British democracy has been shaken to its core in the last couple of weeks following painful revelations of MPs squandering taxpayers' money on everything from bath plugs to duck ponds to non-existent mortgages.
But if you think Westminster is rotten, you really should take a look at the carefree world of the European parliament. Because for all their wrongdoing, at least our national MPs have kept records of their murky business for us to scrutinise. In the peculiar world of EU politics, meanwhile, MEPs have been quietly clocking up hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in expenses without so much as showing a receipt.
And the perks are astonishing. On top of a basic salary of £83,282 a year (representing a huge pay rise for UK MEPs from June onwards), £41,573 in "transition payments" when they leave office, and pension rights of up to £30,000 for a single five-year term, MEPs can claim an enormous £363,000 a year in expenses – not a penny of which requires a receipt.
Jens Holm, one MEP campaigning to reform the system, tells how he naively went to present receipts for his travel expenses when he first arrived in Brussels, only to be told off by the European parliament's secretariat, who said: "We're not interested in your receipts". In other words, MEPs can spend their allowances on holidays, duck ponds, moats, mortgages or whatever takes their fancy, safe in the knowledge that neither the dreaded media nor taxpayers will ever find out.
Such a system clearly invites widespread abuse, as has been confirmed by a series of reports. For instance, one damning report that MEPs voted to keep secret revealed that one MEP had paid his entire staff allowance — £183,776 a year — to a suspected relative. Other MEPs sign in early in the morning to claim their £259 daily allowance, only to dash straight off for a long weekend.
Yesterday Open Europe published a new "league table" of all 785 MEPs, ranking them on 20 different criteria, including their record in promoting reform of the European parliament's absurd expenses system. British MEPs fare well in the ranking compared to their counterparts in Europe – although the competition isn't exactly tough – but many of them still leave a lot to be desired.
In 2005, for instance, several British MEPs voted against key proposals to make the expenses system more transparent, including requirements to produce receipts to back up travel expenses. And as late as April this year, a majority of British MEPs (60%) voted to keep details about their own expenses and information about misuse of EU funds secret. Only 24% of all British members voted to make expenses public. Hypocritically, the same MEPs simultaneously approved new rules making it easier for the public to access other types of documents from the EU.
So what to do? If politicians are to regain our trust, root-and-branch reform is now needed across the board – and that means Brussels and Strasbourg as well as Westminster. Gordon Brown announced over the weekend that he would force Labour MEPs to publish receipts for all their expenses in future. This is a welcome move, which goes further than any other political party. But it still only applies to office expenses, which account for only €50,000 of the €400,000 total available expenses pot. And it is also suspiciously absent from Labour's manifesto for the elections on 4 June, raising questions about the level of commitment. If Labour means business, let's see it where voters can hold them to account. Because right now voters want firm commitments to real change. We need a whole new generation of politicians, committed to acting in the public interest and pushing for a much better deal for taxpayers at all levels of government – especially EU level.