IPSA is under prolonged and heavy attack from MPs who are using every trick in the book to undermine and thwart it. It is fair to say that IPSA was a badly conceived idea produced in a panic during the dying days of the Brown tyranny, it wastes a lot of money itself and could in truth be better organised. Nevertheless one fact strikes Guido, the new expenses regime has saved £18 million. The fact that MPs hate the bureaucracy created might make them think about the quangos and regulations they inflict upon us. The political class has only itself to blame. Remember 52% of MPs had to repay fiddled expenses…

Back in 2009, before IPSA was set up, the Sunlight Centre produced recommendations which included a House of Commons debit card as the best way to regulate legitimate expenses. The transactions would as normal be electronically recorded and could thus be published online in real-time, the spending limits would be automatic and bureaucracy would be minimal. The idea was first proposed in Disinfecting Parliament, a report that recommended a number of measures based on best practice in the private sector that could easily be transferred to IPSA. Two years later IPSA has finally announced a plan to introduce debit cards…