Suspending Belief


I received a very helpful reply to my recent letter to IPSA (Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority)  about the payment of MPs' salaries and expenses - while they're off swanning about in the Australian jungle somewhere.

See post dated 22 November 2012 - 'Money For Old Rope'.

The answer is that IPSA is only the administering body when it comes to the MPs' payroll - any decision or instruction to cease payments to an individual 'honourable' member - must come direct from the House of Commons.

In other words MPs just make up the rules to suit themselves - and MPs like 'Mad Nad' Dorries continue to be paid even while suspended - unless the House of Commons instructs otherwise.

Which I imagine would take a vote on the floor of the House of Commons - or a decision from the Speaker of the House that a member should be suspended without pay.

What puzzles me is how an MP can be suspended with pay - if they are clearly unable to do their job?

And in the case of Nadine Dorries that particular point was clearly unarguable - though we may now hear more now that the MP for Mid-Bedfordshire is back in the country.

I heard a Labour MP on the TV the other day gleefully sticking the boot into Nadine Dorries and the Conservative Party - over the 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here' debacle.

At one level I have no problem with heaping derision on this particular MP - but what I would like to know from the Peoples' Party is:

'How can Labour make fun of Nadine Dorries and the Tory Party while they turn a blind eye to Gordon Brown's absence abroad for 70 days a year - at the Abu Dhabi Campus of the New York University.

Now that really is the politics of the madhouse - if you ask me.

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