How Cameron can expose the long tail of waste

If our MPs keep paying back the expenses they claimed at the current rate we’ll have the national debt down in no time. What strikes me about ex-Labour chairman Ian McCartney is that even the prospect of having his claims made public led him to reach for his cheque book and refund £16,000 of our money that he’d helped himself to – on the likes of champagne flutes and decorating. He wrote a hilarious letter to the Fees Office last July. “In the light of reforms debated and implemented by a resolution of the House on July 3, 2008 I have been looking at my claims to ensure that I am satisfied in their accuracy,” he said. Except that was a lie, because he did know they were, as he puts it, “accurate and allowable and was deemed as such by your department at the time.” But the British public would see this as thievery.