David Maddox: The experience of two MSPs who are also MPs reveals a Kafkaesque side to Westminster's new expenses regime

AFTER the displays of glut in recent years, it is hard to feel sympathetic towards MPs and their problems with expenses. After bell towers, moat cleaning, duck houses, wads of cash for food and unspecified expenses – no receipts required – the regular complaints by many MPs, particularly the old guard, leave most people cold.

Certainly there can be little sympathy for their whining about having to produce receipts and actually fill in paperwork – more of a case of welcoming the Palace of Westminster to the real world.

But that is not to say that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), the sackcloth-and-ashes replacement to the pigs' trough, is not equally ridiculous. Nothing sums this up better than Ipsa's treatment of the two MPs who also for a short period happen to be MSPs in Holyrood – Cathy Jamieson and Margaret Curran.

Ipsa has informed these two that they cannot claim travel expenses from one parliament to the other unless they can prove they are doing it on Westminster constituency business.

This means that for them to go to Holyrood they need to travel back to their constituencies of Kilmarnock and Loudoun and Glasgow East respectively, and then get the Scottish Parliament to pay for them to go to Holyrood, instead of going straight from London to Edinburgh.

Ms Jamieson's office, not unreasonably, pointed out to Ipsa that this was a waste of time and money. But then in the Kafka-style rules that appear to be increasing by the day from the watchdog, it was suggested the travel could be paid for if the two MPs were invited by an MSP. This then begged the question, as yet unanswered, whether they should just invite themselves.

But then Ipsa came up with another solution. In discussions with Ms Jamieson's office, it was suggested by Ipsa that she simply purchase an open ticket then worth 280 to travel up, which would mean she could stop by Holyrood on her way back.

Sounds reasonable enough – except when you consider that the return ticket she wanted to buy to Edinburgh was just 108, which meant that Ipsa, the organisation created to save money, is actually recommending a solution that costs more than two and half times as much.

The odd thing is that should either of them wish to visit the Welsh or Northern Irish assemblies, they would have no problem claiming the money as long as it was a fact-finding visit or on some actual business.

It seems Ms Jamieson at least has given up trying to make sense of the whole system and is just paying the smaller price out of her own pocket, especially as both MPs' dual mandate only runs a year, and they will leave Holyrood at the next Scottish elections.

The case does highlight the Byzantine nature of the new system, which is why so many MPs have become so furious with it. However, it also shows the continuing snootiness in Westminster to devolution and the failure to recognise that MSPs are actually just doing much of the work that MPs do in England.