Expenses Readers of my blog elsewhere on this site will realise that the main thing in my life in recent weeks has been the birth of our first child, Conor.

I wanted in this note to set out what the main parliamentary expenses are for and what I claim.

There are various allowances an MP has access to often grouped under the title of “expenses”.

Firstly, there is something called the Incidental Expenses Provision.  This, in plain terms, is an office costs allowance.  It is used to pay for things like office rent and rates, phone bills, rent for photocopiers, stationery supplies and so on.  The bulk of this allowance for me goes to pay for the constituency office in Crescent House, Broad St, Bilston, though some will be used for headed paper etc  for use in the House of Commons office.  Last year this allowance was worth £22,193, of which I claimed £18,959.  The CLP shares some of the costs of the office in terms of rent and rates under an agreement reached with the House of Commons.  This allows the office to be used for political purposes as well as being the MP’s office.

Secondly, there is the allowance for staff salaries and the accompanying employer’s national insurance contributions.  My own view is it is a little odd to class this as MPs’ expenses given it goes to staff and not the MP.  However that is how it is classed.  I use this allowance to pay the salaries of the staff who work for me in my Parliamentary Office in the House of Commons and in the Constituency Office in Bilston. 

Those staff are:

Matt Cooke (based in the Commons)

Sadia Ghani

Joanna Watson

Dan Watson

Paul Sanders (all based in Bilston).

Of these staff, Sadia Ghani who joined the office in April of this year is full time and the others work between one and four days per week.  None of the staff are related to me.  Last year I spent £75,634.31 on staff pay and employer’s national insurance contributions.

The third allowance is the Additional Costs Allowance (ACA).  This is the allowance to pay for a second home and has been at the heart of the recent controversy.  It is this allowance which the public are most concerned about and it is the various claims on this allowance which have caused the most outrage in recent weeks.

Before I became the MP for Wolverhampton South East my main home was in London.  I already had a flat there which was of course paid for out of my normal salary.  When I became an MP I therefore designated Wolverhampton as my second home for which I used the ACA.  During my first year in the constituency I claimed the costs of a house I rented in Elizabeth Avenue in Goldthorn Park.  Costs covered rent, water rates, utility bills, food etc.  The total I claimed in 2005-06 was £15,206 from an allowable allowance of £21,634.

In 2006 I bought my current home in the constituency.  I paid the deposit myself but have an interest only mortgage on the property which is funded from the ACA.  During the first year I also claimed against the ACA for furniture, electrical goods and for initial work done on moving into a newly built house.  In 2006/07, because of that move into the new house and the number of one off expenditure claims involved, I used the full allowance of £22,110.  However since then my claims have fallen significantly.

In 2007/8 I claimed for mortgage interest (though not capital), council tax, utility bills, food etc.  My total ACA claim for this year was £15,269 out of a potential total of £23,083.

In 2008/9 I claimed £15,061 out of a potential total of £24,006 (around 63% of the allowance).  Again this covered mortgage interest, council tax, utility bills, food etc.

Other costs for MPs are also covered such as postage and travel between the constituency and Westminster, though so far attention has focussed mainly on the Additional Costs Allowance for second homes.  Further details of claims for me and other MPs are available at www.parliament.uk.

So what now?  It is clear that this system has lost public confidence and needs changed.  Some of the claims made have been well beyond what the public would accept and beyond what can be argued the system is for.

For decades there has been a system of allowing MPs to cover the costs of staying in two places.  Given parliament’s hours, this is necessary and I believe most members of the public would accept that.  But there is an urgent need to change the system to restore public confidence so that the public think the system is fair and not open to abuse.  If we don’t do that, MPs will not be listened to on other issues.  The departure of the Speaker is not enough.  We need a system which the public believes gives MPs fair cover for the cost of living and working in two places, but does not allow the kind of thing which has been published in recent weeks.

Although controversy has so far been mainly devoted to the ACA (second homes allowance) I believe it is likely to spread to the other allowances and so this issue will probably be very prominent in the public domain for some time.