Procedure and House Affairs committee  On the first one, the overall cost including expenses is still slightly below what the House of Commons used to cost. It's very hard for us to make a meaningful comparison between ourselves and the House of Commons administration, because of course they were part of a bigger organization, and so a lot of their overheads wouldn't have been as clear, because they would be in the wider organization.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, we have the power to do that now. We've been consulting about that. We've already determined MP's salaries. These are backbench MPs, by the way, not government ministers' salaries. We said for the current year and the next year that they should get a 1% pay increase, which is the same as the rest of the public sector.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, travel is another one of the budgets. That's not capped, because obviously an MP from Scotland—the other side of the country—and an MP from near to London are going to have very different travel expenses. They are done on the basis of an uncapped budget.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We've consulted in all sorts of ways. We do it in the traditional way, with a consultation paper inviting responses; we have an online survey; we've done quite a lot of opinion polling. Last year we conducted a number of citizens' juries, which I know is something that has happened in Canada quite often, whereby you can really get to understand what the public are thinking, if you're with them for three to four hours getting more information.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  They're all appointed by open competition, but what the legislation requires is that we should have a High Court Judge, an auditor, and an ex-MP. It is not specified what the chairman's background should be, and it's not specified what the background of the other board members should be.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  What discretionary spending is available? Well, we set budgets in a number of areas—staffing, office budget, accommodation, residential accommodation—and within those budgets' limits, as long as it's for parliamentary purposes, it's up to the MP what they claim. In that sense, they have a good degree of discretion about how they use their budgets.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, we do. They are published on our website.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm trying to think, but not a real “hands up because we can't decide this”. People work hard to find consensus. We've had votes in the past but not this time around.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We have a set of rules that govern all MP's expense claims, and we consult on those rules. When they started we had extensive consultation, and we review them every year. As an independent body we then set them, and that's it, basically: they are the rules.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We have regular discussions with all the parties, and other political figures. When we consult we always make the effort to discuss matters with them and seek their views. We also have a parliamentary group called the IPSA-MP liaison group with a number of senior MPs, which meets from time to time to discuss issues.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In the first instance, they could ask for IPSA itself to review it. We have an audit team that would review the decision. If they are not satisfied with that, they can go to the compliance officer, who is independent of IPSA. He is appointed by the IPSA board but he operates independently.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The board?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's meant to meet once a month, but it quite often meets more than that. It has one formal board meeting a month, but we have been holding a lot of workshops because of a huge range of issues that we're dealing with at the moment. The board has in recent times been meeting two or three times a month, but that is unusual.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's interesting. At the beginning there was talk of having cameras and so on, but we decided that we didn't think that was going to work. So what we do is to publish those minutes. For example, when we consult we'll always report back on the views of the public and the reasons for our decisions and so on.