MPs who claim the most food on expenses.

The outgoing Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, claimed £1,050 for food during the 2007/08 recess.

Michael Martin

Michael Martin to Kate Hoey: “I just say to you it’s easy to say to the press, 'This should not happen’. It’s a wee bit more difficult when you just don’t have to give quotes to the press and do nothing else. Some of us in this House have other responsibilities.”

When: May 11 in the House of Commons during announcement of review

Michael Martin 'to stand down'

Mr Martin is expected to inform MPs of his departure in a statement to the Commons at 2.30pm, just 24 hours after being humiliated in the chamber by cross-party calls for his resignation.

"I can confirm that the Speaker is making a statement this afternoon and that it is about himself," his spokeswoman said. It is unclear whether he will resign immediately or stay on until the next election.

Speaker Martin has become the highest-profile victim of the Westminster expenses scandal, which claimed another scalp today.

Tory MP Douglas Hogg, ridiculed for claiming for his country house moat to be cleaned, announced he would not be standing in his Sleaford and North Hykeham constituency at the next election in the wake of the row.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said later that no MP who had defied the rules on their Commons expenses would be allowed to stand for election as a Labour Party candidate.

After addressing a meeting of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee, the Prime Minister also promised "major changes" in the system of MPs' expenses.

Speaker Martin's position became untenable after he lost the support of MPs over his handling of their expenses system.

The disclosure in The Daily Telegraph that his staff had encouraged members to claims for "phantom" mortgages provoked fierce criticism.

This morning a motion calling for his immediate resignation appeared on the Commons order paper signed by 23 MPs from across the political spectrum.

Douglas Carswell, the Tory MP who tabled the motion, said he hoped Mr Martin's successor would have the moral authority to push through reforms that would "restore dignity to politics".

"It gives me no pleasure to have done this at all, but it was necessary to do it. We need a new Speaker who understands that 'sovereignty of Parliament' is shorthand for 'sovereignty of the people'," he said.

A Labour MP who has signed the no confidence motion and yesterday clashed with Mr Martin in the Commons welcomed the news of his imminent resignation.

"That is the right and honourable course to take. His resignation will be the first step in the House recovering its reputation," he said," David Winnick said.

But Austin Mitchell, a Labour backbencher, described the treatment of Mr Martin as a "public humiliation" and accused his opponents of being motivated by snobbery. "Partly it is a class issue," he said.

Later this afternoon Mr Martin is due to hold emergency talks with party leaders over how to reform the expenses system. Downing Street said that it expected this meeting to go ahead.

Mr Martin was yesterday involved in a dramatic confrontation with MPs after refusing to stand aside. Following a 15-minute exchange in Parliament, Mr Martin was told that he had signed “his political death warrant”.

One MP described him as a “dead Speaker walking”. Another said that he would remain in the job for a matter of days after the leaders of the three main parties withdrew support.

In astonishing scenes in the Commons, MPs ignored centuries of convention and openly argued with the Speaker as he struggled to get to grips with the crisis engulfing Westminster.

Despite making an unprecedented apology to the country, Mr Martin’s statement descended into chaos with MPs on all sides urging him to go.

One veteran Tory MP likened the mood to that of the Norway debate in 1940 when Neville Chamberlain was urged: “In the name of God, go.”

Mr Martin’s position has been in jeopardy since he clashed last week with MPs over the Telegraph’s investigation. He told the Commons yesterday: “Please allow me to say to the men and women of the United Kingdom that we have let you down very badly indeed. We must all accept the blame and, to the extent that I have contributed, I am profoundly sorry.”

But by not addressing his own future, he caused outrage among many MPs. They demanded that he go, or at the very least allow a debate of confidence. Mr Brown attended the Speaker’s statement but his aides were keen to stress that this should not be seen as a sign of his tacit support for Mr Martin.

Speaker Michael Martin 'sorry' but refuses to resign

Mr Martin told a packed chamber that he was "profoundly sorry" for his failure to prevent abuses of the allowances system, but failed to respond to repeated demands by MPs to give a date for his departure.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, later told Labour MPs and peers that it was "imperative, urgent and important that we take action now" to restore public trust on the expenses system.

Addressing a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the Prime Minister said that it was vital to deal with three issues relating to the past, present and future.

Past problems should be deal with in a quick and systematic way; there should be urgent interim solutions including a ceiling on the amount MPs can claim for mortgage interest on their second homes; and Parliament must consider moving away from its current system of self-regulation.

Earlier, in a stormy Commons session, the Speaker scolded members who interrupted his address with points of order to challenge his position.

He said that a motion of no-confidence tabled by Tory MP backbencher Douglas Carswell would not be debated because it was not "substantive". Amid chaotic scenes, the Speaker was forced to take advice on parliamentary procedure from the clerk of the Commons after Mr Carswell insisted that the motion must be debated.

"When will Members be allowed to choose a new speaker with the moral authority to clean up Westminster and the legitimacy to lift this House out of the mire?" Mr Carswell asked.

The Speaker's statement came just moments after Conservative leader David Cameron called for the immediate dissolution of Parliament to clear the way for a general election as soon as possible after the June 4 European and council polls.

Mr Martin said he would meet with all party leaders within 48 hours to discuss urgent reforms to the expenses regime, but his announcement failed to placate MPs. At least five members took to their feet to condemn the Speaker's leadership and urge him to stand aside before the next election.

Labour MP David Winnick said: "Your early retirement, Sir, would help the reputation of the House." The Speaker replied that this was "not a subject for today".

The Speaker was widely expected to use his emergency statement to announce a timetable for his departure, having alienated MPs of all parties. But while his tone was more contrite than last week, Mr Martin refused to discuss his own future.

"We all bear a heavy responsibility for the terrible damage to the reputation of this House," he said. "We must do everything we possibly can to regain the trust and confidence of the people."

"We have let you down very badly indeed. We must all accept blame and to the extent that I have contributed to this situation, I'm profoundly sorry. Now each and every member, including myself, must work hard to retain their trust."

Afterwards the Speaker's opponents said that he was mistaken to insist that the motion to depose him was an Early Day Motion, which are rarely debated.

Gordon Prentice, another Labour MP, told Sky News that it would appear on Tuesday's Commons order paper, and predicted that the Liberal Democrats would use their parliamentary time to bring it to a vote. He described Mr Martin's performance as "excruciatingly embarrassing".

Earlier the Prime Minister had left Mr Martin's future in grave doubt by distancing himself from the Speaker.

Mr Brown was asked by reporters to back Mr Martin, but simply said: "The decision on who is Speaker is a matter for the House of Commons."

He has previously praised Mr Martin for doing a good job, but that formula has now been dropped both by the premier and his spokesman.

"What we have seen in expenses and in the revelations has angered and appalled me," said Mr Brown.

"It has angered me because people expect politicians to be serving the public and not serving themselves.

"There has got to be root-and-branch reform... to make sure that people can have trust in what their politicians do."

The Prime Minister's spokesman confirmed: "The Prime Minister and the Government will support the will of the House."

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said: "The whole point of the Speaker is that he must be above party politics, so it wouldn't be right for the official opposition to call for him to go or to force him to go, and I won't be doing that.

"But clearly this issue has to be resolved and resolved quickly."

The position of Mr Martin was further undermined after The Daily Telegraph disclosed that MPs had been allowed by the Commons authorities he oversees to claim taxpayer cash for non-existent mortgage payments.

The motion of no confidence in Mr Martin was tabled by Mr Carswell at midday, and signed by 15 MPs from the three major parties. Eighteen MPs have now signed the motion.

His motion reads: "That this House has no confidence in Mr Speaker and calls for him to step down; notes that Mr Speaker has failed to provide leadership in matters relating to Honourable Members' expenses; believes that a new Speaker urgently needs to be elected by secret ballot, free from manipulation by party Whips, under Standing Order No 1B; and believes that a new Speaker should proceed to reform the House in such a way as to make it an effective legislature once again."

MPs signing the motion included Labour's Kate Hoey and Liberal Democrat Norman Baker, who were the targets of criticism by Mr Martin in the Commons last week, as well as former shadow home secretary David Davis.

Others who have put their name to the motion are Labour's Paul Flynn and Gordon Prentice, Conservatives Richard Bacon, Philip Hollobone, Richard Shepherd and Philip Davies, and Liberal Democrats Norman Lamb, John Hemming, Jo Swinson, Lynne Featherstone and Stephen Williams

Mr Carswell said: "More names are expected to declare, as MPs return from listening to their angry constituents over the weekend."

"It's time for change and you're seeing respected politicians from across the political spectrum uniting to demand change – and that means a new Speaker," Mr Carswell told Sky News.

"The House of Commons right now is perceived as stinking. The House is in a moral ditch – we need to get out of it."

A YouGov poll in The Daily Telegraph on Monday found that 54 per cent of people believe Mr Martin should stand down. Only 13 per cent said he should stay.

Officials colluded over mortgage claims

Parliamentary authorities, overseen by Michael Martin, the Speaker, gave secret permission for some MPs to over-claim for thousands of pounds in home loan interest in deals that led to the systematic abuse of the taxpayer-funded expenses system.

Ben Chapman, a Labour MP, admitted last night that he was allowed to continue claiming for interest payments on his entire mortgage after repaying £295,000 of the loan in 2002.

Over 10 months the arrangement allowed Mr Chapman to receive £15,000 for the part of the home loan which had been paid off. Last night, he said he would not give back the money.

Permission to claim “phantom” mortgage payments is understood to have been offered to several MPs before 2004. It was stopped after Commons officials admitted it should never have been allowed. Michael Martin has been Speaker since 2000 and was therefore ultimately responsible for the arrangements – which has never been independently investigated.

He will make a statement today on the growing expenses scandal after a sustained attempt by MPs to unseat him.

None of the other MPs who have benefited from the phantom mortgage deal have been publicly named or are thought to have been asked to pay back claims. Some MPs who were found to have over-claimed for mortgages were simply invited to “dig out” receipts to cover the illegitimate claims.

The Daily Telegraph has disclosed that two Labour MPs, Elliot Morley and David Chaytor, claimed for mortgages that did not exist. They say the claims were an oversight. Both have been suspended from the parliamentary party and face police investigations.

It is feared that if other MPs were allowed to inflate mortgage claims, with the authority of the fees office, the problem may be far wider and could lead to widespread criminal action.

Lawyers have given warning that simply because the arrangement was within Parliamentary rules does not mean it is legal.

Last night Labour launched an investigation into the claims. The party’s chief whip had spoken to Mr Chapman and would seek further clarification from the MP and the Fees Office, a Downing Street spokesman said.

The arrangements – for which the justification is not clear – came to light in the claims files of Mr Chapman, the Labour MP for Wirral South.

Mr Chapman, who has been a ministerial aide, approached the fees office at the end of 2002 to explain that he was repaying £295,939 of the mortgage on his designated second home in Lambeth, south-east London. This reduced the interest payments – met by the taxpayer – from £1,900 to £400 per month.

“By paying off capital I am forgoing interest and investment opportunities elsewhere,” he told the fees office.

He and an official “thus agreed that the mortgage should remain for ACA (Additional Costs Allowance) purposes at the original amount”.

An email between senior officials within the fees office discusses Mr Chapman’s case and discloses that it is not unique. “… I have heard similar arrangements being agreed to in the past,” one said. “Personally, I do not believe that such an arrangement should ever have been suggested.”

Today, it can also be disclosed that a large number of household items such as sofas and dining tables are being bought for MPs’ second homes, as allowed by the expenses rules, but delivered to their main homes, often hundreds of miles away. The fees office rarely questions the anomaly.

The expenses claims of 137 MPs have now been uncovered as part of the Telegraph’s ongoing investigation. Today’s files disclose:

Madeleine Moon, a Labour MP, had thousands of pounds worth of furniture delivered to Wales while designating a London flat as her second home;
Ed Vaizey, a key Conservative ally of David Cameron, had £2,000 of furniture delivered to his London home when his second home was in Oxfordshire;
Ian McCartney, a former Labour Party chairman, spent £16,000 furnishing and decorating his second home but paid it back after the High Court ruled that expenses claims should be published.
Last night, a Commons spokesman declined to comment on Mr Chapman’s case. However, she said: “In October 2003, there was a tightening of the rules for claiming allowances. This was reflected in the 2004 Green Book.”

Speaker spent £1,400 on chauffeurs to his local job centre and Celtic Park

The disclosures are embarrassing for Mr Martin who as Speaker of the Commons has been spending hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to stop the details of the expenses claims being published.

Mr Martin spent more than £1,400 with a Scottish chauffeur hire company in 2004-05. He used it on 12 occasions.

For each of its customers, the company provides a driver wearing a uniform of a grey suit and grey cap. Mr Martin chose to hire a standard saloon car, which the company said would have been either a Jaguar XF, Volvo S80 or a Mercedes E-Class vehicle.

The claims show that on July 23 2004 Mr Martin took a chauffeur-driven car to Springburn Job Centre. The charge for the eight-hour day was £173.90 for a 40-mile round-trip.

The visits during that year also included three journeys to social housing projects in the city.

They included a trip on September 10 2004 to North Glasgow Housing Association. Overall the 32-mile journey took three-and-half hours and cost £97.62.

On another occasion, Mr Martin took a car to John Smith House, the head office of the Labour Party in Glasgow. The driver waited outside, and eventually billed Mr Martin for £64.11.

Mr Martin was also driven by the company from his home, via Celtic Park – where the driver waited – and on to the Glasgow Hilton, at a cost of £100.53 on March 6 2004.

Receipts filed with the fees office show that the account with the company was organised by Mr Martin's office in the House of Commons.

Mr Martin's details also show that he claimed nearly £290 for a two-night stay in April 2006 at the Culloden Hall Estate and Spa, one of the finest 5-star hotels in Northern Ireland. The Culloden's website describes the hotel, on the wooded slopes of the Holywood Hills overlooking Belfast Lough as "built for a bishop... fit for a king".

Mr Martin's expenses claims as the MP for Glasgow North East also show he claimed for the near-full food allowance on his second home during the summer holidays.

In one year – 2007-08 – he charged £2,200 for his food, including £1,050 in July, August and September 2007, when for the most part MPs are not meant to be claiming on their second home.

The Speaker also charged new "Aristocrat" carpets to the taxpayer, costing £1,834, at his constituency home in Glasgow as well as another £1,490 on the cost of redecorating a room.

Mr Martin left the taxpayer with a Rentokil bill for nearly £3,000 and charged for a £285 rug, the claims show. He also claimed £200 for employing someone to tidy his garden and £205 for gutter cleaning.

A spokesman for Mr Martin said: "There are certain circumstances that require Mr Martin to be driven.

He does not use government cars which would be more expensive for the infrequency of these occasions."

She said the fees office "permits the use of taxis for travel within the constituency on parliamentary business".

She said the new carpet was permitted by Commons' authorities. The stay in the hotel had been approved under Commons rules.


Profile: Michael Martin

Job: Speaker of the House of Commons

Salary: £138,724

Total second home claims

2004-05: £6,106

2005-06: £9,551

2006-07: £17,346

2007-08: £11,750

The Speaker should have put a stop to this, not indulged in it .

You can be sure that the situation is out of control when the professor of government at Oxford University suggests, as he did this week, that it is time for the Speaker to be handed a revolver and a bottle of whisky.

Tempting though it is to share Vernon Bogdanor's view of a Luger and a litre of Laphroaig as solutions to the Commons crisis, one fears that teetotaller Michael Martin would take the Scotch, bang it up on expenses, and then shoot all messengers (whistleblowers, journalists and his critics in the House).

For if there is one figure to emerge from this extraordinary scandal as an exemplar of what went wrong, it must be the MP for Glasgow North East. It is not just that he has been helping himself to other people's money; he is hardly alone in that. No, what identifies Mr Martin as the arch villain is his failure to have used a unique and privileged position to lift the lid on parliamentary excesses.

As a Scot, the Speaker will not need me to remind him that this year is the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns's birth. While he and his wife are perusing the latest John Lewis catalogue, or selecting a limousine for shopping trips on the taxpayer's account, they would do well to reflect on the great man's words in To A Louse: "Oh wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An foolish notion."

Mr Martin, surely, cannot see himself as others see him. Hang on a minute – what am I writing? – of course he can. He just thinks, "stuff them all". Or, as irritants are told in Glesca patter, "away an bile yer heid".

Like King Farouk, Fulgencio Batista and President Mobutu, whose thirst for la dolce vita was slaked by the sweet wine of someone else's cash, it seems that Mr Martin regards what's yours as his, by right – and he doesn't care who knows it.

He is chief of staff for the Fill Yer Boots faction inside Westminster, confirming Spike Milligan's observation that money can't buy you friends, but it does get you "a better class of enemy".

There are so many sideshows to the Expenses Circus that it's easy to miss some of the more entertaining performances. My favourite was Tuesday's tour of the broadcasting studios by Lord Foulkes, self-appointed apologist for Mr Martin. It was first-class pantomime.

Lord Foulkes adopts a gruff, unpleasant manner in an attempt to pass himself off as a Scottish hard nut. He is, in fact, nothing of the sort. Educated at an all boys English public school, Haberdashers' Aske's, and Edinburgh University, he wouldn't last two minutes on a busy night in Sauchiehall Street, where uppity outsiders are asked: "Diz yoor mammy know yer oot?"

Lord Foulkes began with the Today programme, shouting down Liberal Democrat Norman Baker, before switching chairs to rough up female presenters on BBC and Sky news channels. His rantings were hilarious, accusing the media of "undermining democracy" and "stirring it up" for having the cheek to interview Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP who is proposing an early day motion of no-confidence in the Speaker.

MPs on all sides of the House have had their hands in the electorate's till, yet it's the press that has damaged confidence in the system. What a joker! With Lord Foulkes sitting also as a Labour member in the Holyrood parliament, one begins to appreciate why the Scottish National Party is doing so well.

Last month, under a headline "Expenses critics are a wee bit rich", Lord Foulkes wrote in the Edinburgh Evening News that "no newspaper has explained the [expenses] situation properly and MPs seem to be suffering from collective fright". The Daily Telegraph has put that right, and we now understand why so many members appeared terrified by transparency.

Hitherto, reports of mortgage wrongdoing were usually linked to Peter Mandelson, who omitted to say on his application form that he had secretly borrowed money from Geoffrey Robinson, another Labour MP. But at least Lord Mandelson had the decency to have a mortgage.

This cannot be said of Elliot Morley, Labour's former agriculture minister, who collected expenses of more than £16,000 for a mortgage that did not exist. This, he claims, was a "mistake". From where the rest of us sit, it looks like something else. No wonder he has been suspended from the party. By comparison, the Prince of Darkness seems like a model of rectitude.

Where is Tony Blair when the party needs him? Do you recall his blethering about Labour's duty to be "purer than pure"? Boy, I bet his personal claims would make quite a show. They will never be seen, however, because all the receipts were shredded just before he left Downing Street.

A fresh lexicon is being developed to describe these activities. Money was "misspent" and funds were "misclaimed". Phrases such as "accounting oversight" and "clerical slip-up" have been given a coat of gloss.

Andrew Mackay, the Tory MP for Bracknell, was at it yesterday. He resigned as an aide to David Cameron after making "an error of judgment" on his claims for interest payments. According to their declarations to the Fees Office, he and his wife, Julie Kirkbride, Tory MP for Bromsgrove, had no main home, but kept two second homes and pocketed public funds to pay for both. Whoops-a-daisy!

We had a hint of what was really going on behind the scenes when Sir Alistair Graham, the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, left office in 2007 with the parting shot: "My greatest regret has been the apparent failure of government to place high ethical standards at the heart of its thinking and most importantly its behaviour." How right he was.

It has been a shocking week. Yet, something good is beginning to emerge. It is no longer credible for trough-snuffling MPs to bleat that "the system isn't working". David Cameron demonstrated that he understands this with an impressive display of authority. By naming and shaming MPs of his own party, he began the fightback against officially sanctioned corruption.

In contrast, Gordon Brown is still trying to duck and dive, hoping to deflect blame from Number 10, while dodging responsibility for all the shenanigans during 12 years of his stewardship. At the next election, I suspect, he will discover the meaning of what Mr Blair told a Labour conference at Blackpool in 1994: "Leaders lead, but in the end the people govern."

As for Michael Martin, the worst-ever Speaker, my friends in Glasgow have a saying: "Pick yer windae, yer leavin!"

Speaker Cornered

No one can push Michael Martin, so he should jump .

The Speaker of the House of Commons has manoeuvred himself into an untenable position. He stands accused - not directly, but effectively - of misleading the public about taxi bills incurred by his wife and charged to the taxpayer; of using Air Miles acquired on official business to buy air tickets for his family; and of claiming expenses to help to cover the cost of a home in Glasgow on which he does not have a mortgage. At the same time it has fallen to the Speaker to order a review of alleged abuses of Westminster's complex and ill-defined expenses system by his fellow MPs. His approach has been widely and rightly criticised as lacking both urgency and independence. In these circumstances it is not just difficult to see how Michael Martin can honourably retain his post. It is impossible.

Last month revelations about the employment of family members at public expense by the Conservative MP Derek Conway threw into stark relief a hitherto inconclusive debate about MPs' earnings, allowances and expenses. Until then, two factors had deprived the debate of clarity or progress. First was the not unreasonable argument that MPs are underpaid relative to other professionals working long hours in stressful occupations in one of the world's most expensive cities. Generous allowances for travel and maintaining constituency as well as London homes were viewed not just as necessary for backbenchers to fulfil public roles but also as de facto top-ups on their £61,000 basic salary. Secondly, MPs had little interest in reforming a system with so much flexibility and so little oversight.

The Conway affair should have jolted the House of Commons out of such complacency.

As it happens, the Standards and Privileges Committee has moved fast under Sir George Young to review MPs' expenses. But Mr Martin's preference was for it to move more slowly, and it was he who ensured that MPs would be policing themselves rather than submitting to outside scrutiny. Until the weekend it was possible to rationalise the Speaker's response in terms of his style. But Mike Granatt, his former spokesman, has now resigned in what appears to be genuine anger at having been misled by the Speaker's staff.

Mr Granatt had told The Times that the Speaker's wife's £4,280 taxi bill was all for official trips in official company. According to Mr Granatt, that company turns out to have been her cleaner, who is also a close friend, and the trips were largely personal. The Speaker is so far the subject of allegations only, but he is already guilty of giving the impression that his approach to reforming MPs' expenses has been guided as much by his own interests as by those of taxpayers.

It is entirely appropriate for Parliament to consider raising backbenchers' basic pay. As we have argued before, this would reduce their dependence on less than transparent expense claims, and ease the financial disincentive that dissuades too many high-flyers in other professions from entering public life. But Mr Martin is no backbencher. He earns £137,000 a year and lives in grace-and-favour splendour in the Palace of Westminster. Nor is his role merely that of exasperated referee in Commons debates. As chairman of the House of Commons Commission he is responsible for the honest management of British parliamentary democracy, whose reputation is battered enough without a tarnished Speaker. There is no formal mechanism for MPs to remove him, and he has said he will not yield to pressure. It is time for him to change his mind.

Members not honourable enough

It can't be that the only people immune from watchful regulation are those who represent us.

I used to like visiting the Palace of Westminster. It brought back fond memories of British Constitution O level. I liked the sense of national centrality, complacent history, clubbable purpose. I liked the civility of officials and the way the police on the door - like those who guard Buckingham Palace - somehow exude a faint holiday air. I even quite liked the dreadful cod-medieval hatchments and the outbreaks of rod-banging and cries of I-spy-strangers.

Not any more. There is a sense that gilded panelling is camouflage for grubbiness. Parliament hangs on to words about itself - Honourable and learned... honourable and gallant - like a comedy trollop wailing “I'm a good girl, I am”. Most importantly of all, there is an insulting dislocation between the self-regulated “honour” of MPs and the mistrust they load on the rest of us.

Listening to John Spellar's defence of Speaker Martin was a queasy business. All he could do - as chair of the committee on expenses - was to trumpet that there is nothing to worry about, MPs work hard, there is “not one shred of evidence” that anybody claims on a non-existent mortgage or sucks up allowances for money they haven't spent. He added that those who worried about the Speaker's wife's taxi bill are “snobs”, while getting pretty snobby himself about journalists.

Certainly the Conway affair was recognised and - up to a point - punished (no fraud charges yet, I note). But it shone a dreary light on to the routine licence permitted to MPs. And given the increasing institutional suspiciousness the rest of us suffer, it demonstrated that the last people in the country to be trusted by MPs are MPs themselves.

If your child, nephew, friend or sister-in-law wants work experience (even unpaid) at the BBC these days, for instance, there is no way an insider can fix it. It is, rightly, centralised in the name of fairness and diversity. Private recruiters are hedged in by anti-discrimination laws. Yet MPs and ministers, their honourable white noses in the air, may on a whim employ not only a spouse but children, lovers, friends and in-laws. There is a reasonable case for the spouse if constituencies are distant; for the rest there is no excuse. These are public jobs on public money, privileges carrying marketable CV cachet. Derek Conway's problem was that his son wasn't doing much; but even if he was, it would stink.

Sir Christopher Kelly has expressed a need to look again at the family rule, and there seems to be a move towards tighter oversight of expenses. Good. Next we need action on former ministers who cash in with private sector sinecures. Gordon Brown, in opposition, spoke scornfully of the Tories' “revolving door from Cabinet to boardroom”. But 28 Labour ministers have passed through it, grinning. Patricia Hewitt is tied up with private medical outfits; David Blunkett is adviser to an ID card bidder. As for Tony Yo-Blair making a US fortune after the misery that his transatlantic sycophancy wrought on British troops and tranquillity, words fail me.

Those who represent us should live on the same planet and not squeal at reform. For everything has changed, and they did it. Consider: there was a time when professionals in Britain enjoyed a high degree of collegiate self-regulation and trust. The assumption was that doctors, teachers, military and police knew their jobs. Today they are subject to targets, league tables and mistrustful demands for statistics. The past was not perfect, but a sledgehammer of regulation has been set on a nut.

Everywhere a culture of mandatory paperwork and back-covering wastes time and erodes goodwill. A lovely example from the NHS: chap with serious but intermittent condition goes to see eminent consultant; symptoms have abated so consultant says: “OK, come straight to me next time it happens and I can do tests.” NHS clipboard-woman says: “Are you signing this patient off or making a future appointment?” “Neither,” says the doctor patiently. “I need to see him when the condition is active.” Row ensues between clipboard woman and doctor, she being unable to grasp the organic, unpredictable nature of medicine and wanting only to tick a box.

Everyone, especially in public service, has similar examples of suspicious, mechanistic monitoring; nursery teachers must list each “skill” their charges acquire and you can't take children on a nature walk without filing a “risk assessment”. And note that if you are genuinely “honourable” and give your time free as a museum trustee or parish councillor, you must fill in intrusive forms about your connections and finances on the assumption that given a chance everyone's on the fiddle. And just you try claiming home-as-office expenses anywhere like those Michael Martin rakes in: the Revenue will be down your throat.

Meanwhile MPs - reasonably paid and holding gilded pension rights - rack up dubious expenses and employ their families on public money. It has the same effect as when John Prescott went unpunished after a squalid affair with a subordinate, on office premises. In the real world, it could have been “gross misconduct” and the sack. Yet he was part of a government whose laws have made the workplace ever primmer: good people lose jobs or have their businesses crippled on mere assertion that they glanced at a leg or used an inappropriate word.

It cannot be that the only people immune from watchful regulation are those who decree it. From lechery to nepotism, from creative expenses to the use of public prestige to rake in directorships, you can't abolish trust in other professionals and still expect it yourself. Honour isn't working.

Commons Speaker Michael Martin speeds up review into MPs' expenses?

Michael Martin says his review into Commons expenses will be complete by July

The embattled Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, bowed to widespread criticism today and promised that a review into MPs' expenses would be completed before this summer's parliamentary recess.

In what it labelled a "special report", the Members Estimate Committee also announced that the £250 limit for MPs submitting expenses claims without a receipt is to be cut from the start of the new financial year, even before the review is finished. Mr Martin ordered the review last month after the disclosure that the Tory MP Derek Conway used a Commons staff allowance to pay his son £12,000 a year plus large bonuses for "all but invisible" research while he was a full-time university student. Dozens of other MPs also employ family members at the taxpayers' expense.

But the committee had not been expected to complete its review until the autumn, prompting the accusation that the Speaker was trying to bury the issue. The fact that Mr Martin chairs the committee alongside major party grandees such as Harriet Harman and Theresa May also failed to impress Commons modernisers.

Meanwhile, Mr Martin has himself come under pressure over his own travel expenses and those of his wife, Mary Martin, an issue which prompted his spokesman's resignation at the weekend. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has been asked to investigate whether more than £4,000 spent on taxis for Mrs Martin’s shopping trips amounted to an inappropriate use of public money

In defiant remarks in the Commons yesterday, Mr Martin made clear that he would not be forced out of his office by hostile media coverage, pointedly reminding MPs that they alone had the power to force him out.

But today's statement by the Members Estimate Committee signalled an abrupt change of tack.

The committee said that it had decided to reduce the £250 expenses threshold as a "first step" towards the reform of parliamentary expenses. The new limit has yet to be agreed but it is expected that there will be a significant cut.

It added: “We will complete a report in time for debate in the House in July. All decisions will be made by the House itself."

The committee said that its first priority was to consider “radical options” for restructuring the system of pay and allowances. “We are conscious of the need to establish a structure which will endure and will rebuild confidence,” it said.

The committee will then go on to consider how to put in place a “robust and transparent process” for claiming and auditing allowances. It has instructed the Commons Department of Resources to draw up a series of options for change in consultation by the Whitehall spending watchdog, the National Audit Office.

The committee said that it would be drawing on the practices from other organisations in the UK and from other parliaments elsewhere, while seeking briefings from the NAO, HM Revenue and Customs, the Audit Commission and private accountancy firms.

“These will help identify a new system which is workable, in line with practice elsewhere and able to command public respect,” the report said.

Philip Webster, Political Editor of The Times, said that Mr Martin had clearly been stung by the criticism over the weekend.

He said: "One of the big problems has been that the House felt his own inquiry, which was due to report in the autumn, was looking very laggardly. It sounded like he was trying to kick it into the long grass.

"This is an attempt to say, 'We are going to be a serious committee. Don't think we're going to hush it all up.' It's very much driven by the Speaker and the criticisms of him."

Webster said that if Mr Martin can complete the review by July then that would also allow him to resign with his dignity intact when Parliament resumes: "He doesn't want to go when people are calling for his head; nor do MPs want him to. If he went in the autumn, the House could be given the chance to elect a new Speaker before the next election."