The BBC is talking today about MPs expenses after the House of Commons tried to justify not asking for receipts under £250 or allowing £400 for unmonitored food each month.
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While I recognise how tricky this is and understand people's feelings about the need for greater transparency. And I particularly understand that at the moment and with the modern world of information, people want to be able to be sure that the systems for MPs expenses are not open to abuse.
For this reason I think there do need to be some changes. For a start they should reform the system so that they are no longer called expenses, because that causes confusion right from the beginning. That reform should introduce more transparency and monitoring.
But I warn against taking it too far - because I think it undermines our democratic system, and falls into the trap of the fourth estate. And I want to say it clearly here - the attitude of some towards elected politicians is designed to undermine them regardless of purpose - and that is dangerous. We need to stand up to them and, as painful as it may be, display trust in our elected officials, and the office in which they reside and resist the temptation to join the rabble rousing crowds.
This is nothing new, but it used to be Communist agitators, or anarchists or fascists or any number of political persuasions. Because these political factions no longer exist it's not felt that these people have a political agenda that they are pushing - therefore we should listen to them.
Instead - in this modern world the threats are apathy, the instant media and oppressive negative reporting (from citizens and media alike). here's my reasoning:
If everything MPs spend is itemised, the level of scrutiny will be massive, and no newspaper will manage to resist the temptation to comment out of the ordinary. This could be a large restaurant bill, or a hotel charge. It is highly feasible we would start criticising MPs for staying in 5 star hotels or visiting restaurants we deem as "too nice".
But what we won't do is judge that expenditure against what is was supposed to achieve. There will be no attempt to judge the expenditure against its results. That dinner might have been with a company who's about to open a new factory in the MPs constituency worth lots of jobs. The context for expenditure will be removed, and that could establish a very damaging method for judging and monitoring MPs.
Let's not forget we already have a very effective system for judging how effective MPs are - they are called elections.
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