In shocking news, apparently IPSA “does not give enough importance to helping MPs spend in a cost-effective way.” Flicking through the National Audit Office report, just released, it seems there is still a long way to go to fix MPs expenses:

“They [MPs] are not required to make use of the few existing centralised procurement mechanisms. Moreover, IPSA does not normally provide advice to MPs, beyond the rules of the scheme, on what would represent cost-effective procurement, even following explicit requests. For understandable reasons, it has not done this to date because it is keen to avoid the recreation of the so-called ‘John Lewis list’. MPs say they are generally dissatisfied with many aspects of IPSA’s advice and guidance which is not consolidated nor easily searchable.”

Guido isn’t sure that thousands and thousands of pounds of NAO resources were required to point that out.