THE cost of MPs’ expenses, pay and staff has jumped by more than 50 per cent in the past five years to £130 million after MPs changed the rules for hiring employees and buying computers.

The size of the Members’ Estimate, which MPs vote themselves to pay their salaries, allowances and staff costs, was £86 million in 1998-99, two years before the new rules took effect. Details of how much each MP claimed in expenses over the past three years are published for the first time by the Commons today, before the Freedom of Information Act, which takes effect in January. The Lords is doing the same for peers’ allowances.

In an interview with The Times, Sir Archy Kirkwood, the Liberal Democrat MP who is spokesman for the House of Commons Commission, admitted that the move is unpopular with colleagues, many of whom are “nervous”. He urged MPs to be “robust” in defending their right to do their job as they thought fit, saying the principle of parliamentary privilege was at stake. He was confident, he said, that there was not systematic abuse by MPs.

“I celebrate the opportunity for people to do this job differently. And if people don’t like it then their electorate can hoy them out: not commissioners, not clerks, not accountants. And so my colleagues need to be robust about defending how they do the job they do, because it is my hunch that there is no systematic abuse of these allowances whatsoever, that we can detect.”

He appealed for perspective, saying that the Members’ Estimate was the equivalent of 3p for every £100 of public money voted by Parliament. The rises in 2001 were deliberate, to modernise terms for employing MPs’ staff and giving them computers, he said. Although the “Green Book” of Commons rules states MPs must supply receipts for claims above £250, Sir Archy admitted that this cannot be enforced with a staff of about 40 in the Commons finance and administration department. “There has always been self-certification. It is true to say that we don’t have a process that goes behind a Member’s signature,” he said.

He was dismissive of the notion of “Inspector Knacker of the Yard following me round to make sure I wasn’t purporting to buy a dear ticket and buying a cheap ticket and pocketing the difference”. The answer, he said, lay in “upstream education” for new MPs.

Sir Archy defended the right of MPs to employ their spouses or family — he employs his wife as his secretary. MPs must be unconstrained in fulfilling their duties, provided they acted within the rules, he said. “She protects my back and I trust her with my political life in a way that I wouldn’t do other people.” Sir Archy said. “Otherwise you are constraining the independence of individual MPs and that is something that I will die in a ditch to defend.”

He admitted embarrassment that MPs had overruled their independent pay review body to increase the reimbursement of housing costs, the Additional Costs Allowance, in 2001. “I think in retrospect it was difficult to defend,” he said.

Longer-serving MPs can use this allowance to buy themselves a house or flat at public expense — most MPs chose interest-only mortgages for this reason, and pay smaller capital repayment costs themselves.

Sir Archy called this “an unintended consequence” and said that the cost to the tax-payer would probably be the same if MPs rented accommodation or stayed in hotels. “If you took full advantage of the rule, I think you would by definition have a capital asset. That was not foreseen,” he said. “It is a serendipitous effect of a long-standing rule that people have been complying with, they are absolutely within the rules.”

He admitted, too, that a new allowance for office expenses can help incumbent MPs to defend their seats, a complaint among candidates fighting marginal constituencies, with annual reports, news letters or newspaper advertisements. But MPs had a right to explain their work to constituents.

“It is true that some of these annual reports that go out are potentially documents of self-promotion and it is a very fine dividing line between self-promotion and information.”

Sir Archy said that his “nightmare” was that candidates would use expenses figures to try and unseat MPs. “That way lies complete madness. We are arguing about 3p in every £100,” he said. “If the political debate is going to get into a loop arguing about if Michael Howard buys his fridge in Selfridges or John Lewis, then I am out.”

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