The claim game

WILL they never learn? Britain's MPs, having shamed their parties, their Parliament and their country with the behaviour that generated the expenses crisis last year, have shown an appalling indifference to the ethical standards of the people they claim to represent. Those politicians who between claimed more than 115,000 of illegitimate expenses, after new rules had been introduced to clean up the House of Commons, have acted with arrogance and ignorance.

The overwhelming and obvious lesson of the expenses crisis was that claims should only be for work essential to MPs' duties. Advertising costs and money to pay for some alarmingly vague "contingincies", which are still being charged to the taxpayer, are nothing of the sort. The pity of it is that there is an all too convenient system under which those who made inappropriate claims can avoid being named publicly.

MPs would do well to remember that even though the recession is over, Britain's economic woes are from done. Unemployment stands at 1.47 million and a further 330,000 public sector workers face the axe over the next four years; these are hardly the conditions in which to continue living a taxpayer-funded life of largesse.

Clearly, the new system is not perfect, with both MPs and staff at the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority complaining about the way it works, as well as each other. Further reform is needed. That should not be used as a smokescreen, however, for experienced politicians to claim that other people are the source of the problem, when the fault lies with them. They have to change their ways or the reputation of "new politics" will go the way of its predecessor: driven into the dust by obloquy and recrimination.