Savings in the House
From Judge David Q. Miller
Sir: Peter Oborne (Politics, 25 January) writes of housing allowances wrongly claimed by Michael Trend, MP. Over the years, Members of Parliament have awarded themselves a variety of emoluments: incidental expenses provision, staffing allowance, additional costs allowance, travel expenses, mileage allowance and, as Mr °borne describes it, `eye-poppingly generous pension schemes' and 'lavish accommodation'.
Might I suggest that it is not only these allowances that are excessive but also the number of MPs — 659? The House of Representatives in the USA has merely 435 and the Senate but 100.
With our lives increasingly governed from Brussels, and with a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly, surely 400 Members at Westminster would be ample. Abolish all expenses and allowances, pay them, say. £250,000 per annum and let them claim expenses through the Inland Revenue like everybody else. There would be staff savings in the Fees Office and elsewhere in the Palace of Westminster, and scrutiny by the Inland Revenue would be rather stricter. David Q. Miller
Bultinghope, Hereford
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