Introduction

As the Wardman Wire contribution to efforts to move forward the current debate about MPs and their expenses, terms and conditions, and the transparency and reputation of politics in general, we are running an article series from a wide range of viewpoints on the whole topic.

If there is a single aim, it is to bring some light in alongside the heat. We want to generate a lot of ideas for ways ahead from a lot of different viewpoints and political positions. You can find the introduction to the series, and brief for the authors, here. I’m happy to keep it running while there are people wanting to express a substantive view.

Tim Ireland: Audits and Timekeeping - an example

This contribution is by Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads, who suggests that MPs draw on experience from the world outside the Westminster bubble.

Random audits

Rather than subjecting all MPs who employ friends/family to stringent audits, why not have a random audit system in place in addition to a complaint-triggered system? After all, a lot is at stake and no sensible person is likely to risk the odds, even if they’re as long as 646-1.

This same audit team can also respond to complaints/suspicions reported to the relevant overseeing authority.

Hopefully, the result will be warier MPs, time/capacity for more thorough audits, and less burden on the taxpayer.

Timesheets

Sure, timesheets could be on bits of paper, but in several jobs over the past decade I’ve been compelled to account for my time via electronic timesheets. The cleverest system allowed you to log on and simply click a button each time you started on one task or another, and then ‘clock off’ when you had finished that task.

This could be applied to research in the follow manner:

1. When the researcher is about to read one paper/book/website or another, he/she simply enters the relevant title/URL, ‘clocks on’ and begins reading.
2. When they’re done, they clock off.
3. This would generate not only a reliable guide to the amount of time spent (that would be considerably difficult to retro-moderate convincingly) and also generate a bibliography for the resulting report. (There is going to be one, right?)
4. The system can allow for a ‘general’ option if, for example, the research material is made of many short items. It can also have a facility that allows for time reporting after-the-fact on research done off-site (at the British Newspaper Library, for example) or when the system is down.

By now you also have a system that - in theory - can issue alerts to the relevant overseeing authority if, just for example, there are enough ‘general’ and ‘after-the-fact’ entries to arouse suspicion.

I have written a hypothetical example of how such records could help in practice below.

A Hypothetical Example of Malpractice

1. A friend of an MP - a former executive - finds themselves unexpectedly unemployed.
2. There are bills and mortgages to pay, and the MP adds their friend to the payroll as an “administrator” - so they may continue to live in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.
3. In the meantime, the friend spends the majority of their time searching for a new position.
4. The bill for this research comes to about £8000, which I estimate to be roughly 20+ whole days of work.
5. Because the friend is far too busy watching daytime TV, scanning the want-ads and spending taxpayers’ money to do any actual research, he or she will no doubt generate many entries of a ‘general’ variety and/or insert more detailed data in an ‘after-the-fact’ fashion, thus triggering the first level of an audit.
6. During an initial interview stage, it is sure to come to light that the friend jumped from a real job to a pretend one (or at the very least a soft one) and from that point the relevant MP’s days are numbered… especially if they can’t produce a single resulting report of sufficient weight to confirm a full 20+ days of research.

Wrapping Up

This is one example of how particular tools may be used to improve transparency in Parliament; undoubtedly there are many more.

Tags: tim ireland, bloggerheads, matt wardman, rules for the house, audit, random audit, timesheet, MP transparency, additional costs allowance, aca, MP salary, parliamentary pay pantomime, house rules for MPs[tags]tim ireland, bloggerheads, matt wardman, rules for the house, audit, random audit, timesheet, MP transparency, additional costs allowance, aca, MP salary, parliamentary pay pantomime, house rules for MPs[/tags]