Mapping expenses

Just to flag us this excellent “heat map” of MPs’ expenses over at MSN.  It imposes a constituency-by-constituency colour scheme on the whole UK, so you easily can see which MPs have been claiming the most.  You can even click on a constituency to get a more detailed breakdown of the corresponding expense claims.

Now, I know it’s too simplistic to think that the highest expense claims (in this case, the deeper shades of red on the map) are automatically the “worst” or most dubious.  But I still believe that this kind of feature should be made easily available on the Parliament website.  In the end, transparency and the promise of public scrutiny will be the best ways to prevent more parliamentary scandals of the type we’ve seen recently.  And if that places a burden on even the honest MPs to explain why their part of the map is coloured in red, then it’s something they should bear for the sake of restoring trust in the political system.