The recent work the All Party Parliamentary Group on Insurance & Financial Services has done on referral fees, staged accidents and whiplash claims has helped attract several new members, boosting the total who subscribe to the group to 55 across both Houses.

With Steve McCabe (Lab, Birmingham Selly Oak) and Margaret Ritchie (SDLP, South Down) now included in the membership the group is almost back to its pre-2010 General Election size and scope.

For those interested in the breakdown of membership it pans out thus:

By House
29 MPs
26 Peers

By party
24 Conservative
22 Labour
6 Liberal Democrat
2 Social Democratic and Labour Party
1 Independent

Complete membership list APPGmembersNov11.pdf
 

So, the first part of the Boundary Commission's proposals for reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600 is out and the bun fight has started. The squealing and special pleading is all too predictable and will lead to some bitter rows within all three major parties. As I have pointed out before, alot of this will be so much hypocritical nonsense.

Let's take a step back and remind ourselves why a review like this is necessary.

Too many MPs
Since the university seats were abolished after the Second World War the number of MPs has crept up from 625 to where it is now at 650. It was briefly higher for the 1997 and 2001 General Elections when it peaked at 659 but a few seats were trimmed in the post-devolution boundary review before the 2005 election. This was too timid a nod towards the implications of devolution for the role of the Westminster Parliament.

As the number of MPs has risen we have seen an enormous transfer of powers away from Westminster, firstly to Europe and now to the three devolved parliaments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We simply do not need as many Westminster MPs as we once did. I accept that the reduction from 600 to 650 seems abit arbitrary and would be easier to justify had a proper study been carried out to ascertain what type of Parliament we need as we move into the second and third decades of the 21st century but it is a good start.

Silly sized constituencies
In addition, there is the problem of too big a spread in the sizes of constituencies which seems counter-intuitive most of the time with urban seats in tight geographical areas having fewer voters than more rural seats that already cover large regions, often embracing dozens of small towns and villages. I don't really care whether you think this favours Labour or the Tories - it doesn't make much sense.

Having looked through the Boundary Commission proposals last night I feel it has done a very good job. I am sure there are a few proposals that will need looking at very hard but, overall, it looks very sound. It even solved the 'Devonwall' problem at neatly as could be hoped with the proposed Bude and Bideford constituency. Most of the noise from displaced MPs will amount to little more than a protection of their own interests but the collective impact of the distress this much needed change will cause is that it might unnerve the government and persuade it to postone the review until after the next General Election. I hope not.

 

The role and the very existence of All Party Groups is back in the headlines with today's report in The Guardian on the links - disclosed and undisclosed - between many groups and lobbying firms, trade associations and commercial interests. This story isn't new - The Times did a very similar exposé in January 2006.

The long list of rejected expenses claims from MPs that was published today by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) makes fascinating reading. It also provoked me to feel some sympathy for MPs trying to do a decent job and made me wonder at the huge cost of administering this new system.

I think that MPs from all parties were being very mild in their criticism of IPSA , its huge bureaucracy and outrageous costs when they debated the new expenses system this morning. It was when I saw that a claim for a few pounds for buying lunch for an intern was rejected that I began to sit up and wonder whether the pendulum hadn't swung a long way too far after the scandal-ridden farce that went on in previous Parliaments. I wondered how I would feel if such a claim was rejected - pretty cross is the answer. There are plenty of other claims which have been rejected which in most private businesses would have been paid. There are probably many more that would never had been submitted if the rules (which I have tried reading on IPSA's wesbite) were clearer.

It is all too easy to say that MPs have brought this on themselves, a rather flimsy argument that doesn't really acknowledge that 100s of new MPs were elected last May and cannot be blamed for the appalling abuses of the previous system. It also glosses over the very serious point that Sir George Young, Leader of the House, made this morning about the new system driving people of modest means away from Parliament. I am not attempting to justify the threadbare old system, even less some of those who seriously and deliberately abused it but it does look as if we have gone too far the other way.

Not only do the rules need looking at but the cost of the system to administer them does too. As I understand it, IPSA costs over £6m a year to run an expenses system for 650 MPs and about 1500 Peers. I think most boards of directors in the private sector would be beating the table with rage if they found they were saddled with an expenses system that cost that much to run for that many staff. There has to be a better way that is fairer, more efficient and alot cheaper.

• Apologies for the longer than usual gap between posts. This is a combination of additional responsibilities at Incisive Media (for our TV studios) and exasperation at the number of spam comments that suddenly hit this blog like a tidal wave: 245 on one Saturday afternoon alone! 

The latest newsletter keeping key executives and public affairs professionals up-to-date with the activities of the david.worsfold@incisivemedia.com