Member News
MPs are to be banned from claiming for their mortgages on expenses under proposed reforms to be unveiled next week to clean up Parliament.
According to reports, Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the committee on standards in public life, will recommend MPs will have rent property if they require a second home.
The report is due to be published on 4 November and is expected to cause uproar amongst MPs and those family members that work for MPs in either Westminster or the constituencies.
Details of the recommendations emerged yesterday after Kelly set out his proposals to the party leaders.
Proposed measures are said to include a call for a cut in the number of MPs eligible to claim for the second homes allowances.
At present only central London MPs are unable to claim for a second home, but under new proposals any MP with a constituency within "reasonable commuting distance" of Westminster will have to pay their own accommodation costs.
As previously reported, Kelly is also to be calling for a ban on MPs employing spouses and other members of their families to work for them.
Roger Gale the Conservative MP for North Thanet, said that the chair of the committee on standards in public life did not know the hours MPs worked or what kind of job they did.
He repeated calls for the report to be published now it had been leaked, as he was unable to comment not knowing the full recommendations.
Gale told BBC Breakfast the idea was "absolutely ludicrous" that MPs living an hour's train ride from London will not be allowed to have a base in London.
However, Labour MP John Mann, who had been one of the key figures calling for reform, said that MPs cannot afford to refuse the changes, however much they disapprove of them.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd