated by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and Countryside Alliance; and encourages the general public to eat more game recognising that this is nutritious and healthy food and can be a tasty part of a balanced healthy diet."

The commercial industry is one that wants to hide its unpleasant face from the public. I tabled an amendment

"Leave out all from ‘Game to Eat campaign..’ and insert

which will help to publicise Britain’s worst animal cruelty secret:  regrets the indifference to animal suffering that subjects 40 million birds annually to inhumane battery cages that breed enfeebled birds who cannot protect themselves from weather exposure or road traffic resulting in most of them dying before they face the guns; believes that the these foul practises can be challenged only if diners reject game and thus avoid cruelty on a plate."

Game is neither organic, wild or even free-range and the release and shooting of game birds is done purely for entertainment.

Of the 28 million pheasants and 6 million partridges released in the UK, 90% and 40% respectively have been bred in intensive battery farms in France, Spain and Portugal.  Last year the Con-dem government overturned a ban on battery cages for breeding pheasants.  They are now confined for their productive life (around 2 years) in the type of battery cages used for laying hens.

Rearing birds in their millions to be abandoned for use as living targets is about as far removed from responsible animal welfare as it's possible to get.

Comments

[simon couldry]

Could I congratulate you, Paul, for your refreshingly commonsense approach to the expenses issue. The witlessness of the 'solution' of IPSA should make us want to weep.
best wishes
Simon Couldry (an East Sussex liberal, by the way)

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks Ad. My comment on IPSA is part of a long report on parliamentary conduct reforms. Ypur comment is genera;;y fair. I will

Paul Flynn MP

The views expressed here are my personal opinions as a
constituency Member of Parliament. They are not expressions of the policy of
the Labour Party or statements by me in my capacities as Shadow Leader of the
House or Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

[Ad]

I don't understand why the offenders were not immediately suspended and then barred. I know it would cause turmoil but we seem to manage whole summers without their supposedly vital input.

Corruption is inevitable? They've done a lot of good? Unfortunately if you have fiddled your constituents then it doesn't matter, off you go.

The response? Deliberately elaborate machination? Its a sorry state of affairs, Paul, for this country. You've said as much (more eloquently). We as a country REALLY don't need this at any time but nowadays its only part of the problem. They fall at the first hurdle: honesty, respect for the office and their constituents. I'm not some over zealous idealist to say so I don't think.

How can it be any different in a constitutional monarchy playing second fiddle to America? In an economy geared towards a square mile above the rest who have borne the brunt of successive governments' cruelty and plundering.

I'm no expert on the relatively small ruling class that exerts its power on us AND the wider world. But they clearly have no scruples or principles. Their seemingly arbitrary barbarity against foreign states, combined with their efforts to drag us in the UK backwards several generations, its a cancer and it has to end. Its not envy, jealousy etc, its 'enough is enough'. For the good of all lets consign this bullshit to the past. And don't let them deceive or swear they will move even further rightwards.

They will rob us if they can. That is the reality. There is no benevolence at the end of the day. And its your duty (individually) to prevent this robbery. Also, they are quite willing to kill, to send the worst thuggish elements against you, there are many examples.

That which we have we have taken...