Backlash over MPs' expenses changes
Updated on 28 October 2009
Rebellion stirs over proposed new rules for MPs to stop them buying second homes and employing their families. Rags Martel reports.
MPs could be banned from employing relatives and face new restrictions on second home allowances under new rules to be outlined next week.
Sir Christopher Kelly, the man conducting an independent review into MPs' expenses, is expected to recommend that no MP with a constituency within an hour's train ride of Westminster should be eligibile for a second home allowance, and that those who are should be forced to rent, rather than buy, a property.
As has previously been reported, he was also said to be calling for a ban on MPs employing members of their families paid for out of public funds.
The BBC said he was advising his reforms should be phased in over five years in order to enable sitting MPs to adjust to the new arrangements, although some backbenchers warned that there could still be resistance.
Sir Christopher, who is due to publish his report on 4 November, was drafted in by Gordon Brown to bring forward proposals for reform of the system in the wake of the expenses scandal earlier this year.
Suzy Gale, the wife and PA of the MP Roger Gale, told Channel 4 News at Noon: "Put me in front of a panel, interview me with others and I still bet you I would get the job.
"My view has always been that only one family member should be employed at a time. Yes, people have taken the mickey and they have abused the system. It just gives the rest of us a bad name.
"What I want to be able to do is to continue the job I've now done for nearly 27 years, along with many other people who work in the House for a member they are related to. They work incredibly hard; we do a good job on the whole.
"We're there to serve the member of parliament's constituents, and I just want to be allowed to go on doing it."
