List your expenses, Speaker warns MPs
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Your support makes all the difference.MPs have been warned that details of their expenses, worth up to £110,000 a year each, are to be published for the first time. The Speaker, Michael Martin, wrote to all MPs this week, telling them their travel, office expenses and staffing costs would be published at the end of 2004.
Some MPs are privately worried that "a fine-tooth comb" will be applied to their expenses, opening them to criticism that they have not been spending taxpayers' money appropriately.
MPs are entitled to car mileage, and rail or air travel to and from constituencies. They can also claim staffing costs of £61,980 – £72,310 for full-time staff – paid directly by the Commons authorities, and office expenses and incidental expenses of up to £18,234 a year, including the cost of their constituency offices. They have an allowance for additional costs of £19,722 on top of their salaries of about £55,000 a year.
But the Speaker has decided to stop short of itemising claims for allowances after concerns were aired that this could prompt a series of investigations into MPs' spending habits.
Some MPs from Scotland are said to be especially worried because their travel costs may prove far higher than those of other MPs because they live so much further away from Westminster and rail travel is so expensive.
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